So long Newport, hello Santa Ana

In a neighborhood where people are a resource, Santa Ana's KidWorks is in the import business.

By SAM MILLER
The Orange County Register

On the wall of Ava Steaffens' Santa Ana office hangs a painting of a place that seems so far away.

It's a wistful watercolor of the Newport Beach Back Bay, with sailboats in the foreground and million dollar homes in the background.

"That's where I used to walk every morning," she says. But four years ago, she moved from her Newport Beach home into the heart of Santa Ana, after giving up a private legal practice to be the office manager of a nonprofit, Christian community center called KidWorks. .

In the square mile around KidWorks, families hope to earn their way out. Ask the kids who go to KidWorks where they want to live when they grow up.

A mansion, one says. Another says in a hotel.

Ruby Gama, a fourth-grader in pink socks who gets teased for his love of Pokémon, says he'll live in a house close to the beach.

Not in Santa Ana?

He pauses. "Newport Beach isn't in Santa Ana? Oh."

But Steaffens – now KidWorks' director – moved in, and she isn't the only one. Most of the KidWorks staff now live in the immediate neighborhood, or nearby in other Santa Ana neighborhoods. Department directors, program coordinators, receptionists, year-round interns – some were raised here and never left, others relocated from Irvine, Fountain Valley or Newport Beach.

This is the story of a painting, but not the one on Steaffens' wall. It's about a mural in a graffiti-blighted neighborhood.

• • •

Three years ago, the teens and staff at KidWorks wanted to broadcast a statement of hope in their neighborhood, so they began planning a mural in an apartment complex on Townsend Street, in one of Santa Ana's most dangerous neighborhoods.

It is the neighborhood where, two years ago, Santa Ana police and the FBI coordinated a huge takedown of gang members.

"Families had become prisoners in their own homes," FBI Director Robert Mueller said then. "As officers led the subjects away in handcuffs, residents unbolted their doors, stepped outside and cheered."

It took more than a year of fund-raising and planning before the work on the mural could begin, and much of another year to complete it. Some KidWorks staff worried about the reaction. Would it be vandalized? Would gangs see it as a challenge?

As work was beginning on the mural, Maria Tonga – a receptionist for KidWorks, and sister of three Townsend Street Gang members – went to look at it.

"I know everybody, so (the gang members) talk to me," she says. "They're like, 'Eh, what are you doing over there?' I'm like, we're just doing a mural. They didn't even know what a mural is."

• • •

Tonga still lives in the neighborhood. So does Jose Aleman, who coordinates the youth program at KidWorks' Los Puentes branch, which is in the apartment complex that would house the mural. Aleman was born in Mexico City and raised in Santa Ana. To his family, his decision to stay in Santa Ana makes no sense.

"My parents see this as a starting point. The way to show you made it is moving out, to somewhere nicer," he says. "I don't know that most families necessarily want to be here. They're forced into living in these neighborhoods, just as a practicality."

The problem with that attitude, he says, is that it strips neighborhoods of their role models. Gang members and drug dealers fill the void.

"That crowd doesn't give kids enough personal attention, whereas we do. It's very intentional. Part of the vision of KidWorks is to bring resources to the community, (with) people as the resources."

It's not for everyone. Prospective employees or volunteers sometimes ask Steaffens whether it's safe to work there. Not live there – simply work there. KidWorks has never had any problems, and Tonga says the gangs would never attack a religious organization like KidWorks.

Aleman considered the potential for violence before he took the job, but now he simply puts faith in God that he'll be safe. "It comes down to, do you want to live in fear, or do you want to be free to live in this neighborhood?"

• • •

KidWorks has been in the neighborhood for 15 years, most of that time as a simple tutoring center but more recently as a place for health consultations, as the only library in the tract, as a place to connect with local police and learn to use computers. There are 350 kids who get tutoring, and long waiting list as the program tries to expand to a third branch this year.

Nobody acts like the neighborhood is perfect, but it's gotten better, and a citizen-driven effort called the Townsend Street Strategy Task Force has sprung up. In Steaffens' vision for the future, KidWorks is entirely run by the local community, and she and her imports can leave.

It used to be that kids couldn't walk from one end of the tract to the other because of the danger of crossing gang turfs. It used to be that every child went to the same local middle school, before empowered parents knew they had a choice.

"Oh, yeah, there's still drug dealers," says Johana Calderon, a former KidWorks student who has lived in the neighborhood her entire life. "You see them on Townsend, really young, maybe 14 years old. But a lot of them now are not from the community. They come in here because they think they see an opening."

On Thursday afternoon this week, the apartment complex that houses the Los Puentes branch was cluttered with the sounds of banda music, young children and a shrieking parakeet. In a few minutes, teens would arrive for tutoring.

The mural in the complex is unblemished. It's 10 feet tall, 18 feet across, and features a tile mosaic of a bright city street. A gnarled, dwarfish tree half-heartedly grows out of a patch of grass and leans against the mural.

It's been six months, and it has never been vandalized. That day when the gang members talked to Maria Tonga, they told her, "Eh, can we go do that? That's cool!"

Says Maria: "They're like, 'We'll make sure that spot is safe.'"

Contact the writer: (714) 796-7884 or sammiller@ocregister.com