The girls, dressed in short-shorts and bathing suits, stand at the four corners of the intersection of Pecos and Alexander, waving white signs like surrender flags. Yards away, on the side of the 7-Eleven convenience store, nine teenage boys, most wearing red clothing, fill buckets with water. It's midday last Wednesday and business is slow for the teenage car-washing troupe. Motorists in dirty cars flit by. Some wave off the solicitors with nods. Others roll up their windows as the women approach, purposefully avoiding eye contact or the signs, which note that funds will be used to bury a friend.
A similar scene unfolds up the block on Las Vegas Boulevard and Pecos: Tennis skirts replace shorts, the girls look a bit younger—high- school freshmen, maybe—and there are fewer guys. But the car wash's goal is the same: to raise money to bury a dead peer.
Tradition in California's gang circles—friends, family and associates holding car washes to defray the costs of burying slain friends—is becoming a practice in Las Vegas. Last week's car washes took place in The Hood, an area behind the Cheyenne campus of the Community College of Southern Nevada patrolled by a Bloods gang. The intersection of Lake Mead and Martin Luther King boulevards, which has seen its share of gang-related violence—including double-digit homicides in 2001—has hosted several car washes in April and May. (Members of the Zion Chapel Outreach Center church washed cars to raise money for the funeral of Gwendolyn Jones, a 35-year-old mother of four in North Las Vegas killed in a May 2001 drive-by gang shooting. Jones, who police say was not affiliated with gangs, was killed in front of her home as she and 100 friends and family members mourned her sister, who died of lung cancer and was buried earlier that day).
Rarely an inexpensive undertaking, burying the dead has become cost-prohibitive for low-income families, the average bill tallying $6,500, excluding cemetery costs, according to the Brookfield, Wisconsin-based National Funeral Directors Association. Katie Monfre, the association's public relations coordinator, says funeral directors often work with poor families on creating affordable funeral and burial sources, be it coaching clients on filling out paperwork or accessing money. "You have a great mortuary out there that does this—Palm Mortuary," she says.
While Ned Phillips, vice president/community relations director of Palm Mortuary, says he's not familiar with loved ones of deceased gang members holding car washes to raise money for a funeral, he says funeral directors routinely work with low-income clients.
Help is also available through the Clark County Social Services Department, according to Senior Public Information Officer Stacey Welling. From July through April, the county buried or cremated 619 people at a total cost of $399,996 (that includes 168 burials at a cost of $209,040). She says there's no set amount given to each applicant.
"They (applicants) have to meet federal poverty eligibility requirements for low-income families and indigents in order to qualify for assistance," says Welling, noting that the federal poverty level for a one-person household is $665 a month and $896 a month for a two-person household. "In some cases, we also make some allowance for expenses such as rent or medical bills."
So burdened by gang-related carnage, the Pico Neighborhood Association in Santa Monica, California, created a Victims of Violence Support Fund, which offers financial support to families who generally rely on youth-led car washes and bake sales to pay for funerals. No such funds exist in Las Vegas' troubled neighborhoods. But maybe they should.
Back on Alexander and Pecos, a teenage girl pries the top off a transparent Tupperware, fishing out a fistful of cash—the morning's take. Seconds later, four cars pull up to the four-way stop. The girls' mouths go into overdrive. Unsmiling and aggressive, their solicitations, which seem more like admonishments—come get a car wash! Give us a donation!—are somewhat threatening.
They don't make any sales.
To reach the Clark County Social Services Department, call (702) 455-3157.