QUIET COMMUNITY STRUGGLES TO COPE WITH BOYS' DEATHS

La Crescenta: Residents Find That Their Upscale Foothills Enclave Is Not
Immune To Teen Boredom, Involvement With Drugs.

Parents move to La Crescenta for the schools, which are among the
state's best. They settle here because the streets are clean, safe,
shaded and gently sloped. They come to let their children skateboard
through neighborhoods where people know each other--and each other's
kids.

Wedged between the San Gabriel Mountains to the north and the Verdugos
to the south, partly in the city of Glendale and partly
unincorporated, La Crescenta is a community with a sense of place.
Parents say kids thrive here, sitting in treehouses, sprinting after
each other with Super Soakers, marching up the hillsides to Blue
Ribbon schools.

"This is a very close-knit community," said Linda Evans, co-principal
of Crescenta Valley High School and a 20-year resident of the area. "I
think this valley, with the Verdugos on one side and the San Gabriels
on the other, kind of defines us as a community. You have this sense
that you're kind of surrounded and separate and protected by these
mountains."

But that peace of mind was stripped away last week by the brutal
slayings of two local boys, Blaine Talmo Jr., 14, and Chris McCulloch,
13, on Valley View Elementary School's playground. The boys' bodies
were found last Sunday night, bloody and beaten almost beyond
recognition.

Michael Demirdjian, 15, who lives near the school, is scheduled to be
arraigned as an adult Aug. 9 on murder and robbery charges. Glendale
police say they are looking into drugs as a motive and that additional
suspects may be arrested. Friends of the victims say Talmo and
McCulloch had been experimenting with marijuana for several months
before their deaths.

As police investigators try to unravel the circumstances of the
deaths, the community is struggling to determine what could have been
done to prevent the tragedy.

"You want to keep your child as safe as possible, but you know it's
impossible when something like this happens," Evans said. "That's what
I've been thinking between 2 or 3 in the morning. I'm desperately
trying to apply logic to it, but this is just beyond my
understanding."

Evans isn't the only one struggling to comprehend the deaths.
Residents have been attending town meetings, and summer school
students have been meeting with grief counselors. And there have been
ceaseless discussions among the youths who gather in parks, cafes and
shops along Foothill Boulevard.

There are no gangs here, they say. Poverty is not really an issue
either in this middle-class neighborhood. Crime rates are low.
Boredom, kids say, is their biggest issue--especially in summer when
most take a break from school and sports leagues.

"There's nothing to do here," said James Hahn, 15, sitting with two of
his buddies in the Round Table pizzeria on Foothill, which was a
frequent hangout of McCulloch and Talmo. "So kids get high."

Often, youths gather at places like sprawling Crescenta Valley Park or
remote Two Strike Park, out of view of their parents, to drink and
smoke.

Drug Use Is Starting Younger

Jason Sein, 18, says drugs such as Ecstasy, LSD and methamphetamine
are becoming more prominent among kids here, but not nearly as much as
alcohol and marijuana. Sein, who left for college last year but was
home for the summer, said he has been alarmed at how young first-time
drug users are these days.

"I hear about kids who are 13 getting in trouble," he said. "There's a
lot of peer pressure to be cool. Crescenta Valley has a lot of
cliques, and I don't think they offer enough for kids to do."

"This is not designed to be a fun place," said Brian Landisi, 17, who
has lived in Crescenta Valley all his life. Friendships become very
important in a place like this, he added.

In fact, most Crescenta Valley High School students come straight from
Rosemont Middle School, a system that creates lasting relationships
between many students and their families. Landisi said he's known his
best friend, Steve Keyes, 17, since they were both toddlers.

Despite how sleepy La Crescenta is, Landisi says there are ways to
keep busy.

"We go to a friend's house and play board games or talk. We go mini
golfing or to Old Town Pasadena," he said. "The YMCA is a big hangout.
This place is always moving; there's always some kind of activity here."

Sports is another outlet. Crescenta Valley has consistently fielded
some of the best youth basketball and soccer teams in the region, and
high school football games are as important here as in the Midwest.

But standing outside La Crescenta Presbyterian Church after
McCulloch's memorial service Friday, Sherry Stockhamer, a longtime
resident and a guidance counselor at Rosemont Middle School, said La
Crescenta can lull parents into complacency.

"These kids all have beepers. They know everything about each other,"
she said. "Sometimes, they know more about each other than even their
parents. We parents need to network too. We need to be stronger parents."

Nancy Riehl has organized several town hall meetings in La Crescenta,
some drawing as many as 800 people. She has lived in La Crescenta for
24 years and has six children, all of whom attended public schools
here.

"The town meetings came about because parents were concerned that
certain elements were coming into the community and trying to sell
drugs to our kids," she said. "We're certainly a wonderful town, but
we're not a perfect town. We're not immune to the problems affecting
the rest of the country. We have no reason to think we're behind some
kind of protective fence that can protect us from evil."

By Southern California standards, La Crescenta's problems with youth
drug and alcohol use aren't epidemic, but Riehl said they are problems
nonetheless. Even she confessed that she has let her guard down from
time to time, recounting a party her children hosted at her home two
years ago.

"Some kids had hidden an ice chest outside with their Mickeys, or
whatever they drink," she said. "By the time I knew what was going on,
we had a few drunk kids here.

"I just want to wake parents up and say don't go to Palm Springs and
leave your kids alone," she said. "I want to tell them: 'Know your
kids' friends and know their parents.' "

Victims' Parents Tried to Be Aware

By most accounts, the victims' parents were trying to be attentive to
their children's needs. The Talmos had caught their son with drugs at
least once and punished him, according to friends. But Blaine's
stepmother, Alana, denied he used drugs, and said she thought he was
on the right track when he began to practice with the Crescenta Valley
High School football team.

Chris McCulloch had resumed going to church, and he and his mother
were attending a local support group for at-risk children and their
parents.

In an interview Saturday morning, McCulloch's mother, Aileen Bristow,
said she would have done little differently, but she acknowledged she
might have been naive about the potential dangers her boy faced. After
the family moved to neighboring La Canada Flintridge, Chris
occasionally left home for several days at a time to be with friends
in La Crescenta.

Bristow doesn't drive and wasn't always able to drive over to pick
Chris up. Other families were willing, but she said she felt her boy
was safe in La Crescenta with so many good families to look after him.

"I tended to think that the world was a safe place," she said. "I'm
just a trusting person. I never felt afraid. I just trust all the time
and thought because I wouldn't do something like this--I wouldn't
destroy any one's entire life--I thought nobody else would do it.

"And that's the way I brought Chris up. I was happy to settle in this
valley. I wanted to let my child walk down the street and know that he
was loved and not be afraid. And that's how he was. He reached out to
everybody just as I told him to."