UNDERSTANDING THE RIOTS--SIX MONTHS LATER : Touched by Fire / A Legacy of Pain and Hope : THE CHILDREN : Reginald Moves In With His Father, Octavio Drifts Along and Patricia Enters a Job-Training Program

For many Californians, the riots were more than a momentary blip on the screen--they were a flash point for lasting and fundamental changes in their lives. The devastation left a legacy of broken dreams for many, awakened a sense of social justice in some, unleashed anger and hatred in others, and rekindled a spirit of hope among others. Six months after the riots, Times reporters visited some of the people and places touched by the extraordinary events of last spring and on these pages we tell their stories.

Last spring, when Octavio Sandoval found a hard floor easier to sleep on than a guilty conscience, he made himself a local hero by returning three beds he had stolen during the riots. Dozens of caring citizens responded to his story; 30 people alone offered beds.

His story seemed a comforting close to a trying chapter in local history.

He was a decent teen-ager who had been swept up in the moment and stolen something he and his family genuinely needed: beds to sleep on. Waiting to help him were dozens of citizens who cared enough to help him and his family rest easier.

Tonight, in fact, Octavio will sleep on one of the donated beds. But his teen-age sister will still sleep in a closet. And, others will share a mattress that pulls out of a wall cabinet that once housed table linens. There just isn’t room for more beds in the two-room, half-a-bungalow where he and his family of eight live in South-Central Los Angeles.

Today--six months after what he saw as an uncomfortably public moment in an otherwise commonplace life--Octavio remains a symbol. Like hundreds of teen-agers in his class at Manual Arts High School and thousands across the city, he’s a youth who didn’t make the honor roll, but didn’t join a gang either; a boy with a strong moral compass, but no place to go.

“I think I’m average,” he replied when asked how he sees himself.

Though Octavio won’t quite admit it, he seems to be drifting away from school, cutting classes to go fishing with friends. He should have graduated last year, and even his teachers realize he doesn’t see much point in hanging on.

His big brother’s high school diploma hangs on the living room wall--the first child in the immigrant family to ever graduate. But Octavio can’t envision himself in a cap and gown.

“He’s one of many, many kids who pass through,” said Mark Epstein, his homeroom teacher this year. “I can see him but, as much as I’d like to reach him, I can’t. I don’t have the time.”

What Octavio would really love is to find a job in a machine shop, which is the only class he really enjoyed. But he doesn’t know anyone who works in such a shop, does not have a car to commute, and does not figure he could persuade a stranger to hire him anyhow.

So, at 18, Octavio is ratcheting down his hopes and looking for a job where neighborhood youngsters have always looked: on the fast-food circuit.

He had such a job working nights at Taco Bell after the riots. That was where he wound up after the disappointment he saw in his mother’s eyes persuaded him to turn the stolen beds over to a church. But he lost that job after standing up to a dangerous-looking customer who was hassling a girl working the drive-in window.

He put in an application in at McDonald’s. But deep-frying chicken at Kentucky Fried Chicken seemed more exciting, he said. Ten of his friends had worked at a franchise near his house; but all were thrown out of work when it burned down in the riots.

Now, the Colonel is rebuilding, and Octavio has applied for work with a man--he doesn’t know his name--who stops by to check on the construction. Calling up the head office, making an appointment, knocking on the door of the personnel office--these are things he hasn’t done. Shy, still abashed about all the attention he has received, Octavio seems reluctant to impose himself on strangers.

He doesn’t say so--perhaps because the soft-spoken young man with the crucifix around his neck doesn’t like talking about himself--but it seems that life is something that happens to him. Jobs, like friends, happen into his life.

And nothing much has happened into the neighborhood around Vermont and Vernon avenues lately. Broken-down cars still line the curbs under trim Mexican fan palms.

Before the riots, Octavio and his buddies used to jump into the back of a friend’s truck and drive as far as Downey or even Bakersfield. The truck broke down regularly, but there were so many guys, they could always push.

Now, he rarely leaves the neighborhood. The friend who owned the truck moved away after the riots. The remaining friends who own cars have small ones, he said; too small to carry enough guys to push them uphill when they break down.

And, it seems, it is always uphill they need to be pushed.

Octavio isn’t the sort to see a metaphor in that.

Asked about the future, he said he expects it’ll be a whole lot like the past--once the Kentucky Fried Chicken gets rebuilt.

“It’ll probably be the same or something,” he said.