RIOT AFTERMATH : Pockets of Violence, but No Rampage : Crime: Locally, four people died and at least 13 were seriously injured. Twenty fires damaged structures and 200 people were arrested. But officials say the destruction could have been much worse.

SAN GABRIEL VALLEY —  As flames spurted from the roofs of seven shops on Allen Avenue and on Villa Street in Pasadena, shooting 15 or 20 feet into the night air, the neighbors came quietly out of their houses. They gathered across the street from the little corner shopping center, watching with long faces as firefighters hacked their way into walls and trained hoses on seven individual infernos.

“They were a neighborhood institution,” Genette Foster said sadly of the stores.

On Indian Hill Boulevard in Pomona, people started picking pebbles out of street planters, angrily flicking them at store windows and passing police cars. Then someone discovered some rubble on a nearby construction site. Suddenly chunks of concrete and pieces of brick were raining on firetrucks, and people were starting a blaze in a dental office and looting a liquor store.

“It’s urban guerrilla warfare,” said a grim Fire Chief John Parker.

“The party’s over,” the man announced, picking up a table and smashing it through the front window of Buster’s Ice Cream and Coffee Shop on Mission Street in South Pasadena.

Then, as 35 horrified espresso drinkers looked on, he pounded and smashed mirrors, neon signs, freezer windows and the espresso machine.

Finally, as an accomplice rammed another table through a window, he picked up the cash register, and the two fled in a car.

For residents of Pasadena, Pomona, El Monte and other cities in the San Gabriel Valley, there were moments of stark violence and terror following the Rodney G. King verdict.

The rage that torched buildings in Los Angeles and sent mobs howling after white motorists seemed for a few days last week to be sending flaming tendrils to the east.

But most San Gabriel Valley communities, in their post-riot assessments, are defining their own experience of civil unrest in terms that contrast favorably with Los Angeles.

“It could have been a lot worse,” said Pasadena Police Chief Jerry Oliver.

Maybe it was because cities such as El Monte and Monrovia are smaller and police are easier to mobilize, police chiefs say. Maybe it was because, as Pasadena officials contend, there’s a greater reserve of goodwill among even their most deprived citizens.

But the police action and, in some cases, community outreach was able to keep the seething anger under control. Or at least they corralled it, keeping it to a minimum, police say.

As Los Angeles shopping centers and supermarkets went up in flames, the San Gabriel Valley remained relatively calm. Among the most common acts of violence were little fires set in dumpsters or youths ineffectually heaving Molotov cocktails at brick walls.

“I’d like to express my admiration for what didn’t happen the past few days in Pasadena,” said artist Dave Beadle at the Pasadena City Council meeting Tuesday.

However, there were casualties.

There were at least 13 serious injuries during the violence and 20 fires resulting in damage to structures. More than 200 people were arrested on charges ranging from curfew violations to arson. Four people died--one each in Pasadena, Altadena, Baldwin Park and Pomona--though, in each case, authorities question whether the deaths were related to the civil disturbances.

And there was a continuing pervasive sense of unease, as if something vulnerable had been exposed. “For two days, I didn’t really feel safe driving down the main boulevard of my own hometown,” Pasadena resident Cam Currier said.

The disorders began from Pasadena to Pomona shortly after the words not guilty rang out on television sets. Within hours, bands of youths were roaming through old Pasadena, bashing windows in restaurants, while others started small fires in Monrovia. There was some random anti-white violence as well.

Edward Darbidian, a 39-year-old Armenian refugee from Iran, was talking to a woman friend on Raymond Avenue, near Colorado Boulevard, when three clean-cut youths approached him.

“One called me, ‘Hey,’ and when I turned, he punched me hard in the face,” Darbidian said. “I go down, and I could feel my front tooth go out. Then one of them kicks me in the ribs.”

Darbidian, who was tortured under the fundamentalist Muslim regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini before escaping in 1989, was recovering from neurosurgery on his arm when he was attacked, he said. He and his family are still in shock. “I thought this was the most free country, and I was forgetting what happened back home,” he said. “Everything came back.”

By Thursday evening, the anger was building. So was the opportunism, police say.

About 300 gathered at the Indian Hill Mall in Pomona, attracted by flyers advertising a demonstration there. Police Chief Lloyd Wood said the alleged demonstration was organized by criminals creating a diversion to allow them to loot.

“They just wanted to create enough upheaval to allow them to steal,” Wood said.

But police were ready for them. Businesses such as Indian Hill Marketplace, Sav-On and J.J. Newberry’s had all closed early and blocked off parking lots. Unable to get at the mall, the crowd smashed windows, started fires in dumpsters and pelted arriving police and firefighters.

The rampage didn’t last long, though. Most people didn’t really want to riot, said Reggie Webb, who owns a McDonald’s on Indian Hill Boulevard, where youths rampaged, tossing food around but not doing much damage.

There’s an improving climate of cooperation among racial groups, Webb said. “You have to give the people credit.”

Police were ready in Pasadena too. Within an hour of the King verdict, Chief Oliver had put the Police Department on alert, canceling leaves and beefing up the late shift.

By Thursday, Oliver said, there were “collections of people” on street corners and in parks and caravans of cars roving the city. Police broke up the caravans and responded forcefully to looting sites, sending contingents of five or six cars.

In El Monte, there was sporadic vandalism and looting. “It was like a button that was pushed Thursday,” said Mayor Patricia Wallach. But about 75 police, spread out along Valley Boulevard, began arresting burglars and armed people. “We mobilized immediately, and I think it prevented anything else from happening,” Wallach said.

Everywhere, the atmosphere of rampant disorder was fed by rumors. In Baldwin Park, there were reports of burned buildings and looted stores--none true, according to Mayor Fidel Vargas. Callers to Pasadena’s cable television station, KPAS, reported rumors of murders at Plaza Pasadena mall and the sacking of a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant on Foothill Boulevard.

Businesses across the region--including Puente Hills Mall in the City of Industry, Eastland Center and The Plaza in West Covina, all far from the heart of the action--closed early Thursday and Friday. In some cases the closings were prompted by city-imposed curfews.

Brad Smith, assistant manager of Music Plus on Colima Road in Industry, said managers closed the store early in consideration of the employees. “They had a lot on their minds,” Smith said.

But as the violence continued in Los Angeles on Friday, the rage seemed to be fading in the San Gabriel Valley. Shortly after 9 p.m., some demonstrators gathered in downtown Monrovia, chanting and singing. There were only about 20 of them, and they left quickly.

“I told my officers (that) if we need to have a demonstration, that’s the kind I want,” said Police Chief Joseph Santoro.

And there was a nasty street scene in northwest Pasadena late Saturday, with police shooting it out with some late-night revelers. After the incident, in which dozens of rounds were fired, neighbors discovered the body of Howard Eugene Martin, 22, in a nearby apartment--shot once in the head by a bullet later determined to have been fired by police.

Police say the incident was not related to the King verdict--”Nobody was making any statements about the King affair,” Oliver said--though residents say the situation was aggravated by the mood of rebellion in the neighborhood.

There have been some dramatic signs of hope, such as the Sunday services at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena. Hundreds of parishioners arrived with sacks of groceries for inner-city residents whose supermarkets had been burned down. The church raised thousands of dollars that day for social service programs to be financed by the Episcopal Diocese.

The emphasis at the services, which included a quick visit by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, was on finding glimmers of light in the Los Angeles wreckage.

“God often breaks through in outrageously inappropriate moments,” said assistant priest Kristin Neily in a sermon on Jesus’ appearance before some fishermen who had not caught any fish. Like Jesus aiding the fishermen to their catch, Neily told the predominantly white congregation, many residents of the riot scenes had given poignant demonstrations of goodwill, she said.

“We must have our eyes focused to the almost imperceptible moment of God’s intrusion of grace,” Neily said.

Pastor George Regas, whose church has a history of involvement in social causes, spoke of the “outrage and miscarriage of justice” of the verdict and a need for understanding of the violent response. He said the gap between rich and poor has “gotten worse, year after year after year.”

City officials all over the San Gabriel Valley were still assessing the damage Wednesday. Mostly, they were looking at what happened in Los Angeles as a measure of what could have happened in their own communities.

“All in all, once we’ve stamped our reports and put our signatures on them, I’d say we should all be proud of the way we reacted,” said Chief Oliver.

But the damage, as light as it was, went beyond statistics, residents say.

The fire in the torched shops at Allen Avenue and Villa Street, less than a mile from Pasadena City College, destroyed a unique commercial cluster and dented neighborhood pride, residents say. Fire officials have put the damage at $2.1 million.

It was home to a barbershop, a shoe repair store, a flower store, a liquor store, a cabinetmaker, a bakery, a hairdresser--their owners were like a mini-United Nations.

“There was an Anglo, an Armenian, a Chicano and Vietnamese--they were all of different backgrounds,” said Andreas Aebi, who lives a few blocks from the corner.

Sal Casola, owner of two Old Town Pasadena restaurants that were vandalized last week, said he was reconsidering some expansion plans. “It puts a little fear in you,” he said. “My God, should I be using all my cash flow for that? Maybe I should be stocking my money away.”

Linda McCue, communications director of Pasadena’s Brignole Fitness Center, where rioters hurled a metal stanchion into a glass-paneled aerobics room and broke an office window with a salt shaker, is still jittery after the experience. She was working in the office when the rioters arrived.

“I’ve been planning to move to Nashville,” she said. “My family is in Seattle, and they’re saying, ‘Get out now!’ In a way, I wish I’d been gone sooner.”

Times staff writers Irene Chang, Amy Kazmin, Robert Moran, Franki V. Ransom, Vicki Torres and Mike Ward contributed to this article.