The house, a three-bedroom cream-colored residence on a peaceful street, even had yellow and red roses waving merrily from the front lawn. And while the backyard was cramped, there was a nectarine tree, a red swing set and a small gazebo.
This is it, Channise Davy thought. Home.
Happy to have found a place near her salon in Altadena and close to her fiance in Pasadena, the 31-year-old hairdresser moved her four children from North Hollywood into the one-story charmer on Broach Avenue in Duarte last fall.
Davy never thought about the fact that they would be the only black family on the mostly Latino block -- until someone reminded her in a way that still makes her eyes tear and her stomach twist.
On May 8, Davy opened the door to her home and was greeted by a barrage of spray-painted racial epithets. The hardwood floors, the mirrors, the televisions, the dressers -- the vandals had turned the entire place into a canvas for that six-letter word used for decades to scare and scar African Americans.
Shaken, she immediately left and called police. And aside from one trip back to pick up some clothes, Davy has refused to return to a scene authorities believe was created by members of a local Latino gang.
"As far as hate crimes go, it's probably one of the worst ones I've seen in my career," said Sgt. Tony Haynes of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's Duarte station. "They trashed the furniture and tossed drawers -- there was pretty much no room left untouched."
The incident has been the talk of Duarte, a predominantly white and Latino bedroom community of 25,000 in the San Gabriel Valley. Black and Latino gangs have been active in the area for years, and last year a rash of interracial shootings occurred in nearby Monrovia.
Since the break-in, Davy and her children have lived in a hotel paid for by the county, but those funds ran out Saturday and she is struggling to find a new home in a place that feels safe.
"You can see it in her face, the stress she's going through," said Lynn Lawrence, who owns the salon where Davy works. "Emotionally it has had quite an effect on her."
Wary of disclosing the area in which she hopes to settle, Davy said the last two landlords she spoke with backed out at the last minute. Others have asked for deposits she can't afford.
