A daughter’s vow means a heavy load

Angela Villegas is young, bright and articulate, and all of 19. She dropped out of college earlier this year to care for her mother, struck down by liver cancer.

When her mom died at home July 7, Villegas knew she didn’t want to see her siblings in foster care, perhaps mistreated, maybe bounced from home to home.

So she stopped planning for her own future and focused on theirs: Jesus, 14, who wants to become a cop; Santiago, 13, who helped Villegas with her own homework; Lucio, 8, shining black hair and a plaid shirt buttoned neatly at the neck, who should be a firefighter, Villegas muses; Fernando, 7, who has Down syndrome; and Alejandra, 5, who can’t yet write but makes big swirling notes on a pad of paper as her big sister speaks.

On Friday, Villegas went to court and became the legal guardian of her four younger brothers and her sister, fulfilling a vow she had made as her single mother lay dying in poverty in South Los Angeles.

“She told me to take care of my brothers and sister,” Villegas said, gesturing to the children.

“We’ve never been split up,” she explained. “We’ve always been together.”

Keeping track of the active brood will be “like herding butterflies,” Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael I. Levanas predicted Friday in his downtown courtroom.

He declared Villegas their temporary legal guardian and called her “the boss.”

“I want you pay to attention to your sister,” Levanas admonished the children lined up in front of him. “Or at least use one ear to listen to her. She’s got a heavy load.”

“It’s a very unusual situation,” said Fabian Giatta, the lawyer who represented Villegas. “I have yet to meet a client who’s taken on this number of siblings at this young an age.”

Villegas has made ends meet through a combination of public assistance, food stamps and subsidized housing.

She kept the family together over the summer with the help of friends and supporters at her church, St. Cecilia’s Catholic Church on Normandie Avenue. One neighbor, worried about the young family living in a gang-riddled neighborhood, approached police.

When LAPD Sgt. Julia Vincent stopped by three weeks ago, she found Villegas worried that her sister and brothers might be taken from her. And she had some personal unfinished business.

“I asked Angela what she wanted to do with her life. She said, ‘Go back to school. Is that selfish?’ ” Vincent recalled.

Vincent said Villegas’ mother told her to “be somebody. She wants to fulfill her mother’s dream.”

Vincent spearheaded a modest LAPD fundraiser. Then the Dream Center church group in Echo Park got involved, along with the Alliance for Children’s Rights, a legal and advocacy group for abused and poor children. Telemundo anchor Lucia Navarro took a personal interest, airing reports on Villegas and her family this week.

Villegas said her mother deteriorated very quickly after her cancer diagnosis in August of last year. In May, doctors told her she had just three months to live. “Talk to your parents,” Villegas said. “I had a hard time telling my mom I loved her. Just say the words.”

john.spano@latimes.com