EAST LOS ANGELES : A Modest Parent Turns Down Clinton

Most people would gladly accept a personal invitation from the President to receive an award at the White House rose garden.

Not Rita Figueroa, who has never boarded an airplane. She says it frightens her too much.

She told an East Los Angeles priest that she was honored, but that she wouldn’t fly even with the Pope. When Atty. Gen. Janet Reno called to suggest that she instead take a train or bus, Figueroa politely declined. It’s her humble nature.

The 65-year-old received the crime victims service award from the U.S. Department of Justice for her work with an East Los Angeles group called Concerned Parents, which she helped create in the early 1970s after she lost two sons to gang violence. But she prefers not to take all the credit.

“There are a lot of mothers who lost their sons, not only me,” she said. “Without their help, I couldn’t have done anything.”

Of the award’s 10 recipients nationwide, Figueroa was the only one to turn down President Clinton’s invitation. Instead, the award was presented to her June 19 in East Los Angeles at a luncheon with lesser-known local, state and federal officials.

The attention has overwhelmed Figueroa, and she is eager to turn conversation toward other mothers like Chris Ramirez, Virginia Lopez and Connie Villar. The group brings together more than 20 parents, most of whom have lost a child or grandchild to gang violence.

Since 1975, when the group began meeting regularly in the basement of La Soledad Church on Cesar E. Chavez Avenue, mothers--and occasionally fathers--from different barrios have worked together to stop inter-neighborhood violence and to serve as a support group for families who have lost children. Some parents in the group have worked alongside parents of rival gang members whose group killed their children.

When they hear of a killing, Concerned Parents visits the parents to offer comfort. They often collect money door-to-door to help pay for the funeral.

To prevent rumbles between youths in warring neighborhoods, the mothers have patrolled local streets and escorted students to school in barrios where they are unwelcome. Some have visited Central Juvenile Hall in East Los Angeles regularly to counsel gang-involved youth.

The original five-mother group that met in La Soledad Church has grown side-by-side with Soledad Enrichment Action (SEA), a program that now offers alternative education, counseling and 32 parenting groups across the county, according to its executive director, Brother Modesto Leon.

At an annual SEA festival Saturday, Figueroa stepped off the chartered school bus, clutching the driver’s forearm, onto the grassy expanse of a Dominguez Hills seminary where booths, tables and an inflated playhouse awaited the busload primarily composed of mothers and children.

“We’re lucky we got a ride,” said Figueroa, who doesn’t drive. Friends said she sleeps little and can still be seen at night walking the streets to protect local youth.

Figueroa explained that the mothers--many of whom still cry at the mention of their lost children--try not to mention the word gangs or the names of enemy barrios because doing so reinforces localism and hatred. She won’t name which gang killed two of her four sons.

Her first son, Bobbie, was a 17-year-old gang member in 1971 when he was shot in the back. He died after 38 days in a coma. Her second son, Ronnie, was a 16-year-old gang member in 1973 when he was playing football in front of his house. Someone shot him from a passing car, and he died three hours later at the hospital. Her sons’ murderers were sentenced to prison.

“Justice was done,” Figueroa said. “But I never wanted revenge. The boys that did it went to court and I left it to God.” The deaths prompted Figueroa to make connections with other mothers.

“We wanted peace really badly,” Figueroa said. “And we were going to get it by joining together.”

Another member of the group, Maria Montenegro, first accompanied Figueroa to neighboring barrios and introduced her to gang members two decades ago. As young women did a folklorico dance, 61-year-old Montenegro stood under a stretch of netting in the shade and told how she has commemorated East Los Angeles’ deceased youths. On a wall in her home, she has collected about 100 small memorial cards from wakes, each bearing the name of a lost youth. And Montenegro also lights candles for the dead.

“I pray to God we don’t lose more boys,” Montenegro said.

Later, mothers shuffled across the tree-dotted lawn to the bus and returned to East Los Angeles. Figueroa was anxious to return home to her husband and 35-year-old son.

“I got to go,” she said. “I’ve got a lot of things to do.”

There will be a get-together to honor all the Concerned Parents at La Soledad Church from 4 to 7 p.m. Tuesday.