the ugly earring

This evening, management posted notices on every apartment door about a forum they had attended concerning general neighborhood issues. According to the notice, the Los Angeles Police Department had requested neighborhood help in ending car robberies and burglaries in our area. Additionally, the following requests were being made by the LAPD:

1. Notify the authorities when you witness suspicious activities such as a stranger running through private property, someone looking into the windows of homes and cars, screaming and shouting for help, or when witnessing a drug transaction.

2. Vending Trucks–these vendors are illegally set up for business. Much of their produce and dairy products are spoiled. These vendors are also known to be involved in criminal activity and are a front for bigger crimes.

The posting continued to read in bold letters–DO NOT SUPPORT THESE VENDORS. STOP BUYING ANY AND ALL PRODUCTS FROM VENDING TRUCKS.

Christina owns a vending truck several feet from the Wendover. Every day from 9am to 10pm, she sits in her truck surrounded by produce, bags of potato chips, candy, soda, water and laundry soap.

For almost a year, we have frequented her truck especially when there wasn’t enough tomatoes to finish the pasta sauce or when ripe avocados were needed to complete a meal. She greets us with sincerity though sometimes her cheerfulness reveals a darker mood–that business is slow or that she’d like to go home to her family. But she prevails, every day she is there, in that truck, waiting to make a dollar or two. After all, this is her livelihood, her bread and butter.

When the weather is nice, she teaches Jimmy a few Spanish words. She waves when I walk by. Every now and then she’ll throw in an extra orange and tomato for free.

Appalled by such a notice, I am reminded of the many times seeing Christina dig through her tomatoes for the freshest ones or when she refused to sell me an avocado because hers were not ripe. I see the neighborhood kids race to her truck to spend their quarter allowances on apple-flavored lollipops dipped in caramel. She’s a part of the Hobart Blvd. I admire most– her, the Filipino karaoke singers and the smoggy, fluorescent view of the city from the rooftop.

So is Christina really involved in a ring of criminal activity? This Hispanic woman with her tired eyes, her reddish-dyed hair and gray roots, her dry hands and chipped nail polish?

I highly doubt it.

Why didn’t the notice mention the 16 rounds of gunfire shot in front of our complex two weeks ago? Why didn’t they tell us what happened to the kid who was shot several weeks ago a block away? Why is it that all the more prevalent issues are kept disguised while people like Christina and other vendors must pay the price for such carpet sweeping?

I simply can’t believe it, that this notice was on my door, that Christina and car burglaries are considered a more serious threat than the weekly gunfire and the gang graffiti that decorates our street.