Column: Surrounded by violence, drug dealing and overdoses, workers at this L.A. restaurant struggle to hang on

In one sense, the Yoshinoya Japanese Kitchen across the street from MacArthur Park couldn’t be in a better location. Thousands of potential customers stream by each day on foot, headed to and from work, home, shopping, school and the Metro station.

In another sense, it couldn’t be in a worse location. The fentanyl epidemic is often literally at its doorstep, along with the same raft of public safety issues that prompted the exasperated owner of nearby Langer’s Delicatessen to tell me in August that he was thinking of shutting down after 77 years in business.

Yoshinoya manager Hortencia Garcia told me that when she gets to the restaurant each morning at the corner or Wilshire and Alvarado, there’s often work to do before the food prep begins.

“We have to move all of these people and remove all the trash that’s left behind,” Garcia said.

Security guard Gabriel Sanchez, meanwhile, said he routinely shoos away people selling or using drugs in front of the restaurant or in its parking lot, and he carries Narcan in his pocket to revive overdose victims. Altercations are part of the job, too.

Vendors sell items near the Yoshinoya at MacArthur Park.

(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)

“I’ve had knives pulled on me, I’ve had people try to stab me with a screwdriver, and just the other day I got hit with a wooden bat,” Sanchez said.

Garcia lamented the fact that the fast-food establishment’s name has become attached to the notorious alley that runs behind restaurant property and draws a shockingly brazen level of drug activity day and night.

“Yoshinoya alley,” Garcia said.

People congregate in an alley by MacArthur Park where drug use is rampant in the Westlake neighborhood in Los Angeles.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

“It’s unfortunately known to the mayor, LAPD, everyone,” said Sanchez. “So our name is” associated with “the overdoses and all the craziness that goes on down there.”

The scene in that alley doesn’t look quite real. It’s like the set of a movie about the darkest corner of hell. I’ve seen several dozen people gathered there at once under the haze of fentanyl smoke, bodies and faces ravaged, and I’ve wondered each time why there isn’t a massive relief effort under way — like you might see in an emergency response to a natural disaster.

“We have to respond urgently” to the crisis in MacArthur Park, Mayor Karen Bass told me in August.

It’s almost November now, and I don’t see it. Not for the sake of those who are badly addicted and flirt with death each day, and not for the sake of residents and merchants who need some relief.

Garcia said she has often complained about neighborhood conditions to city officials, and the response has been “we have a plan.” After two years, she said, “I’m still waiting for the plan.” In a statement from its corporate team, Yoshinoya said it is committed to staying in the community, taking steps to ensure the safety of employees and customers, and participating in neighborhood council meetings along with neighbors, city leaders and the LAPD.

Garcia and Sanchez said they call senior lead officers from the Rampart division when they have a specific problem, and they can usually count on help arriving in a hurry. But Garcia doesn’t understand why routine lawlessness in the area is generally tolerated by authorities.

Gang activity and the trafficking of stolen goods have plagued the MacArthur Park area for decades, including when Garcia raised her five children in the neighborhood. But she doesn’t recall as much homelessness or open drug use back then, and “there were consequences” for illicit behavior. “Now everybody does whatever they want” and nothing is done about it, she said.

Early on the evening of Oct. 9, a middle-aged man overdosed on the sidewalk in front of Yoshinoya. I was working on a column about L.A. Fire Department’s Station 11 — one of the busiest in the nation, partly because of overdose calls — and watched as paramedics pushed naloxone, an opioid overdose drug, through an IV line and revived him.

One of the most striking things about the scene was how routine it appeared. People walked by without pausing, or stopped to see if this one was going to make it, unlike dozens of other overdose victims who have died in Westlake in the last couple of years.

That was a busy night, Sanchez recalled.

“After that one, maybe about an hour later, I had a girl right here at the gate,” he said of a second overdose victim.

Michelangelo prepares to walk across the street by Yoshinoya at MacArthur Park.

(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)

Both times, he said, he called 911. The second person recovered, as well as the first. But overdoses are so frequent, he has arranged for outreach workers from a social services nonprofit to regularly deliver him boxes of Narcan — the nasal spray form of naloxone.

I asked if he’d had to use it often in his first year on the job.

“More than I could count,” Sanchez said.

He said he keeps doses in his pocket, in the trunk of his car, and behind the counter at the restaurant in case a customer pays with cash that has traces of fentanyl on it. Fortunately, he said, no employee has had an accidental drug experience.

But the job isn’t for everyone, Garcia told me. She’s had employees quit because they didn’t feel safe in the neighborhood, or commuting through the nearby Westlake/MacArthur Park Metro station, which has often served as a drug den.

One employee, in his 20s, lasted about 20 minutes.

“It was just too chaotic,” Sanchez said. “That day, I was throwing people out. And [employees] were being yelled at by [customers].”

Sanchez said he often ends up working six or seven 12-hour shifts weekly because it’s hard to find a guard willing to fill in for him on weekends. In the past year, he said, “we’ve had quite a few shootings” in the area. “Maybe two months ago, we had one midday. … And we had a stabbing a couple of weeks ago that was after hours.”

Sanchez later watched that incident play out on the restaurant’s surveillance system. He said it appeared to involve a drug transaction in which one man “goes up and stabs the guy dead center in the chest. … He ended up walking away a few steps, dropped right there by the light post, and died right there.”

Garcia said she’s been with Yoshinoya for 10 years and was assigned to the Alvarado franchise about two years ago. She said she told management a fence was needed to keep people from loitering on the property. She said an iron gate, about eight feet high, was installed at a cost of about $45,000 and sidewalk vendors had to be pushed closer to the curb to clear a path in front of the restaurant.

A fortress was needed inside the restaurant, as well. A glass partition was installed to separate kitchen staff from customers.

“Our regulars do feel safe,” Sanchez said. “I shake hands with them when they come in. … But others have decided to go eat somewhere else because it’s not worth the headache.”

Garcia said business has been down, especially among families.

“I feel bad for the residents — for the ladies that walk their kids,” said customer Daniel Leyva. “Have you seen that alley? That’s crazy.”

Customer James Wright said he lived nearby years ago, and “police had a handle … on it” back then. “A couple of years ago it seemed like they just gave up. This is worse than downtown L.A.”

Wright wondered why MacArthur Park can’t be turned around the way Echo Park Lake has been in recent years.

“You gotta move some hipsters in,” Sanchez said. “Let’s be real.”

Customer Debbie Wright said she used to sell heroin in MacArthur Park 20 years ago, before going to prison. The park was no paradise back then, she said, but it’s worse now.

Emergency medical technicians and paramedics with Los Angeles Fire Station 11 keep an eye on a man they revived from an overdose at the corner of Alvarado Street and Wilshire Boulevard in the MacArthur Park area.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

“I don’t want to give up on society,” she said, “but this is bad.”

“Here’s to hoping it will get cleaned up before anything bad happens,” said Sanchez

I asked why he didn’t consider finding another job.

“The main reason I stay here is the relationship I’ve built with Hortencia,” he said. “But it’s rough. There are some days when … I can’t believe this is where I work.”

In August, Mayor Bass did the right thing in going to Langer’s for lunch and hearing out the owner, who is holding on for now to see if the city can deliver.

She should do the same at Yoshinoya, and take along Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, the chief of police, a county supervisor or two, and all the city and county department heads who need to step up and do their jobs in Westlake.

They can meet Garcia, Sanchez and the rest of the crew, have lunch, and then get to work.

steve.lopez@latimes.com