Kearns » The bullet struck this community deep.

It unsettled some, who once believed their sidewalks safe. It stirred others, who demanded answers to why police hadn't clenched down more heavily on crime. And it drove residents to ponder what they could do to keep violence from striking again.

That slug -- fired during a lunch-hour shooting near Kearns High on Jan. 21 -- killed high-school sophomore Esteban Saidi and triggered a first-degree felony murder investigation against fellow student Ricky Angilau.

Today, The Salt Lake Tribune tells the stories of the parents, the student leaders and the neighborhood activists who are trying to find a long-term fix to crime in Kearns.

Keeping watch

Cathy Harding confronted her neighbor countless times.

But he continued to traffic drugs out of his south Kearns home. When Harding called police, he responded with several retaliatory bullets through her siding.

Nearby residents were scared, Harding recalls. "They didn't know what to do."

So the Kearns woman organized a neighborhood watch that logged license plates and alerted sheriff's deputies when suspected wrongdoing occurred outside her neighbor's home. It didn't take long before authorities nabbed the suspected dealer in his driveway and carted him off to jail.

It was an on-the-street victory that led Harding, over the next two decades, to create and oversee a community-based crime-prevention program.

"I just realized that to get anything done, we have to do it," she says. "We can't expect [law enforcement] to do it for us."

Harding is the mover and shaker behind the Kearns Crime Prevention Association, a not-for-profit coalition of residents pushing back against gang activity and urging a neighborhood-by-neighborhood approach to keeping a lid on crime.

Her vision: Expand neighborhood watch, enlist more volunteers to patrol Kearns' streets and keep the township's graffiti problem under a fresh coat of paint.

With the recent tragedy, Harding hopes for renewed support.

"Until something like this happens, it seems like you are talking to a wall," she says. "If we can get out into the community and let people know what we need to do to prevent [crime], then we're not just reacting to the really horrible things that are going on."

Face Movement

Their words brought hundreds to their feet -- students sporting letterman jackets, parents toting toddlers, sheriff's deputies who locked down Kearns High weeks before in the aftermath of a fatal shooting.

It was a thunderous ovation from a community touched by tragedy and moved by three young men whose grass-roots coalition of Latinos and Pacific Islanders has pledged to help keep that violence from erupting again.

"We cannot wait until more tears are shed," Asa Matelau told a Kearns High crowd of nearly 800 people who gathered last Monday to reflect on the killing of 16-year-old Esteban Saidi.

That message is driving three college-age friends of mixed cultures -- Matelau, Isaac Giron and Moses Mounga -- into chapels to preach unity, into schools to solicit help from student leaders and into the highest levels of Salt Lake County government to win support from Mayor Peter Corroon.

They are the heart of the Face Movement, an advocacy group that believes the long-term solution to crime lies in community-based prevention. They want government to match dollar for dollar the money spent on gang-related policing with after-school programs, mentoring and measures to deter young people from joining gangs. They want law enforcement to stop "harassing" young Latinos and Pacific Islanders because of their clothes and the color of their skin. They want the news media to quit portraying their communities "wrongly" through the lens of gang activity.

"Unless the institutions and the community members realize that they need to take another approach on this," Matelau says, "they are going to continue to turn out tragedies."

These three men -- from hometowns ranging from east Los Angeles to the west burbs of Kearns and West Valley City -- hope to keep their siblings, their cousins and coming generations from the same gang influences, stereotypes and underfunded youth programs that affected their childhoods.

"This is a way to rebel against the problems we are seeing in our community," Giron says, "not in a self-destructive way, but in a constructive way."

Testament of trust

Before turning himself in, accused shooter Ricky Angilau sought refuge at the home of a former LDS bishop.

Nofo Matua knew the boy well -- he often passed by the old bishop's house on the way home from school. Matua would wave and sometimes offer him a ride when the weather was particularly nippy.

But Angilau also was friends with the bishop's son-in-law, whom he asked for that Jan. 21 afternoon after allegedly drawing a gun during a fight and firing a fatal shot into a crowd of onlookers.

At first, the teen appeared calm. But he broke down as police sirens approached the nearby Kearns High and helicopter blades pounded overhead. Matua says the boy confided that he had done something wrong.

"I know you are [LDS] priesthood holders," Matua told him and another boy whom investigators have declined to identify. "The best thing for you to do is the right thing."

And they did. They asked Matua to call police.

"You are safe right here," Matua assured them. "There are helicopters up there; they'll pick you up. There are people out there that might shoot first and ask questions later. But you're safe here. Stay until the officers come."

It was a testament of trust to a father and former church leader who insists that parental involvement would curb "95 percent" of the crime in Kearns.

Matua's advice: Know where your children are, keep tabs on their school attendance and don't shrug off those parent-teacher conferences.

But he also is taking a neighborhood approach. Matua and his wife are considering creating a neighborhood-watch program, hosting street barbecues and starting a "Safe Home" initiative that would help children know where to turn when they're in trouble.

On the front lines

David Kinikini is a lineman -- and not just on the football field.

He's at the scrimmage line at the University of Utah, where he shepherds Pacific Islanders toward graduation; at his church, where he oversees a young men's program; and in Kearns, where he was among community leaders to call for unity after the killing of a high-school sophomore.

Kinikini doesn't live in Kearns. But he's taking a vigorous role in watching over, and improving the lives of, young Pacific Islanders in the west-side burb.

He has helped coordinate basketball tournaments, train Boy Scout leaders and recruit young athletes for Polynesian summer football camps. He is now working with Kearns High to more fully involve his U. students in the school's mentoring program.

That's where to look for a solution to the crime problem, he says.

"There are a lot of people who point the finger at parents -- 'Oh, those parents are bad. Oh, those police officers aren't doing their jobs. Oh, those churches aren't doing anything.' The blame just goes in circles," he says. "My approach is that there are some quality things that are in place. We just need to work together."

Kinikini's comments came during an interview outside a school counselor's conference at Salt Lake Community College, where his scheduled presentation was dubbed: Team Effort, Everybody Wins!

Kinikini -- an LDS stake young men's president and the U.'s Pacific Islanders program coordinator -- sticks by that slogan for Kearns.

"We stand together," he says. "Stop complaining and start moving."

'I cannot do it by myself'

Robin Lukenbach didn't win an election to become PTA president at Kearns High -- she was the only one who volunteered for the job.

Now, more than a year later, Lukenbach is one of just a handful of parents to take an active role in the school's association.

So when finger-pointing began recently at a crowded town-hall meeting in Kearns, suggesting that the community wasn't providing enough resources for youths, she couldn't sit still.

"We are here," the PTA president declared. "I cannot do it by myself."

Lukenbach has her hands full. She's the full-time-working mother of eight who is trying to reinvigorate the Kearns High PTA.

Her vision: Build an organization that will take charge of all-night graduation parties, conduct training seminars for parents to help them identify signs of gang activity or drug abuse in their children, and coordinate programs such as Rachel's Challenge, which seeks to eliminate prejudice and promote kindness.

Trouble is, she doesn't have enough support from those who could make it happen: parents.

"If these parents in Kearns want to keep saying there is nothing there for them, I have no sympathy," she says. "I can't reach out to them if they aren't going to reach out as well."

jstettler@sltrib.com