One prominent attorney, who asked not to be identified for security reasons, drove from his office directly to the border with a police escort after being notified that kidnappers planned to kill him for speaking out against the crime wave.
He and his family slept on air mattresses and sofa beds in a San Ysidro apartment for weeks until he closed escrow on a home in Eastlake. He shut down his office in a Tijuana high-rise and now works from his American home.
"I had to change cities, houses, countries, offices," he said. "It's a life of constant fear."
In the rolling hills of Eastlake -- only five miles from Mexico up California 125, the new South Bay Expressway toll road -- most of the gated mansions in the $2-million-to-$3-million range have been sold to Tijuana refugees, say real estate agents. Maids cross the border daily to work for families that have recently come north -- both in Eastlake's mansions and in its lower-priced neighborhoods of large tract homes with red-tile roofs.
Though safely ensconced behind gates or in the cookie-cutter anonymity of manicured American suburbia, many people who leave Tijuana remain tethered to it by business.
Many continue to run their factories or businesses there from a distance, from nondescript office parks in Otay Mesa or Chula Vista. They monitor their employees via closed-circuit camera systems and shuttle messengers back and forth across the border with paperwork and cash.
If they must travel to Tijuana themselves, they take ample precautions -- varying their routes and driving junky cars that they hope will not attract attention.
"They're running scared. They're having to do clever things to not be seen crossing the border. They go in different clothes. They go in different cars," said Father John P. Dolan, pastor of St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church in Chula Vista. Dolan said six families in his parish have fallen victim to kidnappings in the last year.
Dr. Fernando Guzman, who was kidnapped in April, said he occasionally commutes by motorcycle across the border to his hospital near downtown Tijuana.
The prominent attorney armor-plated his SUV for $66,000. Another business owner wears a GPS tracking device hidden on his body so that in an emergency his family will be able to determine his location via satellite.
