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There's hope on Street of Miracles

By ANDREW SKERRITT
Published September 17, 2006

When I called the Dade City Police Department recently seeking information on the East Pasco neighborhood called Tommytown, the person who answered seemed relieved to tell me to call the Sheriff's Office. The drugs, prostitution and violence in Tommytown is somebody else's problem.

It didn't take me long after that to find out whose problem, as I attended a community gathering with about 150 people in church on Calle de Milagros, Street of Miracles.

The irony of the street's name isn't lost on those who were inside the church that night or on the johns who cruise the neighborhood to buy sex. There are more prostitutes than ever in Tommytown. Drug dealing and violence are commonplace.

But the folks who gathered for the meeting hadn't lost faith. They've seen more churches and new houses being built, more children of farm workers going off to college.

Their story is so distant from the neighborhoods that define much of this fast-growing county - the gated communities where roads are paved, lawns are green and manicured, where the biggest complaint may be about teens driving their cars too fast. But we should all pay attention.

Tommytown's troubles may make you glad you don't live there, but the place offers us all a shot at inspiration.

Pastor Tim Ratterree, who opened the doors of Christian Fellowship Church for the community gathering, showed a documentary of church congregations in eastern Kentucky who rallied to successfully fight the methamphetamine scourge in their rural community with a combination of determination, law enforcement and love.

The message was clear: Tommytown can get those kinds of results. Fortunately it still has people who just won't quit. Like Margarita Romo of Farmworkers Self-Help. She has been toiling in that neighborhood for 25 years. She's almost 70 and is as committed as ever to turning the neighborhood around.

Or Corporal Keith Krapfl, 36, who has served as the Pasco County Sheriff's Officer Friendly in Dade City for three years. You get frustrated fighting the same troublemakers, responding to the same complaints. But when he went to the church Tuesday night and saw the determination of those gathered, he got his second wind.

Drugs are at the root of Tommytown's troubles. Krapfl will tell you that. People steal from houses to get money to buy drugs. Women prostitute themselves for money to buy drugs or exchange sex for drugs. Where there is drug dealing, violence follows.

And it's not just the crime. There is the daily social chaos in the largely farm-worker and immigrant neighborhood. Prostitutes fight with women who are trying to raise families. They steal dresses drying on clotheslines. They sleep in backyards and scare the children. Yes, things need to change.

But how?

How do you get rid of the prostitutes? Where do you send them? After you punish drug dealers, how will they ever make an honest living?

There are people in Tommytown desperate to answer those questions. They know that things didn't fall apart overnight in their neighborhood, and it's going to take a while longer to put them back together again. But they also know that even with the prostitution, drug and violence, hope still has a home on the Street of Miracles.

Andrew Skerritt can be reached at 813 909-4602 or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 4602. His e-mail address is askerritt@sptimes.com

[Last modified September 16, 2006, 21:08:57]