UNDERSTANDING THE RIOTS--SIX MONTHS LATER : Money and Power/Making It in the Inner City : LOOKING AHEAD: Visions of Darkness and Hope : ‘When are you coming back?’

From his Ladera Heights home, a helpless Rod Davis watched the TV pictures of his Firestone store at 52nd Street and Crenshaw Boulevard burning to the ground, his lifelong ambition of owning a business going up in flames with the riot-torn city.

“Our worst fears . . . were realized,” Davis, 53, said. “Everything was gone.”

With the fires extinguished, Davis made sure his 11 employees were placed at other Firestone outlets. Then he left with his family for Alabama, where he was born and raised, to think about the future.

“We went to Alabama to get away and get a clear head,” he said. “To get away from the ringing phones. I considered going back there and working for Firestone. But I couldn’t do that. That’s not me. I would not have been happy.”

So Rod Davis came back to Los Angeles. And he went back to work.

“After getting away for a week, I thought about how long it would take to rebuild the business,” he said. “It would take a long time--some six to eight months. I had the nucleus of my staff placed at other Firestone stores, but if they stayed there they would become seated there. I stood a good chance of losing my crew. And my customers. The people would go elsewhere.”

Davis attended riot recovery meetings. He met with President Bush during the President’s May 7 visit to Los Angeles. “But I realized I had to focus on my own situation,” Davis said. “I had no income.”

Bridgestone/Firestone Inc. agreed to sell him a company-owned store in Westchester, near Los Angeles International Airport. Davis took over Aug. 1, with six of his original 11 employees.

Since then, 40% of his Crenshaw customers have returned. “Many of our customers are seeking us out,” he said. “It’s been absolutely unbelievable. There’s not a day that goes by that somebody doesn’t come in and say, ‘Gee, I’m glad to find you guys.’ ”

That relationship with his customers is a point of pride with Davis, who moved to Los Angeles in the early 1960s to look for better job opportunities. “I wanted more than just the menial type of job open to me” in the South, he said.

By day, Davis worked for Lockheed. By night, he changed tires at the Broadway in Panorama City. “I watched and learned,” he said, “and I became a salesperson, then a sales manager.” Davis worked as a manager for 20 years at other shops before buying his own.

“We opened in February, 1984, at Crenshaw,” said Davis, who runs his business with his wife, Lola, and his son, Rod Jr. “Being a minority and being in a minority area, I felt that was a place to open my business.”

Yet on a recent visit to the Crenshaw site, Davis notes that a wall he constantly repainted--the only thing left standing on the property--is covered with graffiti. A sign says he will reopen in 1993. But now he’s not so sure. A drug rehabilitation center next door wants to buy the property and expand.

“We’ve had to use a lot of resources to relocate,” Davis said. “It would be like an expansion. I would need to borrow a lot of money. And at my age, the problem of making a profitable business is that it takes some time. I don’t feel I’d be able to get my investment out of it.”

Climbing into his white Cadillac Eldorado, Davis turns onto a side street. Two men standing next to a car recognize him.

“When are you coming back?” they ask.

“I don’t know,” he says. “These things take time.”