LIVING IN A 'HOT SPOT'

Dumbarton Residents Cope With Drug Dealers, Reckless Drivers on Daily Basis

With loose gravel under his feet and blue skis above, 9-year-old
Jerson Cano walked home from school along Dumbarton Avenue with his
mother.

Cano passed Migue Cabrera I Sais, the neighborhood's silver-toothed
ice cream man, who pushed his small cart. He innocently drifted by
small groups of men who appeared to be selling drugs. They lingered
near the street's corners and cautiously approached strangers who drove by.

A few blocks after the youth passed the intersection of Dumbarton and
Lilac Lane, where a 21-year-old man was killed in February, Cano
adjusted his baseball cap and listened to the birds chirp.

He recalled playing soccer in the road with his friends, although some
parents in the neighborhood would never dream of even letting their
small children walk on the street without supervision.

A number of incidents have sparked that fear in recent years,
including shootings, drug dealing and speeding cars that mimic scenes
from the movie "The Fast and the Furious." One early morning in June,
Cano's nearby school, Cesar Chavez Academy, locked down its classrooms
after a SWAT team was called to the neighborhood. A woman alleged she
had been stabbed inside her home on Dumbarton Avenue.

The incident turned out to be a hoax of sorts: the drunk woman's son
locked her out, and she received stab-like wounds trying to climb
through a broken window before calling the police. But the fear of
families who live on the street -- that something bad could happen at
any moment -- is all-too-real.

Dumbarton Avenue, with its abandoned refrigerators, smatterings of
crumpled litter and surprisingly high rents, is one of the city's
crime hot spots, according to Police Chief Wes Bowling. Drug dealing
is rampant, gangs are occasionally active and the police receive
between five and six calls a week for shots fired.

"We get a lot activity there," Bowling noted.

Neighbors, in response, are of two different minds. Some do nothing
about the crime -- either out of fear, hopelessness, apathy or a rare
sense that things really aren't that bad. After all, most of the
violence is between drug dealers and lawful citizens appear to be safe.

"There seems to be more or less a code that people live by," Stanford
biochemist Matthew Footer said. "That is, if you don't get in their
face, you're fine."

Footer is one of the few on the other side of the debate and bemoans
his neighbors' inaction. He is actively trying to improve things even
as he admits that since moving to the street in 2001, he has gotten
used to the neighborhood's all-too-familiar crime.

"I've seen dealing now every single day of my life for the past three
years," he said. "It's like, 'OK there's a dealer.' It just becomes
part of the everyday thing. In some ways, it's kind of sad."

Neighbors who have lived on the street longer than Footer note that
things have gotten quieter in the last few years, like most of East
Palo Alto. The soon-to-be-open IKEA, along with other developments,
promise brighter days to come.

Still, many worry that any slight increase in crime could balloon into
rampant lawlessness, like what occurred in 1992, when frequent
shootings gave the city its reputation as a crime haven.

Today's tough economic times, a few fear, could bring about that
reality, especially since there is a reduction in government services
- -- even as the city's promising construction boom continues.

Most ominously for those nervous residents, San Mateo County recently
more than $500,000 in aid it had been giving East Palo Alto to help
the police patrol crime hot spots.

"That will make us an easy target for more crime," worried Dumbarton
resident Martha Monje.

Last month, Monje's 17-year-old son found a bag of crack cocaine on
their property after a drug dealer ran through their backyard, fleeing
police.

"There's nothing we can do to stop it," she complained, sitting on a
colorful beanbag chair inside her home.

Still, echoing the attitude of many Dumbarton residents, Monje doesn't
think about moving or worry much about raising her kids in a hot spot.

"Anyplace is always going to have problems," she said. "It just
depends on the friends you choose."

The Finau family is less optimistic. One of their neighbors had their
fence knocked down last month when a speeding car wildly skidded
"donuts" around the corner of Bell Street and Dumbarton Avenue.

"That intersection is popular for the crazy drivers," mother Paea
Finau said, half-angry, half-laughing. One of these days, she said,
"I'm just going to stand there and throw a brick at them. That's how
mad I am."

As Finau spoke, her children -- 5-year-old Caitlin and 3-year-old
Otetti -- were splashing each other in a little plastic pool in their
tiny front yard. But Finau doesn't let them play on the street, past
the large brown fence surrounding their home.

Fences are a common feature for homes along Dumbarton Avenue, be they
black and wrought iron or pink and wooden.

In front of another such railing near the Finau's home, an abandoned
auto had a yellowed ticket stuck to its windshield. Apparently,
nobody's bothered to tow the car for months.

"When we first moved in here, I thought it was nice," she said. "Now,
we're thinking of moving because it's not safe."

Despite their fears, the Finaus pay $1,800 a month for their
two-bedroom house. That's triple what they were paying two years ago
for a three-bedroom home in another part of East Palo Alto. Finay
recently got a job as a telemarketer to help pay the bills.

The homicide in February sparked Footer, the biochemist, into action.
He lived next door to the murder victim: 21-year-old Mitchell Badue,
who was shot and killed one early February morning on the corner of
Lilac Lane and Dumbarton Avenue.

The first time the two met, "Mitch" proudly showed off his large fish
tank, Footer recalled.

Police and neighbors were trying to help the young man set up a
fork-lift company and get out of drug dealing. The week before he was
killed, Mitch got his business permit.

"He actually had some promise," Footer said.

Even the police liked him. "He had a lot of respect for people,"
Officer Johnny Taflinger remembered, quickly adding that he knew, even
prior to the murder, Mitch "wasn't innocent innocent."

The gossip around the neighborhood is that Mitch was shot by a rival
dealer in a turf war, and while officers say that's just a rumor, they
also admit it's a likely scenario.

"He lived a fast life," Taflinger said. "He died a fast
life."

Hoping to move the drug trade from his corner, Footer petitioned the
city to place speed bumps on the street to slow cars and make the
neighborhood less desirable for those purchasing drugs.

"The problem is not all drug dealers," he said. "The problem is 50
percent drug buyers."

Life on Dumbarton Avenue is not all gloom and doom. Living in the area
for the past three years, Footer has gotten to know many of his
neighbors -- a first for him in his adult life.

While people in Palo Alto stay inside and let their paid gardeners
take care of their property, residents of East Palo Alto toll outside
themselves, tending to their weeds. With everyone working on their
gardens, homes and cars in full view, it's easier to get to know someone.

"People care for each other," Footer said. "There's more of a family
atmosphere. We invite each other to barbecues and parties and baptisms."

Some suburban trappings can also be found behind the fences.

Tall trees shade basketball nets that stand erect in driveways.
Satellite dishes perch on roofs while vegetable gardens decorate the
backyards. There's even a few Jacuzzi pools resting on some
well-manicured decks.

On the other side of the coin is the intersection of Dumbarton Avenue
and Bayshore Freeway, the street's most troubled intersection,
according to Officer Taflinger. The single-story white stucco home
sitting on the uneasy corner has a red and white "No Trespassing" sign
on it, but visitors wander in and out frequently.

On the corner, those visitors -- usually young men around Mitch's age
- -- wait patiently at all hours for customers to come from Stanford,
Palo Alto, Atherton, and all around the Bay Area to purchase their
small bags of narcotics.

A few months ago, Taflinger apprehended the young man who most often
stood outside the home on charges of marijuana possession. That single
arrest took days of work, and culminated in a fight that left the
officer with a broken wrist.

"He's already out of jail," the officer sighed, complaining about how
hard it is to arrest suspected dealers and keep them away from the
city's residential neighborhoods.

Some people who live along Dumbarton Avenue are contributing to the
drug problem, Taflinger said, by too often turning the other cheek.

"We need to clean up the street and make it nice," he added. "But we
can't do it by ourselves."

Despite the reputation, some who live on the street insist it's not so
bad. Aside from a few isolated violent incidents -- an occasional
murder or stabbing -- the street is tranquil, remarked Ana Quazada, a
housekeeper who shares a home on the other end of the street with her
sister and four kids.

Others appear to be too scared to speak about the streets' obvious
problems.

Police say Realtor Ken Harris has helped evict troublemaking
residents, but he's not talking about it. "I'm not going to do any
articles on East Palo Alto," he grumbled. "Particularly about
Dumbarton Avenue."

That type of apathy disappoints Norm Picker, who came to East Palo
Alto 20 years ago to start a nonprofit, Bayshore Christian Ministries,
to mentor young, poor kids. He lives a block away from Dumbarton, on
Oakwood Drive.

Why doesn't he and his family just leave?

Picker, who is white, believes in the idea that when people of
different races live near each other, they help break down stereotypes
and heal racial wounds.

"As a Christian, I believe God is in me and that just by sitting here,
I'm doing some good," he said.

As he walks around the neighborhood and on Dumbarton Avenue pulling
his small son in a red wagon, Picker said neighbors give him looks,
suggesting he shouldn't be walking outside.

"If I want to come home at two in the morning, I should be able to,"
he said. "There's too much acceptance ... too much saying we can never
have a good neighborhood."