Sexual Allegation, Racial Tension Divide Neighbors

Tegra Vetrovec liked the Palmdale neighborhood the moment she saw it.

Built around a quiet cul-de-sac, it was a small patch of suburban heaven. Children frolicked in the street, and their thirtysomething parents commuted to good jobs. Their homes were lower-priced starter models but spacious and well-kept.

Although she was the only African-American on the block, Vetrovec thought any resentment would dissolve when white residents got to know her as a good Christian woman. In any event, the spick-and-span neighborhood was a perfect spot to raise her daughters, Samantha, 3, and Erica, 16 months.

“I could really see myself and my kids in that picture,” Vetrovec said. Her husband, Jim, is a security supervisor whose parents are white and Latino. The couple bought a three-bedroom home on Desert Willow Lane, no money down, in March.

But Tegra Vetrovec’s dreams of suburban quietude disintegrated after she told a neighbor woman that a teen-age girl who lived nearby had been sexually molested by a local man.

That touched off a bitter neighborhood feud that has dragged on since July. And early Friday morning, the quarrel burst into public view when an unknown vandal spray-painted racial slurs on the home of a neighborhood friend of Vetrovec’s who had been baby-sitting her younger girl.

Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies said Sunday they are investigating the incident as a hate crime but had made no arrests.

By midday Sunday, Vetrovec and supportive neighbors had erased the slurs from the home of Mary Jane Dunn, a widow who lives several doors from Vetrovec.

“I’m a prisoner in my own home, my marriage is in jeopardy, my kids’ safety is in jeopardy and my health is shot to hell,” said a sobbing Vetrovec, who makes children’s clothing and furniture in her home.

She accused white families on the street of being behind the spray-painting. But the neighbors vehemently denied any involvement and charged that Vetrovec is a busybody who has stirred up the neighborhood by spreading nasty rumors.

“We never lived like this before. This all started when she moved in. And I wish she’d leave,” said Suzanne Miller.

Miller and her husband, Randy, denied involvement in the racial attack. They said they do not object to Vetrovec because of her race, but because she has thrown their peaceful neighborhood into an uproar.

“We’re not prejudiced,” said Suzanne Miller. “We have black friends over here all the time.”

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Both sides agree that the feud began when Vetrovec told Suzanne Miller that a 14-year-girl said a local man had molested her on a fishing trip.

The man later confronted Vetrovec, yelling obscenities at her in her front yard, she said.

The situation escalated when Vetrovec accused a white teen-age girl of burning Vetrovec’s daughter Erica on the nose with a cigarette lighter while baby-sitting. The teen-ager’s parents denied that such an incident took place.

Vetrovec said she plans to press charges of child abuse against the girl. She said her husband, Jim, talked her out of seeking charges when the alleged incident occurred, and she became so angry at him that they have separated.