09/10/04

LC040910

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

Random violence changed this beautiful child's life forever, so
why haven't we heard any public outcry?

Brooks Hurst>> We just let it happen. Our leaders aren't doing
anything. Oh, they'll have another little rally when some kid -
- a little boy got shot a couple weeks ago -- and they'll have a
Stop the Violence rally and then everybody will go back to doing
what they always do.

Val>> And then, the photographer who brought the West Coast
look to West Coast jazz.

All that and more straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> It's an unfortunate part of life in the big city and, if
we're lucky, it will never touch us or those we love. But
violent crime has scarred the lives of scores of Southern
California families and, for them, violent crime means much more
than just something they watch on the local news. You're about
to meet one of the youngest victims. She's a survivor and, as
Toni Guinyard tells us, she's typical of many more innocent
children in Los Angeles who get caught in the crossfire.

Maira Morales>> I'm angry because there's a lot of violence in
the world.

Toni Guinyard>> Maira Morales has a right to be angry. In a
split second, she became a statistic, one of those people too
often described with clichés, a victim of random violence, an
unintended target, a child in the wrong place at the wrong time
caught in the crossfire. It was the summer of 2001. Maira had
just been promoted from the fourth grade. She was shot as she
waited to buy corn from a vendor's cart on Normandie Avenue near
51st Street. She remembers two men approaching, walking down
the sidewalk.

Maira Morales>> They were laughing like friends, normal
friends, and one just went back to a corner and the other one
just stayed right here and they started yelling. One stood
behind me and the other one went on the corner. He just got the
gun and then they started shooting. When the other man who was
standing behind me, he went down on the floor and the bullet hit
me on the shoulder.

Toni Guinyard>> The shooting happened here just outside Maira's
front door. She calls it an accident. That accident happened
and everyone quickly labeled Maira one of the innocent victims.
Now she's being called a true survivor and an inspiration.
Maira was paralyzed from the waist down. The chain of events on
that summer day has impacted so many lives including the lives
of people who don't even know her, but live in the same
neighborhood. They've seen how violence rips a family and a
community apart. They understand.

Thomas Herron>> A friend of mine down the street, his nephew
was killed the other day. They just rode up on a bike. He was
pulling out of his driveway and they said they found shells and
they say he fell dead falling out of his car. So it's really
getting worse over here instead of better.

Toni Guinyard>> Maira's godmother and little sister witnessed
her shooting.

Maira Morales>> She saw everything that happened. She was
playing outside. The whole block was outside.

Sandra Jimenez>> She was over here and she picked her up and I
had to come over and help her to pick her up.

Toni Guinyard>> The shooting, this random violence, did not
spark public outrage, but it should have.

Brooks Hurst>> We just let it happen. Our leaders aren't doing
anything. Oh, they'll have another little rally when some kid -
- a little boy got shot a couple weeks ago -- and they'll have a
Stop the Violence rally and then everybody will go back to doing
what they always do. You know, all the liquor stores will sell
more alcohol. All the drug dealers will pass on more cocaine
and crack and everyone will sit back down and wait for the next
victim.

[Film Clip]

Toni Guinyard>> Brooks Hurst is Maira's physical education
teacher. He is one of the handful of people who understands
just how much of a challenge Maira and some of her classmates
face day to day.

Brooks Hurst>> "Perfect. All right, go back to the wall. Take
that with you. Good job."

Brooks Hurst>> Maira is someone who is going to succeed, but
it's going to be tough. My challenge is to let her know that
she still has a lot to offer and that's my theme with her.

Toni Guinyard>> At what point did you realize your life was
going to be completely different?

Maira Morales>> Well, I didn't realize that it was going to be
different because, when I was in the hospital, I thought they
were just going to take out the bullet and then I would be like
normal. But no, they told me that it was going to be like a
whole lot different.

Brooks Hurst>> "Again, come on, get going."

Maira Morales>> I told them I couldn't feel my legs. I was
like why can't I, you know? Then they were like, oh, you're
going to be in a wheelchair. I'm like, wow. It was like
surprising for me because I thought they were just going to pull
out the bullet and I would be like normal, but no.

Toni Guinyard>> Maira's hope is to become physically stronger
every day and she's counting on this adaptive physical education
class to help her achieve that goal. Here, she and her
classmates make their hard work look like play, but it is work.

[Film Clip]

Maira Morales>> I miss like running and playing with my friends
because I used to do like a lot of jump rope and play around
like running. I miss helping my mom a lot because I used to
help her like a lot.

Toni Guinyard>> Doing what?

Maira Morales>> Like going to the laundry. Now I don't go to
the laundry because it's hard.

Toni Guinyard>> Maira willingly talks about what happened to
her, but she does not feel sorry for herself. If anything, her
anger is caused by how readily too many people accept violence
as just another hazard of life in Los Angeles.

Maira Morales>> They should stop violence. There's a lot of
violence. I don't know why.

Brooks Hurst>> Unfortunately, a lot of the people who commit
these kinds of acts just don't care. They really don't care and
I've seen them. I've seen them. I've talked to them and I
know. They don't care and that's just a fact of life in the
inner city.

>> "Come on, you're late. Hurry up."

Toni Guinyard>> Teachers and administrators at Henry Clay
Middle School, the school Maira attends, are working with
students to break the cycle of violence through education and
inspiration.

Cris Ziegel>> There are some things that we can't change. We
can't change -- we could provide a phone book list of the
reasons why we can't be successful, but I think the driving
belief is that, with an education and a group of people that
believe in the performance of the students, that they will have
the ability to make choices and we hope that those become
positive choices that are going to allow them to be successful.

Toni Guinyard>> Maira and Henry Clay Middle School are a
perfect fit.

>> Two times three is --

Maira Morales>> Six.

>> Six, okay. And three times what is fifteen?

Maira Morales>> Five.

>> Five. Okay.

Toni Guinyard>> She has high expectations for herself and the
school has high expectations for its students.

Cris Ziegel>> I don't think Maira perceives herself as having
any deficits. I think she perceives herself as a very, very
normal young lady that's growing up and I think that she has
that positive attitude. I think down the road we're going to
see great things from Maira.

Brooks Hurst>> I've given her a booklet, a diary so to speak,
to write down every day like for a year and a half. I want her
to write her thoughts down, learn vocabulary. She could be a
writer. She could be a reporter.

Toni Guinyard>> She could take my job.

Brooks Hurst>> Well, you know, maybe someday she'll have a job
similar to yours.

Ana Azcarate>> She, to me, is a daily inspiration. She's
amazing.

Toni Guinyard>> Ana Azcarate is Maira's healthcare assistant.
She was assigned to work with Maira just months after the
shooting. She is with Maira every day at school. She has
watched her progress and is astounded by her attitude, inspired
by her determination.

Ana Azcarate>> When I found out what had happened to her, she
explained to me and she said, you know, I never thought of
giving up, you know. I know now how my life has changed, but I
still want to be a teacher.

Maira Morales>> A fourth grade teacher.

Toni Guinyard>> Why fourth grade?

Maira Morales>> Because they're not that little and they're not
that big. Because middle school, like they say, they're bad.

Toni Guinyard>> They really aren't bad. They're just typical
middle school students doing typical middle school things, and
Maira is just another one of the 2,100 youngsters enrolled in
this school. She just happens to be a girl in a wheelchair, a
victim of random violence teaching those around her a lesson
about perseverance.

Maira Morales>> With other patients, I've been right there with
them and they are like, oh, life is hard, I don't want to live.
I'm like why do you say that? You have to keep on going.

Brooks Hurst>> After what she's been through, she could take it
and use it, hopefully, to help others, maybe even stop this type
of senseless violence that's permeated our inner city.

Ana Azcarate>> How could you complain when you see her, you
know, her life has changed so drastically and she keeps going?

Sandra Jimenez>> I love her. I know that she's in a
wheelchair, but I still love her.

Toni Guinyard>> Maira has a way of making the people around her
believe you really can reach your goals if you're determined not
to let an act of random violence define who you are and what
you're capable of doing.

Brooks Hurst>> "Other direction, ready, go. One-two-three."

Val>> As you've probably guessed, Maira has big plans for her
life and she's not about to let her wheelchair get in the way.
She's interested in theatre, writing and visual arts and she
hopes to take part in an after-school program that encompasses
all three.

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Val>> Street drugs are often the cause of violent crime and,
whether we like it or not, there's a new one making the rounds
in Southern California. Our friends at Channel One News
recently spent some time with a special narcotics strike team in
California's Central Valley. As Laura Ling tells us, that's
where they encountered a new variation of an old drug. It's
called "Ice".

Laura Ling>> Well, these guys are gearing up and getting ready
to go raid a suspected meth house. In California's Central
Valley, I went out with the team from the Fresno Meth Taskforce.
Can you tell me about all the equipment that you're wearing
right now?

Officer>> Basically, it's all safety equipment. We have the
Kevlar helmet, the Nomex mask to protect us in case there's a
flash fire, Nomex gloves. We have the Nomex suit, the
bulletproof gear.

Laura Ling>> Well, with all of their gear, I'm not worried
about them, but what about us? (laughter)

Officer>> "Everybody understands their assignment? Okay,
everybody knows where they're supposed to be? Okay, let's go."

Laura Ling>> We followed at the end of the convoy as the
taskforce pulled up to the suspect's house.

Officer>> "Hold it right there!"

Laura Ling>> Did you see him? He just said don't make me shoot
you.

Officer>> "You may want to use your cover of the vehicle for
right now in case some shots are fired. You want to kind of use
that because they're going to be searching this way."

Laura Ling>> Right here?

Officer>> "Yeah, just kind of --"

Laura Ling>> Okay, thanks. The taskforce searched the
neighborhood and eventually found all four suspects. Inside the
house was a meth amphetamine lab and the meth they found was
being manufactured into a more powerful type called "Ice".

Robert Pennal>> There's meth right there and there's probably
meth in solution down here. The finished product will be like
rock candy. It'll look like rock candy crystals.

Laura Ling>> Ice is an ultra-pure and highly addictive form of
methamphetamine. How common is it these days to find Ice at a
site?

Robert Pennal>> Almost all the meth we see, everything is Ice
now. Especially for us with large-scale labs, we will hit
places that will have fifty to seventy-five pounds of Ice.

Laura Ling>> As school kids got off the bus across the street,
officers in protective suits carry toxic pieces from the lab
into the driveway. Over the last decade, illegal labs producing
methamphetamine have spread from California across the United
States and now police are finding that many of these labs are
producing Ice. Experts say methamphetamine in any form is one
of the most addicting drugs there is.

Robert Pennal>> You're going to smoke it or you're going to
inject it and then, once you start smoking it and once you start
injecting it, believe me, that's how you get addicted to it and
you can get addicted quickly to it. There has never, ever been
a worse drug in the United States.

Laura Ling>> Yeah, the up highs that are the cars that are
right there. I could see how easy it is for people to buy and
sell Ice when I went along on an undercover operation to arrest
suspected Ice dealers. We're completely covering all of the
windows of this vehicle with towels and sheets. We were in an
unmarked police van conducting surveillance.

We are parked just a block down from the location at a school.
You see right over here there are lots of children playing at
recess. A few hundred feet from a school, suspects in this
house were selling Ice. We watched as customers came and went
and eventually one of the dealers strolled out. He just walked
outside to buy an ice cream cone, but little does he know that,
in about ten or fifteen minutes, he's going to jail.

Officer>> "UC, is that the target location?"

Laura Ling>> Then an undercover police officer, or UC, arrived
in this truck.

Officer>> "He's got two fingers out. He's doing a hand sign
back to the house. Okay, the secondary and primary are outside.
Both are outside at this time."

Laura Ling>> We watched the undercover officer buy Ice from the
two dealers.

Officer>> "UC says anytime, Don."

Laura Ling>> The undercover said to pull in anytime, so they're
going to make the arrest any moment. The dealers went back into
the house just moments before the police arrived. Here comes
one of the cars. Oops, there they go, there they go. One, two,
three, four, five, six, seven officers right in front of the
door. They are busting in. Wow, this is crazy. There they go.
They got them. A few minutes later, the dealers were in
handcuffs. It was one more victory in the fight against
methamphetamine and Ice.

Robert Pennal>> Since we've started, when we broke it down to
dosage units for users, we estimated that we've taken probably
sixty-four billion dosages off the street.

Val>> Laura Ling tells us another hot spot for Ice is Hawaii.
It's taken a huge toll on young people there and it has become
the drug of choice in a place that many of us would consider a
paradise.

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Val>> His work has been called keen, joyful and exuberant, yet
the work itself is silent. We're talking about William Claxton,
the great photographer of the early California jazz scene. This
UCLA graduate has captured the likes of Chet Baker and Charlie
Parker. So what's the difference between a good photographer
and a great photographer? We found out when we went along with
William Claxton on a photo shoot.

William Claxton>> I think that the sight and sound of musicians
go hand in hand. I think that -- I love looking at musicians
when they play. Their expressions, their body language, their
movements, their improvised somewhat choreography, all work to
make the sound even more interesting.

Besides the visual glamour, I like their personalities. I think
their personalities are really unique in a sense that they have
a funny combination of a very strong discipline attitude as they
train, and they have the other side of them which is a very
ingenuous naïve quality not of an artist. So I love that
combination. It's very pleasing to me. And also, musicians
take direction well, just like dancers.

[Film Clip]

What makes a photograph extraordinary for me is that a
combination of elements come together at the same time with that
one-twenty-fifth of a second or whatever the exposure might be,
and it never happens before that, it doesn't happen after that
happens, only at that one moment, that one precise moment, and
it's a combination of light, movement, expression on the
subject. You see it and you try to capture it. Sometimes you
see it way in advance and you work very hard to try and capture
it by shooting too much film and sometimes it happens just in
that one moment and it all comes together.

[Film Clip]

I sort of liken my camera to a musician's ax or his horn or his
instrument. I guess I play it -- I guess we can make that
analogy. I play it or work it in a similar way that the jazz
musician does. I'm constantly -- I have a plan when I go in,
just like they have an arrangement. It may be rough or very
loose. I start with my plan and I can even take a range of
conducting in a sense of getting the musician to work with me
while they're actually playing. They almost unconsciously turn
certain ways and there is an unsaid kind of control there that's
really interesting, I think. Not that I'm a controlling person
(laughter), but I want to get the musicians in the best kind of
light possible.

[Film Clip]

I think black and white photography, by the very fact that it is
more abstract, by some strange reason, is also more real. I
don't know why, except that I think it gives the chance for the
viewer's mind to fill in things. It's a funny combination of
simplification and abstraction that makes it appealing to me.
Color images almost give you too much information and therefore
detracts from the overall important single image or single
message that's there. I love color photography, but I think
that color photography tends to be slightly monochromatic and
therefore a little closer to life.

I'm very much associated with the jazz West Coast scenes, many
because of happenstance. A lot of things came together at the
same time. I had photographed (inaudible) for the university in
shooting jazz musicians. At that same time, there was a
renaissance of jazz. Many East Coast musicians were coming out
here. Many of the musicians who lived here and worked in the
studios were getting recognized. Many of the black musicians
who were not recognized before were now recording stars. All of
a sudden the press started to notice the West Coast school of
jazz.

So when it came to me, my turn here at the West Coast, to shoot
all these musicians and do record covers, I thought "How can I
get a style?" I constantly thought about that. What can I do
to capture the look of a West Coast and show that the jazz scene
is different? Well, it was easy because we have sunshine out
here and the palm trees, and the musicians, psychologically,
were easy to set up because everybody was on a health kick.
Everybody was eating health food. Even the junkies were eating
health food.

That made it a wonderful background, psychologically, of taking
pale-skinned musicians who never see the daylight and putting
them out on the beach like I did the Lighthouse All-Stars, like
with Shorty Rogers up in a tree-house or on a hilltop, and it
gave a whole look on the West Coast, at least record cover
scenes, a definite look. That brought me a lot of recognition
because of that.

[Film Clip]

The first subject that really meant a lot to me as a
photographer and to the artist I was photographing was Chet
Baker. I first saw him when I went to see Charlie Parker play
at the Tiffany Club here in Los Angeles. I really went to see
Bird, Charlie Parker, but on the bandstand with all these black
musicians was this one very, very pale white tough-looking guy
with one tooth missing. He looked kind of like a pretty
prizefighter. I photographed him that night and I went and put
some pictures in the darkroom and printed them. My god, his
face just popped out, like it was phenomenal.

That was the first time I really knew what "photogenic" meant
because he was extremely good-looking, better looking in
photographs than he was in real life, and that's being
photogenic. After that, I photographed him night and day, just
many happenstance, in his recording sessions, in his rehearsals,
at his club dates. His first pictures, which were my pictures,
were released the same time his records were and reviewers would
say, "We don't know if we like the pictures on the cover or the
music. They're both so great." (laughter) It made me feel good
and Chet didn't mind it.

[Film Clip]

I think when I'm photographing almost anyone, jazz musicians or
anyone, it really comes down to trust. You're establishing a
rapport with the person, letting them know that you're an okay
person, that you're not out to do something evil or that you're
not going to take a bad picture of them. It's even more so when
you're photographing a performance like movie stars, actresses,
actors. Musicians, they are even more on guard. They are very
frightened of the camera. Because they don't want to come off
bad, they don't want what it reveals, that the camera can lie.
(laughter)

I think that the pictures I took are important because the
moment -- and I realized this when I was very young -- the
moment I click the shutter, I've captured history. That makes
me feel good because my work is a very important part of
American culture.

I think we got it. Is that a wrap? (Laughter)

Val>> Claxton was also famous for his pictures of the high-end
fashion world and of Hollywood actors like his good friend,
Steve McQueen. You can see five decades of Claxton's work.
It's on display at the Fahey/Klein Gallery in Hancock Park
through October 16. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala.
For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see
you next time.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times, he's been called Los
Angeles's favorite developer, but can Rick Caruso survive a
tough political fight over his latest retail vision?

Rick Caruso>> They don't want to solve the problem. They want
this project to go away. They don't want the competition and
that's a bad thing. It's a bad thing for Glendale, it's a bad
thing for our industry, it's a bad thing for the economy.

Val>> That's next time on Life and Times.