writing

Meet the Scum Fucks

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 00:38:00 -0400

Tober has been out of prison three days and already he’s back on the circuit.

Standing on a footpath next to a grove of trees in Golden Gate Park, he loudly solicits passers-by to consider purchasing his wares.

“Hey! Hey, you! You want some weed? I bet you do,” he calls out to a group of 20-somethings walking by. He’s been out of the game while serving a four month prison sentence for breaking the jaw – and puncturing the lung – of a man who was rude to his pit bull, but he doesn’t need to worry about stepping on anyone’s toes.

Tober, 29, is a leader of the San Francisco Scum Fucks, a notoriously alcohol-fueled gang with a tumultuous reputation among the homeless and runaways who seek refuge in Golden Gate Park.

“We’re drunk, crazy motherfuckers,” he says, the sparkle in his robin’s egg blue eyes momentarily distracting from the cacophony of gang insignia covering his body.

The Scum Fucks derive their name from 80s punk rock band GG Allin and the Scumfucs, a raucous group of heroin addicts known for stage antics ranging from defecation to on-stage rape. Unlike Allin, modern-day Scum Fucks ascribe to a strict moral code, regularly helping new street kids find safe places to sleep in the park and often putting teen runaways in touch with outreach programs. While drunken brawls and peddling pot to college kids are acceptable, those who come through the park slinging heroin or scamming tourists are likely to face opposition in the form of several well-conditioned fists. Pedophiles in particular are a favorite target for the SFSF.

“We may sell pot, drink booze and fight, but we have kids too,” Tober said.

The group gets in an average of 10 fights per week, Tober said, but only half of those are regulatory. The other half?

“It’s usually for a greater good,” said 24-year-old Sarah, Tober’s girlfriend of six months, “but a lot of times it’s just friends getting drunk and stupid.”

The gang is made up of around three dozen members, about 10 percent of whom are female. Most members are homeless and spend their nights in Golden Gate Park, rarely sleeping in the same spot twice. Initiation into the gang involves a vicious beating, except in the case of female members who take little more than a few blows to the arms.

Among those who call Golden Gate Park and the streets of the Upper Haight their home, there is both admiration and fear of the Scum Fucks. One homeless man referred to them as “really honorable people,” but refused to give his name for fear of becoming a target of the group’s merciless beatings. “There’s a lot of shit that goes on in this neighborhood,” he said. “Somebody’s gotta take care of us because the cops aren’t gonna do it. This is our home.”

Mark Utter, a 38-year-old father of four from Findlay, OH, has been living in the park since 1991 when he was discharged from the military for blackmailing a dentist for nitrous to sell at Grateful Dead shows. Utter is an intelligence officer with the SF Dogs, a gang Tober considers the “older cousin” of the SFSF.

“You don’t go to the police,” Utter said. “We are the police.”

The SFSF used to have a more tangible presence in their territory but recent crackdowns by beat cops have weakened their hold on the neighborhood. Every member of the gang has some sort of criminal history, Tober said, mostly for assault and drug charges.

Late one night, an officer who declined to give his name was shooing vagrants from doorways on Haight Street. He has worked this beat for many years, he said.

“Yeah, I know the Scum Fucks,” he said in an exasperated voice. “But I haven’t seen much of them lately, thank God.”

Although many Scum Fucks are out of commission because of drug problems or prison sentences, Tober patrols his park with confidence. As the afternoon wears on, Tober’s sobriety sets with the California sun. He warns a nearby teenager peddling dime bags to back off his territory.

When asked if he would ever consider going straight, Tober looks down at the words “SCUM FUCKS” tattooed on his knuckles and smirks, remarking that the ink makes him a lifer.

“Plus,” he says, “our retirement plan ain’t so good.”

———-

Note: This piece was a part of my participation in the 49th annual Hearst Journalism Championship in San Francisco, Calif., in June 2009. The story - on the topic of Golden Gate Park - had a 750-word limit.

I am not a white bitch

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 15:57:00 -0400

Daily Kent Stater
March 13, 2008

There is a campus group that is nearly untouchable.

It is one of the largest and most powerful student groups, able to turn campus upside down with a single phone call. Very few columnists or reporters have had the gall to speak against the group’s policies, because the Stater is very afraid of them - and they have good reason to be.

They are immeasurably powerful.

They are Black United Students.

And I am not afraid.

My freshman year of college, my high school boyfriend and I went to the ballroom to see hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons. ACPB, BUS and USS brought him to campus as part of Black History Month programming.

Coming from a town that did not acknowledge Black History Month, I was eager to attend the month’s lectures and talks and to get to know other students interested in fighting for equal rights. Back home, I was the only one.

But what I found that night was disturbing and hurtful in ways it took years to understand.

From the moment Justin and I entered the ballroom, the tension was palpable. We received puzzled stares from students sitting around us, and though we couldn’t put a finger on why, we felt incredibly unwelcome. I left feeling uncomfortable and unable to make sense of what had happened.

Back in Tri-Towers, when I told my dorm mates where I’d been, I received similar puzzled looks. You went to a BUS event? Hasn’t anyone told you about BUS? They don’t want white people attending their functions.

I didn’t believe it. Even as I heard the exact same dialog from every non-black student and coworker I discussed BUS with, I had a hard time believing that a group fighting for equal rights would covertly push away other people fighting for the same cause.

A couple months later, as a member of the Stater editorial board, the forum editor and I had a small meeting with BUS leaders. The Stater and BUS have always had a notoriously rocky relationship, and my editor thought that by hearing from BUS itself about the group’s goals, we could help bridge the gap.

Boy were we surprised when we were informed by then-leaders Teddy Harris and Demareo Cooper that BUS’s goal was not equality, but to advance blacks beyond that of whites. The goal was black-owned, black-operated businesses and universities. When we said,

“… but that’s racism …” we were told that as the majority, we were unable to feel racism. We just couldn’t understand.

Two years later, I was forced to understand.

While covering a fashion show for Uhuru magazine (I was the photo editor at the time), an angry black student hissed, “Why are you even here, anyway?” when I sat my photo gear next to him on a chair.

Weeks later, while covering a Black History Month talk by Malcolm X’s daughter, a man behind me - who apparently was unhappy with my camera - yelled, “Get out of my way, white bitch.”

Shortly after, while silently shooting another BUS event, I was called a white bitch again.

Shelley Blundell, a Kent journalism school graduate and native of South Africa, used to be a member of the Stark campus BUS chapter. But when she began attending Kent BUS events, she said she felt extremely unwelcome.

And after a controversial column on separation, Blundell said she received numerous e-mails from BUS members calling her, too, a “white bitch.”

In 2005, after humor columnist Aman Ali wrote a satirical column called, “Black people need to start sharing,” BUS made one phone call and the two days later, the Ohio Civil Rights Commission and NAACP converged on campus, demanding Ali be fired. Some even pushed for his removal from the university.

Yes, Ali’s column was inappropriate and the editor made a major mistake in running it, but when pressured, the editor folded like a card table and gave in to every single demand made by civil rights groups. Since then, the Stater has been very careful about BUS coverage, and when I told them I wanted to write this column, they were nervous. I can’t blame them. BUS has showed its muscle numerous times over the years.

Now, this is not a column bashing BUS for past mistakes. This is a means to a dialog. I truly believe that BUS should embrace its non-black supporters, because there is power in numbers. We support your cause; now can we please be embraced the same way you embrace your black peers?

So this is what I say to you, current members and leaders of BUS: Tell me again. Tell me again what your goals are. I certainly hope they differ from those expressed to me in 2004.

Tell me what you are doing to reach out to non-black students who support your cause. As a straight girl, PRIDE!Kent has always welcomed me to their meetings and functions because they knew I supported their cause. I want to be able to attend BUS functions and feel the same love.

Racism is still a problem in this country, and it will never be solved if we continue to divide black from white. I have been called names and ostracized for the color of my skin, and I have been ridiculed for sharing my life with a man who is not white.

I am not a white bitch. I am a straight, white girl who will always do everything in her power to support the plight of all minorities.

I don’t use the color of your skin against you, so please do not use mine against me.

Please, BUS: Tell me how you plan to use your powers for good. I want to hear your voice, and I want to become a united front in the fight against prejudice.

I am not a white bitch. I am not whitey. I am not a cracker. I am not the man.

And I never want to feel ostracized because of my race ever again. Don’t you feel the same?

Beth Rankin is a senior photojournalism major and a columnist for the Daily Kent Stater. Contact her at rankinel@kent.edu.

Admitting it is the first step

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 15:57:00 -0400

Daily Kent Stater
March 10, 2008

A couple of weeks ago, while checking out photo gear to journalism students in Franklin Hall, a young black student came in and asked to borrow a camera. Our exchange went a little something like this: “I need to borrow a camera for a couple hours.”

“And you’re from Uhuru I take it?” I froze, realizing I had just assumed - because she was black - that she worked for the campus minority (read: black) magazine.

My face grew hot in the half-second before she told me that she was, in fact, working for Uhuru.

Sometimes we experience thoughts, emotions or actions that straddle the thin line between presumption and prejudice. Moments like this are not uncommon, even for a liberal white girl who used to - as a 110-pound, blonde high school freshman in a cheerleading uniform - attack men twice her size for using the n-word in a Wal-Mart checkout line.

A lot has changed since segregation was ruled unconstitutional, since women won the right to vote, since the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The brunt of the problem facing minorities in the 21st century is economic backlash caused by a culture of segregation. Minority groups who were forced to live in ghettos 50 years ago are still struggling to get out and get the education they need to have the same advantages many whites have had since birth. The struggles of poor black, Hispanic and Asian families are not lost upon us, but with all our minority scholarships and education programs, it is easy to forget that white families feel the same hardships. Single, poor white mothers hear the same shaming whispers when their children arrive to school wearing the same dirty sweatpants they’ve worn every day for a week, and they struggle just as hard to keep their children in school and away from the drugs and gangs that run their neighborhoods.

No longer is it socially acceptable to throw old black women off busses or beat our wives for overcooking the roast. That doesn’t mean that isolated incidents like this do not occur; rather that the collective unconscious of our society has been forced to ascribe to a quieter, more subversive prejudice.

We do not gas Jews by the thousands; rather we parody them with stereotypes of stinginess and greed. We confuse duty with discrimination when we report dark-skinned men for taking tourist pictures of lakes, bridges, skyscrapers. We pull our boyfriends close when a black man walks past us on a dark city street. Even I thought twice before hiring two female students to work in my department in Franklin Hall.

We are not far removed from the extreme prejudice our parents knew.

There exists within us a collective unconscious that has been shaped by the society that we and our families live in. And while our society is moving in the right direction, toward a place where a baby will be born with no subconscious memory of blind hatred, our quiet prejudice threatens that end goal.

During the next couple weeks I will, in a series of columns and interviews and personal anecdotes, explore the changing face of prejudice in our modern society. Every Monday and Thursday, I encourage you to read, reflect and respond. I want to create a dialog about the prejudice we have all faced, be it a product of race, gender, sexuality, economic status, age, handicap or appearance. We need to stop treating our own prejudice as a skeleton in the closet instead of an opportunity to learn about the mistakes of our past and the possibilities of our future.

I will start the dialogue, but I hope that you will continue it, whether though letters to the editor, comments on my column’s Web page or discussions among you and your peers. Hell, you can even stop me on the sidewalk to give me your two cents.

It is time to reassess the role of hate in our culture, and there is no topic too taboo to bring into the public forum.

We can never truly grow until we are honest with ourselves and those we have injured - knowingly or unknowingly - with our fear.

Beth Rankin is a senior photojournalism major and a columnist for the Daily Kent Stater.

Teen's death a mystery

Tue, 22 Aug 2006 00:00:00 -0400

Akron Beacon Journal
Aug. 22, 2006

A scruffy gray-and-white cat lounged in the sunshine Monday outside Dwight David Donovan’s Kenmore home.

The cat is one of many strays, Donovan said, brought home by his 18-year-old daughter, Melissa.

On Saturday, police found Melissa’s body in a vacant house on Edgewood Avenue.

“I felt like the world had been pulled out underneath me,” Donovan said. “Her and I weren’t close, but this didn’t have to happen.”

Donovan said the last time he saw her was about a week ago when the two quarrelled.

The teen was found dead at about 10:30 a.m. at 613 Edgewood Ave. Police have not determined how long she had been there.

A man who ran onto the porch of the house to get out of the rain Saturday smelled a foul odor coming from inside the house, detectives said. The man called police, who arrived and found the teen’s body.

The girl was identified through dental records.

Detectives said it is not clear how Melissa died.

Investigators say she doesn’t appear to have been shot, and there are no clear signs of blunt force trauma.

Melissa’s death has not been ruled a homicide, but detectives are treating it like one until evidence shows otherwise.

The Summit County Medical Examiner’s Office did not rule on a cause or manner of death Monday.

Donovan said his daughter struggled all her life with schizophrenia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Melissa turned 18 in January and then stopped attending Kenmore High School, he said. She emancipated herself from her parents and lived in the Edgerton Group Home for a few months before returning home to live with her father and mother, Veronica Donovan.

Whenever she did come home, Donovan said, she never stayed long.

“I kinda wish I’d said more, but what would it have done?” he asked, tears streaming down his face. “She had that independent thing going on.”

Donovan said she loved caring for wayward animals and that she loved to read.

“She used to come in here all the time,” said Norma Wagner, public services assistant at the Kenmore branch of the Akron-Summit County Public Library. “She was a nice girl.”

Wagner said Melissa came in at least once a week. She was a member of First Glance, a local church-sponsored hangout for area kids. The group meets at the library on Thursday nights.

“She was very friendly and just a sweet girl,” Wagner said.

Melissa’s father, who is disabled, now wonders how he will pay for his daughter’s funeral. He said he will likely have to have her cremated.

“She was her own kinda kid,” he said, shaking his head.

Heartache left in wake of Lakemore flash flood

Wed, 02 Aug 2006 00:00:00 -0400

Akron Beacon Journal
Aug. 2, 2006

Bessie Hopkins paced back and forth in her empty living room, her feet making the sodden wood beneath her feet bow with every step.

She hung up the phone and her eyes welled with tears. Her insurance company had informed her the water damage from Monday night’s storm would not be covered.

“I’m not OK,” she sobbed. “I’ve lost everything.”

More than 100 Lakemore homes were flooded by storm water that drenched the village between 4 and 6 p.m. Monday, Mayor David E. Carter said.

“It’s been crazy, absolutely crazy,” he said. “We got hit with a ton of water … and there was no place for it to go.”

Mike Abair, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Cleveland, said 3.8 inches of rain was recorded at Akron Fulton International Airport from 8 a.m. Monday through 8 a.m. Tuesday.

The flooded area was largely from Front Street to Sixth Street in Lakemore’s residential area.

Hopkins returned to her home from a cigarette run Monday night and saw the water lapping at her doorstep.

“The next thing I knew, it just started coming in under the floors and through my vents,” she said. She and her husband, Hibbard, began to pump the water from the house before they realized there was nowhere for it to go.

“It just came so quick,” she said. “It just devastated me. I lost everything.” Hopkins’ home filled with almost 3 feet of water.

As neighbors began to evacuate to a Red Cross shelter at Edwin Shaw Rehabilitation Center, Hopkins gathered what belongings she could and rushed them upstairs.

“This is our home and we were not going to leave it, come hell or high water, and we had the high water,” she said.

Across the street from Hopkins, neighbors were piling their sopping-wet belongings outside to await trash pickup. Jim and Carla Waddell were commiserating with neighbors as people in pickup trucks began loading them with stoves, washing machines and dryers from street corners.

“You can’t imagine how it feels inside when you come home and your front lawn looks like a lake,” Carla Waddell said.

No flood insurance

She, like many of her neighbors, didn’t have flood insurance. “Nobody here does,” she said. “They say this isn’t a flood area. We’ve got news for ‘em.”

An initial assessment by the Red Cross said 90 homes had minor damage, 10 homes were severely damaged and two were deemed destroyed.

Some places in the village had 6 to 8 feet of water when the flooding was at its peak, Mayor Carter said.

Springfield Lake was 2 feet higher Tuesday than it had been Monday before the storm, he said. Carter said the lake — where the village’s storm water is discharged — did not overflow its banks. Goodyear on Tuesday opened all the valves to let the lake discharge to the Little Cuyahoga River, he said.

A rain gauge indicated that Lakemore got 6 1/4 inches of rain in 90 minutes, although that total has not been confirmed by the U.S. Weather Service, he said.

“I’ve lived in Lakemore for 50 years, and I’ve never seen a storm like it,” Carter said. “It was like a cloud came over Lakemore and drenched us with a steady downpour for 90 minutes. It never moved. It was a 200-year rain that hit us in 90 minutes. It was unbelievable.”

Residents return

The Red Cross shelter closed about 2 a.m. Tuesday as residents returned to their homes. Since then, members of the Summit County Red Cross Disaster Action Team have made constant rounds through the neighborhood, assessing damage and handing out food, water and cleaning kits.

Jim Waddell said emergency workers and Red Cross volunteers were on the scene in less than an hour. “God bless ‘em. They were awesome,” he said. “They’re the heroes.”

At the Summit County Red Cross kitchen on West Market Street, volunteers prepared spaghetti, rolls and salad for 200 hungry victims of flooding.

Fire departments from Coventry and Springfield townships and Uniontown assisted Lakemore after Monday’s storm, Carter said. The village of 2,600 had offers of help from police and fire departments as far away as Hudson, he said.

A Red Cross assessment team is to visit each of the damaged houses in Lakemore today.

Other flooding

The heavy rains also hit parts of East Akron and Springfield Township.

Akron had about 18 calls of flooded basements, mostly from Ellet and Goodyear Heights, said Michael McGlinchy, head of the Public Utilities Bureau.

On Multnoma Avenue, Maureen Edwards found herself dealing Monday night with a basement full of sewage for the second time in two years.

Edwards works from her basement, caring for handicapped children. The basement is furnished with a kitchen and bathroom, and she had just made a final payment on new carpet.

“Basically, my business has come to a screeching halt and I’m going to have to send my clients elsewhere now,” she said.

Edwards said the sewage department didn’t visit her home until Tuesday; workers refused to give her their names before they left and they haven’t returned or called.

In Lakemore, residents are banding together and trying to keep a positive attitude, Jim Waddell said. When he and Carla went to a Denny’s restaurant for breakfast Tuesday morning, he said, the management refused to let him pay for his meal.

“If everyone every day did one small thing, we could turn this world around,” he said. “You don’t see that in the world unless something bad happens.”

The Red Cross is asking for donations to help pay for food and supplies for flood-affected areas. Donations to the Disaster Relief Fund can be sent to the Summit County Chapter at 501 W. Market St., Akron, OH 44303.

Heavy rain, high winds inflict pain in region

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 00:00:00 -0400

Akron Beacon Journal
July 11, 2006

A thick fog had settled onto the valley Monday evening as Larry Rogers solemnly watched his business float away.

“I just retired, so I was slowing down,” he said. “I guess I’m really going to slow down now.”

Rogers has owned and operated Pine Run Woodwork for 25 years.

When storms in Ashland County caused major flooding Monday, Rogers could only watch as waters from a nearby creek lifted his shop and slammed it into a nearby bridge.

“I had some stuff in there waiting to go to a gallery in Philadelphia,” he said. “I guess it won’t make it there.”

Severe thunderstorms moved slowly southward through Northeastern Ohio Monday, leaving a trail of power outages and severe flooding in their wake.

Without power were about 3,000 FirstEnergy Corp. customers in Mogadore, Akron and Massillon. By 7 p.m., that number had dropped to about 500 each, but about 500 homes were still in the dark in Akron, Barberton, Alliance, Kent and Fairlawn Monday night.

The National Weather Service said the storm, capable of producing penny-sized hail and winds up to 58 miles per hour, was earlier spotted moving at 30 mph through Cuyahoga Falls.

Between 2 and 3 p.m., the Akron Fulton International Airport recorded more than an inch of rain with wind gusts reaching 35 mph. By 5 p.m., nearly an inch also had fallen at the Akron-Canton Airport, with a gust of 37 mph near 3 p.m. and the heaviest rain lasting the next hour.

“We have a lot of reports of some pretty good rainfall in some of the thunderstorms,” service meteorologist Martin Thompson said.

Most damaging to the majority of communities were storm winds.

Caroline Brumbaugh and her husband, Robert, were sitting in the family room at the back of their Northwest Avenue home in Tallmadge when they heard a loud noise Monday afternoon.

“When we came out to look, there was the tree, uprooted. I was dumbfounded,” Brumbaugh said. “It happened so fast. That tree has to be more than a hundred years old. I guess I’ll call the insurance company to see what I need to do.”

Similar gusts also claimed a large garage on Baier Circle in North Canton.

Particularly hard-hit in Summit County was Mogadore, where the city street department rallied to clear at least five trees from power lines, including one that threatened lines in front of Hopkins Lawver Funeral Home, Police Chief David Fowler said.

“We lost the majority of the town’s power due to several telephone poles over the substation which had broken because of the wind at about 2:10 p.m.,” he said. “We were out of power probably close to three hours.”

Trees on South Cleveland Avenue and Mogadore Road also blocked roadways and severed wires. Services were restored about a half hour after the rain subsided, he said.

But city basements continued to suffer through the night as fallen limbs blocked water inlets, flooding residential yards.

Runoff from lakes and streams also caused severe damage at Mohican and Malabar Farms state parks in southern Ashland County.

The Horovitz family of four had just checked into a cabin at Mohican when they heard rumor of a flood. They were about to evacuate to the nearest restaurant when the water came.

“I saw a wall of water,” said patriarch Brad Horovitz of Brimfield Township. “I saw that, and I started running.”

At both state parks, heavy rains and high winds uprooted trees, washed away bridges and tore roofs from park buildings.

Louie Andres, park manager at Malabar Farms, said two buildings had lost their roofs and 30 or more trees had been uprooted.

At Mohican, the Ashland County Sheriff’s Office evacuated campers near the Pleasant Hill Lake Dam.

While no injuries had been reported in any local community, some area campers lost tents, gear and even automobiles when the valley flooded.

A severe thunderstorm watch issued by the National Weather Service for Summit, Stark, Portage and Wayne counties ended at 6 p.m.

The weather service predicted a continued chance of showers and thunderstorms this afternoon to Wednesday morning, with temperatures in the 80s and similar forecasts until Friday, Thompson said.

Whether the storms could be as destructive as Monday’s, however, he could not say.

“Can’t discount it,” he said.

Ellet fights fire with fire

Fri, 09 Sep 2005 00:00:00 -0400

Akron Beacon Journal
Sept. 9, 2005

Jackie Isaly is no stranger to hard times.

The strain from years of lost loved ones, car accidents and charred memories makes her hand shake as she raises a cigarette to her lips day after day. It is a habit, she says, she can’t quite kick because of stress.

As she sits on the steps of her home in Akron’s Ellet neighborhood and fingers the gold cross hanging around her neck, the 57-year-old’s eyes fill with tears at the mention of her latest source of heartbreak: the scorched remains of the place she has called home for 28 years.

“There’s nothing left,” she says. “And I didn’t have much.”

Isaly is a victim of one of the seven arsons in Ellet over the summer, blazes that have caused more than $200,000 in damage since the first fire was set June 26.

When a fire was set in Isaly’s Stevenson Avenue garage on July 23, the flames spread to her home, sending almost everything she owned up in smoke.

Now her mind is plagued by the same question that is in the minds of her neighbors: Who is setting these fires?

“I maybe see them every day,” she said, her eyes scanning the street. “I don’t know. I would feel a lot better if I knew who did this.”

The houses in Ellet differ little from those found elsewhere in Akron.

The hum of air conditioners provides quiet background music to the sounds of wind chimes ringing, faded American flags flapping in the wind and children riding bikes.

The mostly one- and two-story homes sit unobtrusively in the warm summer sun, but a closer look at the neighborhood shows that things are not as peaceful as residents would like.

Some homes show the wounds from their fight with fire: black streaks bruise the exterior, siding is blistered from the heat and boards bandage broken windows and walls. The smell of burnt plastic still lingers.

“I’m scared, you know,” said Ruth Moore, 54, whose home is just down the street from Isaly’s.

Moore said she believes the person or people responsible for the fires are also responsible for her missing lawn sculpture, which disappeared a few weeks ago. “We keep a light on every night,” she said.

Her husband, Arnold, 86, rocked quietly in a swing in the front yard. He believes minors are responsible for the fires.

“I hope they catch them,” he said.

Fire investigators say the arsons have all been opportunistic. They say the fires seem to be set on a whim, using materials found in the yards. Most were started in piles of garbage and tires. Many were easy to contain and caused only minor damage.

Isaly’s fire

In Isaly’s case, what started as a small garage fire escalated into a blaze that turned most of her memories to ash.

Around 11 p.m. on July 23, as Isaly was getting ready for bed, she heard a frantic knock at the front door. As she went to answer it, she noticed orange flames lapping at the side of the house.

When she tried to leave the house through the kitchen door, the heat from the handle stopped her. She fled through the front and watched in horror from her neighbor’s driveway as her home was engulfed by flames.

The next time she stepped into her house, parts of the roof and her bedroom were gone and water and smoke had destroyed most of her possessions.

“I had no idea it would cause this much (damage),” she said. “I had no idea. I never dreamed of the bedroom being the way it was. It was devastating.”

Isaly’s dog, Buddy, and a friend staying on her couch escaped unharmed, but Isaly said she is still nursing emotional wounds from the fire. A serious car accident and resulting spinal surgery in 2003 still weigh heavily on her, as do the deaths of her parents in 1986 and 1995 and a few scrapes with domestic violence.

Now Isaly, who works part time as a courier, says she smokes a pack of cigarettes a day just to help calm her nerves.

“I don’t know many people who’ve been through as much as me,” she said. “I know people have had their problems, but I’ve had my share. Sometimes it just feels like the devil is just on my back, chasing me.”

Crime of opportunity

This time, Isaly isn’t alone in her troubles. Six other fires in the neighborhood have damaged yards, garages and vacant homes, and the Akron police and fire departments are trying to ensure that there isn’t an eighth fire.

“Since the Ellet situation, we have been more visible in that area,” said Akron Fire Capt. Al Bragg.

Bragg said the fires, which have all occurred at night and are all confined to the Ellet area, appear to be related, but officials won’t be sure until the person or persons responsible are apprehended.

Bragg said the “Ellet situation” is the most serious case of repetitive arson he’s seen since the days of David Klar of Massillon, the notorious “west side arsonist” who pleaded guilty in 1986 to 16 counts of aggravated arson, 32 counts of breaking and entering and two counts of arson relating to multiple fires. Klar was charged with causing 46 fires between 1983 and 1986, including one that seriously injured a Massillon firefighter. Klar later confessed that he set the fires because of anger with a city councilwoman.

While the fires in Ellet are fewer and haven’t caused any injuries, Bragg said every fire could become fatal.

“I think about the person who’s doing it,” Bragg said. “Do they realize the damage they’re doing?”

A $5,000 reward is being offered to anyone with information that will lead to the arrest of the arsonist.

Kim Meyers, a Cora Avenue resident, has witnessed firsthand the destruction of the fires, two of which she helped extinguish.

“(I’m) very, very angry that someone could cause this much damage to someone without any remorse or anything,” Meyers said.

Her son, 11-year-old Dakoda Parsell, helped extinguish a garage fire on Priscilla Avenue on Aug. 10. Meyers said her son, whose bedroom is at the back of the house, now sleeps on the couch every night out of fear.

Dakoda recently pulled his mother out of bed at 3 a.m. when their dogs began barking. Meyers said she swung open her front door to find three deer meandering down the street.

“It was a relief,” she said. “It wasn’t a fire and it wasn’t smoke.”

Low-crime area

Ellet has the fewest block-watch groups of any neighborhood in Akron, community Police Officer Clay Cozart said.

“Ellet has always been known as a low-crime area,” he said. “I’ve been on the department 10 years and I can’t remember a crime spree such as this occurring in Ellet. Many times we see areas with low crime have the least amount of block-watch groups.”

But because of the arsons, Cozart said, neighbors are beginning to band together to keep their neighborhood safe.

“If any good can come of this, it will maybe be more citizens involved with block-watch groups,” he said.

Meyers, who is organizing block watches for the area, said residents are turning their anger into action.

“It’s kind of breaking everyone up, but then again, it’s kind of pulling everyone together,” she said. A few weeks ago, Meyers organized a block-watch group at the Ellet Community Church of God, where almost 100 residents met to discuss ways to make their community safe.

“People are more alert and mad,” Meyers said. “They’re unhappy that this has happened because it’s been a nice neighborhood and there have never been any problems.”

Even Jackie Isaly, whose home is now little more than a memory, said she believes Ellet is a safe neighborhood and she plans to rebuild her home.

Isaly said she now relies on police and firefighters to keep her safe, the hospitality of her neighbors to keep her sane and her faith in God to keep her strong.

“I want to be strong,” she said. “I do depend on God for everything, and I know with his strength, I’ll make it through this.”