AFTER THE RIOTS: THE SEARCH FOR ANSWERS : Mother Elects to Leave L.A. to Save Family : Effects: Life was tough for Carol Thomas before the riots. Now she has applied for a transfer to Dallas and sent two of her children away.

Carol Thomas of Inglewood hit the top of the stress scale Thursday morning.

A divorced mother of four, she says she gets no regular child support. Her paycheck has shrunk from about $30,000 annually to $25,000 because her work hours have been cut as the recession lingers.

Her 13-year-old car died in November, forcing her to take the bus to work every day.

“And then along comes a riot,” Thomas said.

It was then, she decided, that she and her children must leave the flames and violence that followed the verdicts in the Rodney G. King beating trial. That decision marked the beginning of the end of a lifetime in the Southland.

On Thursday morning, Thomas asked her employer, American Airlines, to find her a comparable clerk’s job in Dallas. While she awaits the transfer, she will send her two youngest children--boys 14 and 16--to live with her sister outside Dallas.

Already, Thomas’ elderly grandmother has gone to Dallas to get away from the turmoil until her hard-hit Los Angeles neighborhood returns to normal.

“I’m 41 years old,” Thomas said. “I want a house. I want a little garden. I want peace of mind. I just think I’ve been through so much already. The taxes are high (here), the crime rate is high, the gang problem is awful.”

Her youngest son, she said, has to endure taunting by gang members, and since the rioting last week, bus schedules have been so erratic that the boys are leaving home at 6:45 a.m. in order not to be late for class.

“For those people that have options,” Thomas said, “I think we should exercise them. . . . There are cities that we can move to where housing is affordable and we can hunker down and rebuild our lives.”

Rent alone, Thomas figures, would be at least $200 less than the $800 a month she pays in Inglewood. And because she belongs to a union, the airline would pay her the same amount in Dallas that she earns now.

Reared in South-Central, Thomas married at 19, graduated from Los Angeles City College, worked as a railroad reservation clerk for 14 years and joined the air carrier three years ago.

She had toyed with the idea of leaving Los Angeles, but the riots made the decision easier.

“There’s a lot of people who want to get out of this city,” Thomas said. “I just think people are torn about how to do about it. A lot of frustration is building. And what are we going to do with our kids this summer with all this stuff burned down? I just don’t think this is a good place for kids.”

Thomas said her oldest child, a daughter who is a college senior in the Midwest, is so horrified by the rioting and so conflicted about where her loyalties as a young black person belong that she does not want to return to Los Angeles this summer.

Thomas’ daughter, who has been paying for her education with a series of student loans, will begin law school this fall at an Ivy League university. Thomas’ 19-year-old son attends Cal State Northridge, where he is studying to work with computers.

Thomas would go to Dallas tomorrow, she said, if she could. But she must wait for an opening, and the company couldn’t tell her this week how long that might take.

Adding to her stress is the possibility that she could lose her job here. Like many other airlines, American has been hit hard by the recession, although reservations picked up as people made summer travel plans, Thomas said.

“Then the riots came,” she said.

Travelers destined for Los Angeles, fearful of the chaos, were getting off planes in such places as Las Vegas and San Jose, and she fears that tourism in Southern California has been permanently damaged.

“After I saw all that burning Wednesday night on TV, it just seemed like the sky was ablaze,” Thomas said. “You could smell the smoke in my house.”

The life she leads, Thomas said, is the same as thousands of other divorced black women have been leading for years.

“Life is stressed enough,” Thomas said, explaining her decision to leave. “I know that Jesse Jackson would say you’re not being kind to all the people who are suffering, but how do you judge (that) suffering against mine?”