Highland Park Ca

There's a steep price to pay for living on Eldred Street. You have cars that run away. Truck cargos that roll away. Mail carriers who fade away. Visitors who turn around and go away. "To live here, you learn what you can and can't do," said Ric Phiegh, whose Highland Park home is on the steepest street in Los Angeles. In a city bisected by a mountain range and laced with hills and ridges, that distinction is high praise.

Last month, Eli Estrada found $140,000 cash in the street on his way to work. The $20 bills were unmarked, bundled into wads of $20,000 and in a bag in the middle of Gridley Road in Cerritos. The 40-year-old Highland Park man's first thought was: "I'm rich." But he immediately decided to turn in his find. The money would go a long way, he thought, but keeping it would be wrong.

It looks like the kind of police station that Hollywood would design for a period-piece cop series, but it's a real police station with a real pokey, a place where some big cases came down, and where a future Los Angeles police chief once cooled his heels as a juvenile delinquent. And now Police Station No.

In Highland Park, an explosion of art galleries in the last few years has made the neighborhood a leading light of contemporary Latino art in Los Angeles. East Hollywood, meanwhile, features a profusion of Thai restaurants and spas, along with Armenian bakeries, shops and a boat-shaped library, which reflects the legend that Noah's Ark came to rest on an Armenian mountain.

Last month, Eli Estrada found $140,000 cash in the street on his way to work. The $20 bills were unmarked, bundled into wads of $20,000 and in a bag in the middle of Gridley Road in Cerritos. The 40-year-old Highland Park man's first thought was: "I'm rich." But he immediately decided to turn in his find. The money would go a long way, he thought, but keeping it would be wrong.

Mario Rocha spent his first night out of prison lying on a blanket on the roof of his cousin's El Sereno garage, reading by flashlight -- Luis Rodriguez's gang memoir "Always Running" and the writing handbook "The Elements of Style," by William Strunk and E.B. White. Just a boy of 16 when he was locked up 10 years ago, Rocha, now 27, fell asleep savoring the starlit sky and awoke Friday to face the limelight.

The place If you want hipster swank, go to Silver Lake, but if you're looking for pre-gentrification grunge and cryptic cool, Highland Park is the ticket. Ask for a cup of coffee at a local bakery, and you could be handed a jar of Nescafe. Ask for a bottle of red wine at a liquor store, and you might be directed toward the cooler. Look in a store window, and there could be power tools displayed along with knitting supplies. The beauty of Highland Park is its eclecticism.

Jose Cruz is a walking testament to what happens when a member turns against the Avenues street gang. He has 30 scars from the stab wounds he suffered in one attempt on his life -- on his arms, torso and legs. In another attack, he was beaten so severely that he has a visible dent in his skull, according to court papers, "the size and shape of a pistol butt."

Occidental College was awarded a $399,654 grant to help revitalize the neighborhood near its campus. The grant is part of $7.5 million distributed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to 22 colleges in 16 states, said HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo. The grant will help the college provide local communities with social programs.

Plans for a new classroom building and parking lot at the Optimist Youth Home in Highland Park were unanimously approved Thursday by the Los Angeles Planning Commission. The 21,000-square-foot building will serve the at-risk youths who live and attend school at the facility, which opened in 1906. Home officials hope to break ground in winter 2002. Overcrowding at the facility became an issue when the population doubled to 200 in 15 years with no corresponding space increase.

The Anti-Defamation League on Thursday honored the federal agents and prosecutors involved in convicting four members of a Latino street gang in Highland Park last year for violating the civil rights of African Americans with a campaign of threats and violence, including murder. The group noted that the case against the Avenues gang "broke new ground as the first time a street gang was convicted of violating federal hate crime laws."

Three Highland Park gang members convicted of deadly hate-crime attacks against African Americans were sentenced to life in prison without parole Monday. The members of the Latino gang the Avenues had been prosecuted for breaking federal hate-crime laws -- statutes typically used against white supremacist groups. They were convicted of carrying out a conspiracy that violated their victims' rights to live and walk in Highland Park. The conspiracy included several killings.

Promise yourself ... to be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. As boys they saw it hanging from the walls of the dining hall, recited it in unison with other boys, heard it intoned at every special event like a prayer: Promise yourself ... to think only of the best, to work only for the best and to expect only the best.

Mario Rocha spent his first night out of prison lying on a blanket on the roof of his cousin's El Sereno garage, reading by flashlight -- Luis Rodriguez's gang memoir "Always Running" and the writing handbook "The Elements of Style," by William Strunk and E.B. White. Just a boy of 16 when he was locked up 10 years ago, Rocha, now 27, fell asleep savoring the starlit sky and awoke Friday to face the limelight.

A former Avenues street gang member acknowledged Wednesday that he had lied repeatedly about the murder of a black man who authorities allege was the target of an organized campaign to harass, threaten and kill African Americans in Highland Park. The defense in the federal conspiracy case pushed hard to suggest that the violent incidents Jesse Diaz recounted were directed at black gang members, and not all African Americans.

Jose Cruz is a walking testament to what happens when a member turns against the Avenues street gang. He has 30 scars from the stab wounds he suffered in one attempt on his life -- on his arms, torso and legs. In another attack, he was beaten so severely that he has a visible dent in his skull, according to court papers, "the size and shape of a pistol butt."

The Optimist Youth Home in Highland Park has doubled the number of children it serves and started new kinds of therapy in the last 15 years, but with no corresponding growth in space. Tired of the constant struggle to find space, officials have begun a campaign to build a 21,000-square-foot classroom building by 2003 to house their troubled charges.

The city's Department of Transportation agreed Wednesday to take measures to slow traffic along a Highland Park street where a young boy was killed Friday by a car. In a meeting with Councilman Richard Alatorre's chief of staff, Hilary Norton, transportation officials said they would add a left-hand turn lane and more school zone signs along Figueroa Street in the next month.

A Latino street gang threatened, assaulted, terrorized and murdered black people in Highland Park for six years in an effort to keep them out of their territory, a federal prosecutor alleged Wednesday. "Kenneth Wilson was killed because he was black, because he was in Highland Park and because the Avenues gang members had promised each other, had agreed that they would drive African Americans out of the neighborhood, by threats, by force, by murder," Assistant U.S. Atty.

An 18-year-old man was detained Tuesday afternoon on suspicion of bringing a gun onto the football field of his former high school, a school spokeswoman said. Witnesses reported seeing a person carrying the weapon onto the field at Franklin High School just before class was dismissed for the day. Students were kept inside while school police and Los Angeles Police Department officers searched for the gunman.