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Also in this article:Not long after Rose Espinoza and her family moved into their new neighborhood in La Habra, California, they noticed tough-looking young men wielding baseball bats and golf clubs in the vacant lot next to their house. They made so much noise, they kept Espinoza awake. One night, she heard a gunshot and screeching tires—and later found out it was a drive-by shooting. This is crazy, she recalls thinking. We shouldn't have to live like this.
After she organized a neighborhood watch program, she discovered a message spray-painted on her husband's pickup truck: "Keep your mouth shut." Determined to make her neighborhood safe, she confronted the ringleaders. "Get used to my face," she told them. "I'm here to stay. You may be going to hell, but you're not taking the neighborhood kids in your handbasket." Espinoza didn't have a lot of free time: A medical instruments designer by day, she was going to school for a business degree at night and raising her son, Christopher, then eight. She began simply by asking neighborhood parents about their children's activities.
The pickings were slim. Parents worked late, and many lacked the English skills to enforce or help with homework. Espinoza had an idea: Help the kids with their homework, and make it fun. "We need to show them that we think highly of them and want them to succeed," she told parents.
Her plan required a major commitment, so she put her own education on hold. Each weekday, Espinoza rushed home from work, grabbed the beat-up desks and chairs salvaged from a condemned school, and, along with a few helpers, carried them across the street to the park to meet elementary school kids and volunteers.
The kids flocked to la escuelita ("the little school"), and the tutoring made a measurable difference. On average, the kids increased their writing abilities by 2.1 grade levels and their math by 2.9 grade levels within one school year. Espinoza also took them on field trips—camping, operas, readings. "We just opened up their world," she says.
As word spread, parents began donating supplies, a relief to Espinoza, who had been paying for everything herself. When the weather turned cold, they moved inside, to a series of neighborhood garages. Eventually, they settled on Espinoza's house. A local reporter dubbed the group Rosie's Garage.
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