Riots’ Toll on a Family’s Business

In the aftermath of the recent unrest in Los Angeles, many inner-city businesses are struggling to get back on their feet. In an effort to understand the problems facing these small entrepreneurs, The Times is periodically detailing the recovery efforts of one mini-mall at Pico Boulevard and La Brea Avenue.

Five months after the riots, things seem to be looking up at the corner of Pico and La Brea. On the northeast corner, what was until late August a charred heap of rubble buzzing with flies has finally been cleaned up. Only a swept-clean concrete foundation remains to remind passers-by of the conflagration that followed the Rodney King verdicts.

That much is progress. But this deserted scene tells nothing of the struggles of the businesses and people who are still trying to recover from the destruction of the mini-mall last April.

Western International Insurance, the company that insured the mall, has been closed down by the state, insolvent because of heavy riot claims and other problems. It left scores of store owners in the lurch.

Joseph Kung, the mall’s owner, has waged weeks of fruitless protest at City Hall trying to obtain government help for himself and other riot victims. He was finally given a $6,000 grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. But now, after he used it to keep up with mortgage payments on his house, he’s been told he has to give it back. FEMA maintains that Kung was covered by loss of income insurance and that Kung has to return the FEMA aid unless he can show that he has exhausted all other resources.

Kung has moved into cheaper housing and is fighting health problems. He says he can’t rebuild because the new, lower rent levels he expects won’t let him meet his mortgage payments.

That means his former tenants--including a Chinese restaurant, a Rentronics store and a check-cashing firm--will have to find other locations. And some of the employees at those stores will have to find other jobs.

Grandison (Tico) Johnson, whose Krystal Maintenance had a contract to maintain the parking lots of this and dozens of other mini-malls destroyed by the unrest, has been forced to file for bankruptcy. He laid off his six employees shortly after the riots and thinks most of them are probably still unemployed. He hasn’t received a cent of government aid.

Just around the corner from the mall in a quiet residential neighborhood, the home of Johnson and his wife, Brenda, shows no signs of the financial disaster the family is fighting. In fact, it looks the very picture of middle-class economic success. The tidy 1920s bungalow where they have lived for 22 years perches behind a velvety green lawn on a shady street with trees so big their roots crack the sidewalk. In their living room, the Johnsons’ sons smile down from framed high school graduation photos and baby pictures. Grandison IV, the eldest, was a sophomore at USC when the riots hit. Younger son Estevan has been studying at Bakersfield College. But this home, and the education of these young men, is now on the line.

Because of the destruction of so much of their customer base, the Johnsons are thinking of putting up for sale the house they so lovingly renovated and decorated--though they don’t know what to expect in this depressed market. They hope they’ll be able to scrape together enough money to send Estevan back to school next week. There won’t be enough to send Grandison back to USC, so he will have to quit college for now and help with the family business.

In the Johnsons’ living room, the television buzzes with the local news as Tico describes his life over the last five months: fires, looting, lost business, red tape. When the screen fills with flames, Rodney King’s face, and the fuzzy image of his beating, the conversation stops.

“For me, it’s flashbacks,” says Tico after a moment, recalling the horror of watching looters burn down the Pico and La Brea center and the Boys Market down the street. He stops talking again to watch the next news story--the shutdown of the General Motors plant in Van Nuys.

The evening news sums it up: For this family, the recession and the riots have been just one disaster after another. For the Johnsons, as for so many others, the sluggish economy makes recovering from the destruction even harder.

Grandison, who is 24 and grew up in a cocoon of relative financial security, can’t shake the new feeling of the fragility of success. “I never thought we’d be in this situation. We weren’t rich, but I never thought it would come to this,” he says.

The Johnsons saved for years from Tico’s salary as a chef and Brenda’s earnings as a retail store manager and real estate agent to nurture their dream of becoming entrepreneurs. Five years ago, they started their parking lot maintenance and landscaping business, and at first, business was good.

The family was flush enough that Brenda was able to quit her jobs to help run the business and spend more time with her sons--and even to get a live-in helper in the apartment Tico built out back. Though she already had a master’s degree in political science, Brenda enjoyed studying and took classes at Loyola Marymount with Grandison, who shared her academic bent, sometimes taking classes with her.

The family was doing so well that Grandison couldn’t qualify for financial aid at USC, so Tico and Brenda swallowed hard and coughed up the $15,000 annual tuition.

Then, as the recession deepened and some of Tico’s customers began to go under, his income began to drop. The live-in helper had to go. Meanwhile, unable to obtain a business loan, the Johnsons had to borrow against their house to buy a $40,000 cleaning truck for the business. Then, late last year, Brenda developed a serious heart condition, and their skimpy health insurance left them with about $80,000 in unpaid bills. Tico took out a third mortgage to start paying those bills. Then the riots hit.

“My father and mother have always gone out and worked hard. I watched my father do everything right. And then this happens,” says Grandison.

It’s not just his family he’s worried about, but his peers. “People said you need a college degree to get a job. Then they say you need a master’s. Now I see the situation of my family and my friends and think, no matter what, it doesn’t get you security,” he says.

Grandison’s best friend from college took his USC engineering degree straight to a good job at Hughes Aircraft. “He’s at Hughes now, but with all these layoffs, will he be there at the end of the year?”

The riots destroyed all but 17 of Johnson’s 53 customers. Then he lost another 10 contracts when a chain of mini-malls changed ownership. None of the customers who were burned out have yet rebuilt. Some never will.

Devastated but determined, the Johnsons have tripled their mailings of flyers looking for new maintenance and landscaping work and have pounded the pavement trying to get contracts. Brenda and her sons have been making cold calls to real estate management offices. They’ve put in bids to clean lots at the state Department of Transportation, the Department of Water and Power and Old Town Pasadena. They put in a bid with the insurer of the Pico and La Brea center to do the cleanup there. No reply. They bid on the center across the street, also to no avail. They listed their firm with the Brotherhood Crusade’s list of minority contractors, but are still awaiting a response. They signed up with the city’s program to match contractors with rebuilding work. That got them one one-time job.

Lately, things have begun to pick up a bit. They’ve been able to get some new contracts in the San Fernando Valley and their customer base has crept back up to 25. Johnson has taken back one employee on a part-time basis. “He has a family back in Mexico to support. We try to help him,” Tico says.

Tico says he’s never depended on government help, and reluctantly applied for aid from FEMA. Nothing has come through. He says he applied for a Small Business Administration loan, but the disaster assistance center lost it.

He says he’s fed up with politicians. “Nate Holden’s not going to do anything for me. I don’t trust somebody in $500 suits and $200 shoes,” he says of the Los Angeles city councilman.

Brenda is perhaps better prepared than the rest of her family for their current situation. She grew up in a family of business people--her father owned a mortuary and a dry cleaning store in Louisiana--and she’s accustomed to the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. She has always cherished her independence, and recalls being enthralled in her high school and college days by the radical individualism celebrated in Ayn Rand novels like “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.”

“People don’t understand what a risk-taker you are when you start a business. It’s a big risk and you have to be able to roll,” she says.

Tico seems more discouraged. “It’s all gone. It’s all for nothing now,” he says, looking around his home. “I’m a workaholic. That’s all I know.”

Brenda, who is 43, says she understands why her husband is dismayed. “He’s 51. He doesn’t want to hear he has to start over. When we had to file for bankruptcy, it was ‘Gosh, it’s all come down to this after all these years.’ It’s like getting your legs cut out from under you.”

Grandison and Estevan are unhappy that the rioters hurt the family business. But they understand the fury expressed after the King verdicts and are frustrated that things seem to be getting worse. Like many young black men, they say they are accustomed to getting hassled by police for no reason. They say they understand how bleak the prospects are for many of their high school friends.

“What started the riots of ’92 were the same as the riots in the ‘60s. I don’t want my kids to have to go through this,” says Grandison. “You’re going to be interviewing someone 20 years from now and it will be the same questions and the same answers.”

Their parents recall that things used to be better--at least in this neighborhood. Front doors stayed open to the breeze and people--incidentally, it seemed at the time, people of all races--went out of their way to say good morning. Now, Tico dreams about moving back to his hometown of New Orleans and starting a coffee shop there.

Brenda doesn’t want to leave. She’s convinced that her family will make a comeback here in Los Angeles.

“For a while there, we thought we weren’t going to make it,” she says. But now, she’s determined to pay back Krystal’s bills, get the bankruptcy protection dismissed, and reinvigorate the business.

“You have to not sit and cry woe is me. You have to move on and do what you have to do to survive and rebuild.”