05/03/05

LC050503

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

Bullying may be an early sign of worse things to come. Is there
a way to turn it around?

Jose Hernandez>> When I was younger, I used to get picked on a
lot because is was like the small person in class. Look at me
now. I'm like super huge. Basically I thought if they did it
to me, why can't I do it to them?

Val>> And then, the port of Santa Monica? Wait until you see
what almost happened to Bay City.

It's all 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.

With additional support for Life and Times from The Ralph M.
Parsons Foundation.

Val>> We've seen them in the movies and we've seen them in real
life, bullies, that one kid that picks on little guys and steals
the lunch money. But bullying is not to be taken lightly. In
fact, it's often a start of more violent behavior. So what can
a school do when it's got a bullying problem? Hena Cuevas takes
us to one school that's found a solution.

Hena Cuevas>> This is Berendo Middle School in the Pico Union
area of Los Angeles. It's a tough neighborhood and the school
has a tough feel. For the past few years, it has also had a
major problem: students bullying other students. One of the
bullies was fifteen year old Wendy Cienfuegos.

Wendy Cienfuegos>> I will pick on kids. I mean, because I'm
really tough. I'm a tough girl. I mean, I'm short and
everything, but I'm actually tough.

Hena Cuevas>> The problem was getting serious and counselors
knew that more serious violence on campus often starts with
bullying.

Dee Dee Hitchcock>> It was severe, severe. There was probably,
you know, anywhere from five to ten incidents of bullying
behavior each day at Berendo and that was what was reported.

Hena Cuevas>> According to counselor, Dee Dee Hitchcock,
suspensions and other punishments weren't working, so school
officials decided to take action. They empowered the students
themselves through Project Safe School.

Dee Dee Hitchcock>> Project Safe School is a student-driven
program. They told us what they needed in the school. They
told us what they needed when they were out at lunch to prevent
this problem.

Hena Cuevas>> Project Safe School starts with a six-week course
that trains both bullies and victims on how to resolve conflicts
among themselves.

>> "Today on our agenda is mediation. David wants to know what
is it? What do you two do? You who have already acted as
mediators?"

Dee Dee Hitchcock>> We pair them up. They role-play, they
role-play, they role-play before we allow them to go into
mediation with other kids.

Hena Cuevas>> In today's role-playing, the new mediators are
learning how to read body language.

>> "What are some of the specifics of passive body language?
Daniel? All right. He made eye contact for a long time, but
when Wendy pressured him, he got really uncomfortable and he
dropped his eyes."

Hena Cuevas>> This is how it works. Whenever there is a
problem between two students, the counselors give them a choice.
Either get suspended or take part in a student-led mediation.

Daniel Valladares>> They prefer it because they get to solve
the problem and they don't get suspension that day.

Hena Cuevas>> Daniel Valladares and Jeanny Fuentes are both in
the eighth grade and are halfway through the program.

Jeanny Fuentes>> Well, they feel comfortable with us, so they
come out and speak more with us and, with adults, I don't know,
they have some fear. They actually respect us.

Hena Cuevas>> Neither one of them are bullies, but today they
are role-playing with two former bullies. They are high school
students who graduated from the program.

Daniel Valladares>> "We're mediators and basically help you to
solve problems. That's it."

Hena Cuevas>> Wendy became a mediator after she was threatened
with suspension and was failing all her classes. She says the
program taught her how to control her anger and use her
experiences to help other bullies like herself.

Wendy Cienfuegos>> I put myself in their position. It's like
now that I think about it, it's funny because it's like I'm
mature now. I grew.

Hena Cuevas>> Another graduate, sixteen year old Jose
Hernandez, was forced into the program by his probation officer.
He was also failing his classes.

Jose Hernandez>> When I was younger, I used to get picked on a
lot because I was like the small person in class. But look at
me now. I'm like super huge. Basically I thought if they did
it to me, when can't I do it to them? For a while, about my
sixth to eighth grade, I was a big bully.

Hena Cuevas>> He says, having been a bully is an asset when it
comes to helping other bullies.

Jose Hernandez>> It's pretty cool because I knew what the kid
was talking about. I knew what had gone on. I knew like
everything that happened.

Hena Cuevas>> The students who agree to mediation have to
accept the mediator's resolution and everything they say and do
is confidential.

Wendy Cienfuegos>> You get used to it and you know that you put
yourself in their position. It's like you're talking to a
person, say I'm talking to you, and it's confidential and you're
my friend and I wouldn't want you to tell anyone because I'm
trusting you.

Hena Cuevas>> And it works both ways. The kids who get in
trouble also have to keep the conversation confidential.

Dee Dee Hitchcock>> They can't go back out at lunchtime and
say, guess what we did? You know, they can't do that. So if
they can't stick to the confidentiality and agree to all the
rules which is about the mediators as well, then they don't
participate in the peer mediation.

Hena Cuevas>> That's a pretty big responsibility, though, to
put on twelve, thirteen and fourteen year olds.

Dee Dee Hitchcock>> It works out really well. The mediators
that we pick come in all shapes and sizes. Some are really
small sixth graders to really tall eighth graders. When they're
done training and the ones that we pick to be mediators have a
maturity about them that the kids do respect.

Hena Cuevas>> The mediation program has been at Berendo for
about two years now and, in that time period, fifteen students
have graduated as mediators. And even though it may not sound
like a large number, school counselors say you need to keep in
mind just how many students they've been able to help. In those
two years, they've conducted over two hundred mediations with a
ninety-seven percent success rate.

Jeanette Stevens>> There were no concerns with the power of
children helping children.

Hena Cuevas>> Jeanette Stevens is the principal at Berendo
Middle School.

Jeanette Stevens>> I think, when children work with children,
they are seen as an ally and sometimes especially at this level,
the kids don't necessarily view adults as allies.

Hena Cuevas>> Stevens says the peer mediators don't just reduce
hostility among students. They free up her full-time counselors
to spend more time with other troubled children.

Jeanette Stevens>> And I don't know that we'd be able to reach
all of the children in the capacity that we're able to reach
them at this point.

Hena Cuevas>> The program costs about $250,000 a year to run
and the initial federal grant for two years has ended, but the
program was successful enough to convince the school to pay for
a third year itself, although it's a scaled-down version.

Dee Dee Hitchcock>> It's not like they're going to get in
trouble or we're going to call their parents because they're
having a fight with another kid. We handle it in a way that the
kids don't feel like, you know, it's going to be a punitive
punishment.

Hena Cuevas>> It goes against everything like everybody's
always heard of the way that you deal with discipline.

Dee Dee Hitchcock>> Yes (laughter), yes. It works, though. It
works.

>> "Not only are you helping kids out at the time that they
have a problem, but you're helping them out for the rest of
their future."

Hena Cuevas>> That's certainly true for Jose and Wendy. Both
are getting good grades and are proud to say their days as
bullies are over. Jose wants to go to college and Wendy is
looking forward to becoming a counselor someday.

Wendy Cienfuegos>> Everything I've gone through in life, you
know, is going to help me and now that I'm trying to be a
mediator, it's helped me a lot because it's a step closer to
being a counselor.

Hena Cuevas>> This is the only school in Los Angeles that's
using Project Safe School, but for those at Berendo who've seen
the program work, they say this could be one solution to the
bullying problem other schools are facing. I'm Hena Cuevas for
Life and Times.

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Val>> Thirty years ago this month, one of the most painful
chapters in American history came to a close. It was the Fall
of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War. Now three decades
later, thousands of Vietnamese children who came to the United
States have grown up and one of them is Quang Pham. The amazing
story of his father's imprisonment and their reunion after
twenty years is told in his memoir, "A Sense of Duty: My Father,
My American Journey". I talked with Quang Pham at Skylight Book
Store in Los Feliz. You have an amazing story which you managed
to put in a book because you said it was bottled up for so long
inside you?

Quang Pham>> Yes. There's a great debate about the Vietnam War
and nowhere is the South Vietnamese point of view. My father
was one of those South Vietnamese who, after the Americans left
in 1975, was in prison for twelve and a half years.

Val>> In a communist re-education camp, right?

Quang Pham>> Yes. The North Vietnamese put him in the camp
along with a million other South Vietnamese and, thank God, the
United States didn't forget about him because he was able to
come here and we were reunited in 1992.

Val>> Your father was a fighter pilot, is that right?

Quang Pham>> He was a fighter pilot for part of his career in
the South Vietnamese Air Force. There's this whole side to the
Vietnam War that this country doesn't want to talk about. It's
almost if we can absolve our problems and our mistakes in
Vietnam by not talking about the South Vietnamese, our former
allies. The South Vietnamese depended on the United States to
fight the communists and when the United States decided it had
had enough, it withdrew and that hand-off after the Paris Peace
Accord left the South Vietnamese basically high and dry. The
South Vietnamese made some mistakes too, but to blame them all,
that's what happened during the last election in 2004. The
pundits and all the experts blamed it all on the South
Vietnamese.

Val>> His father, who had been trained as a pilot in the
United States, was now imprisoned in a Vietnamese re-education
camp. He would remain there for twelve years while his family
settled in America.

Quang Pham>> My mother and my three sisters and I came to
Oxnard just an hour north of Los Angeles. Probably like a lot
of immigrants and single-parent families, my mother didn't speak
any English, so we grew up -- it was tough during the first
couple of years, but there are some good things that we
encountered, some good people. After about three years, a lot
got better, certainly a lot better than the people of South
Vietnam.

Val>> So you grew up and you really felt compelled in a sense
to join the Marines, is that right? Like your father?

Quang Pham>> Yes. I wanted to fly as a child in Vietnam, so I
joined the Marines basically for three reasons. To follow my
childhood dream, but also to dispel that myth that the South
Vietnamese weren't worth fighting for. I was also chasing this
American identity. I had no identity. I lost my country. The
last part, I wanted to pay back for my citizenship and the
education that America gave my sisters and me and many South
Vietnamese after the Fall of Saigon.

Val>> And how long were you in the Marines? How many years?

Quang Pham>> I served about seven years in active duty and six
years in the reserves, most of it in Orange County just an hour
south of here.

Val>> Finally in 1987, Quang's father along with other South
Vietnamese officers was released from the communist camp, but it
would be five more years before he decided to come to America.

Quang Pham>> By 1992, he was able to come to the United States
and our family was reunited after seventeen years.

Val>> What was that like?

Quang Pham>> Well, you spend all your life longing for your
father and, for my mother, it was much more difficult. She had
become this independent American woman instead of a mother of a
Vietnamese fighter pilot raising four kids in Saigon, so the
happy family reunion didn't happen, but we were glad to get him
back. My parents were divorced and I never became close with my
father until the very end. There was just a big cultural and
generational gap and there was all that pain that he didn't want
to talk about. His years in the prison, how the United States
abandoned South Vietnam, and he also felt that we were also
Americanized. We spent many years after he got here and we
finally bridged the gap, but unfortunately, he passed away in
2000.

Val>> So you and your father must have had very different
perspectives on the Vietnam War and the United States role in
the war. What was the difference between you?

Quang Pham>> When he first got here, I was a young Marine
officer, a captain, and I was very gung-ho about the Marines.
What my father saw and the way the United States fought with the
South Vietnamese during the war was a completely different
picture. He was very proud of my career --

Val>> -- he was? He was glad you joined?

Quang Pham>> He was glad that I followed his footsteps, but he
also knew that there were some mistakes made in the way the
United States prosecuted in the war. They kind of just shoved
the South Vietnamese aside when we landed in Vietnam in 1965.
So he held back about his feelings towards the Americans because
he didn't want to insult me. He didn't want to downplay what I
was doing with my own life in serving in the United States
Marine Corps.

Val>> Quang Pham graduated from UCLA. Then after serving in the
Marines, he became an executive with a pharmaceutical company.
He went on to start his own successful business and, now that
his book is finished, he's speaking publicly about his story and
the South Vietnamese view of the war.

Quang Pham>> If you look at what happened to the Americans in
Vietnam, it took about twenty or twenty-five years for this
country to welcome home the American vets, but the South
Vietnamese were the real losers. So it's going to take a little
bit more time, but it's coming. All I want is not even an
appreciation, but just acknowledgement that there was another
side to the war. The South Vietnamese were our allies and, in
the end when we decide to pull out of Iraq just like the South
Vietnamese, we have to make sure the hand-off is complete so
people that are depending on us don't get put in prison and
don't get put into camps for many years.

Val>> So that's in a big part what this book is about, right?
Trying to make people acknowledge and appreciate the South
Vietnamese perspective?

Quang Pham>> That's about a third of the book. I mean, there's
greatness about this country, but I also wanted to share the
story of many Americans that helped my family along the way and
the greatness about this country. So it's a balanced book.
It's not just a book that tells the ugly side of the war in
Vietnam. It tells about a family that came to the United States
with nothing and, thirty years later, we're living in freedom
and we're able to pursue whatever we want to pursue in this
country.

Val>> And hopefully will help fill the gap on the bookshelves
on something of South Vietnam.

Quang Pham>> If it does that, I would be very happy.

Val>> Well, Quang Pham, thank you so much for your time and
your story.

Quang Pham>> Thank you, Val.

Val>> There's an exhibit commemorating the thirtieth
anniversary of the Fall of Saigon. It's at the library at Cal
State Fullerton. It includes documents, photographs and art by
refugees and prisoners. It's on display through June 30.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us
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Life and Times
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Val>> Did you know that a railroad used to run alongside Santa
Monica Beach? And some people wanted Santa Monica to become the
huge port that Los Angeles Harbor is today? But Santa Monica
Beach was destined for different things and now a local
historian is telling his story. His book is called "Santa
Monica Beach: A Collector's Pictorial History". Vicki Curry
talked with the author, Ernest Marquez.

Vicki Curry>> Ernest Marquez has spent years compiling his
family history, but that history is also the history of the town
of Santa Monica. In 1839, the Mexican government granted much
of the land there to his great-grandfathers, Ysidro Reyes and
Francisco Marquez.

Ernest Marquez>> It consisted of 6,656 acres and they settled
in Santa Monica Canyon. My great-grandfather had a home in
Santa Monica Canyon and so did Ysidro Reyes and they raised
cattle. This was a cattle ranch at that time. Ysidro Reyes's
youngest daughter and Francisco Marquez's youngest son, Pascual
Marquez, married and they are my grandfather and grandmother.

Vicki Curry>> So they settled here in the 1830's and cattle-
ranched, but they soon found that a lot of people liked to come
and visit from Los Angeles and they allowed those people to hang
out on their land.

Ernest Marquez>> That's right. During the 1850's, Santa Monica
Canyon was a popular resort for people living in Los Angeles.
They had a horse and buggy that would bring people to the beach
at the mouth of the canyon. There was obviously nothing there
but the creek and a few sycamore trees and people set up tents
and they could stay there over the weekend or as long as they
liked.

Vicki Curry>> Santa Monica started booming in 1875 with the
arrival of the Southern Pacific Railroad. The township was
established and the Santa Monica Hotel was built at what is now
the corner of Ocean Avenue and Colorado Boulevard. It was soon
followed by the first bath house built by Michael Duffy in 1876.

Ernest Marquez>> And all through the years, they just kept
getting bigger and bigger after Michael Duffy's bath house of
Santa Monica was established and then later in 1896 the north
beach bath house was built. But in order to reach the beach,
they built a staircase at the foot of Arizona Avenue and it was
a wooden staircase that had ninety-nine steps in it. They
called it the Ninety-Nine Step throughout its entire life. That
access to the beach is still there today. Today it's a cement
overpass that crosses over the Coast Highway to the beach.

Vicki Curry>> The Luxury Arcadia Hotel was built in 1886 and
included Santa Monica's first roller coaster built not for
amusement, but for transporting guests to the center of town.

Ernest Marquez>> The thing traveled about five hundred feet,
but it took a whole minute to do it. It went very slowly and it
was all gravity-run. They would start down a steep hill and
that was enough momentum to take it all the way to the other
side.

Vicki Curry>> Although Santa Monica was quickly becoming a
resort town, the businessmen of the time weren't interested in
tourism dollars. A railroad magnet named Collis P. Huntington
wanted Santa Monica to compete with San Pedro to be the primary
harbor for the city of Los Angeles.

Ernest Marquez>> To do that, he built a wharf just above Santa
Monica Canyon that extended out into the sea 4,750 feet. It was
almost a mile long and, at that time, it was the largest wooden
pier in the world. He got the right-of-way for railroad tracks
that would be run from Los Angeles through a tunnel all along
the base of the cliffs here to the long wharf and then out onto
the wharf. Finally the Congress of the United States said the
harbor should be at San Pedro and not anyplace else. When that
happened, of course, businesses and the long wharf declined, and
by 1916, it was half demolished and about 1920 it was gone
completely.

Vicki Curry>> But during the short life of the long wharf, a
Japanese fisherman came to town and a village of about three
hundred families soon developed.

Ernest Marquez>> The Japanese families in Los Angeles started
coming down here. They had a Japanese fisherman there who would
go out fishing and soon they built hotels and it became a resort
for the Japanese families in Los Angeles.

Vicki Curry>> The long wharf was just one of many piers built
and destroyed during the early years of Santa Monica, but one
still remains. The Santa Monica Pier. It was originally called
the Municipal Pier and was built in 1909 to hold a sewage pipe.
That didn't stop it from being a tourist attraction, especially
when an amusement pier was built right alongside it.

Ernest Marquez>> Well, the second pier was built in 1916 by a
man named Charles Looff. He was a manufacturer of amusement
rides. He made carved animals for carousels. It's still there.
The carousel is still there and the bowling and billiard
building are the only two original buildings that were built in
1916 that are still on the pier.

Vicki Curry>> Santa Monica continued to grow in the early days
of the twentieth century. The Santa Monica Land and Water
Company, which had owned most of the land on the beach, began
selling lots to individuals for private homes.

Ernest Marquez>> In the 1920's, the movie industry and movie
stars discovered this area that would be a nice place to have a
home because it would be isolated. They started buying these
lots and building homes on what they call the Gold Coast. The
largest home built on the coast was Marian Davies' house. It
was paid for by William Randolph Hearst.

Vicki Curry>> It was during this time that Ernest Marquez was
born and, over his eighty years, he has watched the landscape of
Santa Monica grow from a small town to what it is today.

Ernest Marquez>> Well, it's changed so much that I don't
recognize it as my hometown. All the things I knew as a young
man or a young boy are no longer there. It's not the same
place. I just don't recognize it.

Vicki Curry>> One thing he does recognize is a place in a
Canyon neighborhood hidden away from public view. So, Ernest,
this is something that's not included in your book, but I wanted
to come and see it because it's a very interesting part of your
family history. What is this place? Where are we?

Ernest Marquez>> We are in a family private cemetery that we
think was established sometime in the 1840's by my great-
grandfather, Francisco Marquez. He was living here in the
canyon. Right where we're standing was where his adobe was
constructed.

Vicki Curry>> And this is the primary marker. There's one
other on the lot, but that's it. The rest of the graves are
unmarked.

Ernest Marquez>> The other graves have wooden markers and, over
the years, they've been taken away or lost, or I don't know
what's happened to them.

Vicki Curry>> And it's just this little piece of land that's
tucked in amongst a bunch of houses that have grown up around it
in Santa Monica Canyon.

Ernest Marquez>> I think it's charming just the way it is. You
know, it's natural in its own way.

Vicki Curry>> Ernest Marquez, author of the book, "Santa Monica
Beach", thank you so much for sharing all of this with us.

Ernest Marquez>> Oh, you're welcome.

Val>> The name of his book again is "Santa Monica Beach: A
Collector's Pictorial History". 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.

With additional support for Life and Times from The Ralph M.
Parsons Foundation.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times --

He's the only Persian politician in 90210 and he's breaking down
ethnic stereotypes.

>> They were telling me that it's not the time, you are not
ready, the city is not ready, the community is not ready.
Others have done it. What makes you think you can?

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