Echo Park Lake

When she's lonely, Edelira Pineda visits an empty lot just across from Echo Park lake. There, at the dusty parcel surrounded by a chain-link fence, she communes with the spirit of her husband, Juan Francisco Pineda, 31. He was crushed to death there a year ago when the apartment building in which they lived for eight years collapsed in a terrifying rumble. "I take flowers to him [at the site] when I feel a need to go there," Pineda, 32, says in Spanish.

Some would say reinvention is the best antidote for a bad reputation. Ask any Angeleno. But longtime resident Ron Emler might rescript that axiom--just a shade. For the last 15 years or so, Emler's prescription has called for reinvestment or better, break-a-sweat commitment. A late-to-the-game community activist, Emler, with the help of other concerned neighbors, has ministered to the sagging image of Echo Park and tried to help the neighborhood reconnect with itself.