For years the 40-foot-long cinder-block wall at the entrance to Durfee Village in Pico Rivera stood largely untouched.
Then the graffiti began appearing. PV. BXA. The city painted over it, but the graffiti reappeared. The city planted ivy. It died; the graffiti returned.
Neighbors thought the scrawling was the work of taggers.
But the graffiti was a sign of the ongoing war between Pico Viejo, a street gang that dates to the town's inception, and a longtime rival it was trying to suppress, Brown Authority.
On Aug. 10, Maria Elena Hicks, a 57-year-old medical secretary and grandmother who had lived in Durfee Village all her life, found herself at the center of the feud when she spotted a youth spray-painting the wall and attempted to stop him.
Hicks honked and flashed her car lights at the teenager. Suddenly, another car pulled up behind her, a gunman emerged and fired into her rear window, hitting her in the head. She died three days later.
Since her death, another story has emerged in the tight-knit community. It is the tale of two longtime neighborhood families: the Quinteros -- Hicks' family -- and the Tafollas.
Both had lived in Pico Rivera for decades. Their children played sports there and attended local schools together.
But while the Quintero family worked to better their community, the Tafollas' neighbors campaigned to force them out.
The Quinteros pushed their children to go to college. Some Tafolla kids went to Juvenile Hall.
Of the four youths charged in the murder of Hicks, two are Tafollas: Jennifer Tafolla, 19, and the accused shooter, Angel Rojas, 16, who will be tried as an adult.
The other defendants -- Cesar Lopez 19, and Richard Rolon, 21 -- are members of Brown Authority, a gang allegedly formed by Tafollas, whose house was the gang's hangout.
Although the two families lived six blocks apart, they were only vaguely aware of each other.
Then "their paths crossed in such a tragic way," said Gregory Salcido, a city councilman and high school history teacher raised in Pico Rivera. "It makes you want to holler."
Vigilant residents
Ray and Mary Tafolla arrived with their family from Compton in 1965, moving into a four-bedroom stucco house on Greenglade Avenue. Their oldest son, Tony, was 18 at the time.
"Where we lived there was all these shootings," said Tony Tafolla, now 59, "then the Watts riots happened."
