Conflict Hits Home on La Verne Ave. : Families: Residents of East Los Angeles share concerns for their children serving in the Middle East.

The atmosphere inside the small wood-frame house on South La Verne Avenue in East Los Angeles grew quiet. The telephone stopped ringing. Nine-month-old Kevin stopped crying. And for a few moments, Rachel Reyes was free to stare at her television and wonder to herself:

Would her son be safe?

It was 9 o’clock Tuesday night--the deadline for Iraq to withdraw its forces from Kuwait, and less than 24 hours before the U.S.-led attack on Iraq would begin.

“What do you think?” the mother of Navy SEAL Timothy Reyes asked, turning to one of her neighbors in the living room. “Will (President) Bush go for it?”

The friends quietly shrugged. “Who’s to know?” one of them answered.

Even before the bombs began falling, events in the Persian Gulf had hit home on La Verne Avenue.

This sliver of Los Angeles--a working-class barrio sandwiched between Whittier and Olympic boulevards--has four of its sons serving with their units in the Middle East. Another two on the block also are in the military, but they have not been shipped to the gulf.

But these days, things are changing rapidly.

Tuesday night was not the first time Rachel Reyes had wondered about 20-year-old Timothy’s safety.

His parents said Reyes was aboard the ferry that capsized Dec. 22 in rough waters off the Israeli port of Haifa. Twenty-one sailors stationed on the aircraft carrier Saratoga died.

“We were talking to him on the phone and you could hear his friends in the background, saying, ‘Hurry up. The ferry’s leaving,’ ” his sister, Stephanie, recalled.

News of the accident left the Reyes family, surrounded for days by other mothers in the neighborhood with sons in the gulf, fearing the worst. They did not know if they should call the Navy, the American Red Cross or someone else.

Finally, on Christmas Day, Reyes telephoned and assured his parents that he was all right. He was able to leap off the sinking vessel and swim to safety, he reported.

“He kept saying, ‘I love you, I love you,’ ” Rachel said, dabbing away tears.

A normally outgoing woman with a quick smile, she knew the worst could happen as she stared at her giant-screen television set Tuesday night.

“He’ll be safe,” she concluded after a while. “He’ll be safe.”

Moments after the 9 p.m. deadline had passed, the phone calls resumed. This time, it was her husband, Steve.

He works a night shift at an Orange County paint factory. He, too, was aware of the deadline and decided to call home for any news.

“Yes, honey, the deadline has passed,” Rachel told her husband. “Nothing yet. . . . Yes, please, say a prayer for Timmy.”

She hung up the phone--an old-style pay telephone she bought at a swap meet--and turned to Martha Cooper and Dela Jean Villarreal, two of her La Verne Avenue neighbors seated in the living room.

“This waiting--it’s worse than New Year’s Eve,” Rachel grumbled.

As 9 p.m. approached, activity in the Reyes household was fairly hectic. Friends, intending to take Rachel’s mind off the approaching deadline, stopped by for sweet rolls and coffee while she struggled to keep Kevin and his sister, Cindy, 2, out of harm’s way in the kitchen.

Although the two youngsters are not hers, they live with her and her husband. They are considered as much a part of the family as her sons, Steve Jr. and Timothy, and her daughter, Stephanie.

Rachel Reyes, according to her neighbors, is a giving person whose home seems to be the neighborhood’s nerve center. The green-and-white house on La Verne isn’t hard to miss--it’s the one with the yellow ribbon on the front door, a U.S. flag and Navy SEAL banner tacked to the front of the home.

Two other La Verne Avenue parents with sons in the Persian Gulf region, Irene Yracheta and Maria Martinez, checked in with Rachel during the final countdown to 9 p.m.

“Please keep them in your prayers,” Rachel asked them. “We love you.”

An hour after the deadline passed, the conversation turned to family matters when the television broadcast yet another bulletin: President Bush had gone to bed for the evening.

“Well, if he can, so can I,” Rachel Reyes announced.

For a night, at least, Timmy was safe.