Tracy residents struggle with the violence that seems to have overtaken their city

by Jeanine Benca

He says he hasn’t lost his faith in Tracy — today a booming commuter hub of more than 83,000 people — but Siffing, like many others, can’t help mourning the loss of the farm town he once knew.

To say the community’s innocence has been shattered, with the Sandra Cantu case, the case of the teenage torture victim and other unexpected, violent tragedies that have unfolded here in the past year, would be simplifying the pain of residents struggling to make sense of it all.

"There are a lot of great things still going on here. But this past year … it just makes you wonder what is happening," Siffing said.

The city has been a fixture in national headlines since March 27, when one of its residents, 8-year-old Sandra, was abducted. Ten days later, the dead girl was found stuffed in a suitcase near her home.

Before Sandra, there was the shooting death of Tracy resident Mark Dunakin, one of four Oakland police officers gunned down by a parolee on March 21.

So much has happened here," Ruth Briggs, another longtime resident, said of Tracy, which just last year was rated the second safest city in Northern California on a list compiled by CQ Press. "Why all of a sudden all this?" she asked.

Mayor Brent Ives is quick to refute the notion he says he has heard voiced by some that there is "something in the water."

"These ugly kinds of things happen everywhere. It just so happens that we got our dose at one time," he said.

Still, the violence has left a deep, abiding sadness with residents who wonder what the rest of the world must think of them. More than that, it’s a sense of loss about what they were and the price they have paid to become part of the growing East Bay.

Built on fertile agricultural ground, Tracy was once a hub on the Central Pacific Railroad Line.

Development, fueled in part by the demand for more housing in the expanding East Bay, has steadily nibbled away at its once vast agricultural tracts. The result has been a population explosion: Tracy, which numbered just 34,000 in 1990, has since nearly tripled.

Traces of the old farm town have survived, in the horses and cattle that still dot the landscape and in hometown events such as the annual Dry Bean Festival, a regional favorite that draws tens of thousands.

But there’s no question growth has led to more graffiti, gang activity, traffic and a loss of the small-town connectedness that once made it so unique, says Jack Alvarez, a third-generation Tracy farmer whose family has been here since the 1930s.

Higher crime rates are "inevitable when you have that much growth," Alvarez said.

Siffing agrees the city’s flavor has changed.

Siffing lives a mile and a half from Sandra’s trailer park and belongs to the Tracy fitness center where on Dec. 1, the boy known as Kyle R. stumbled in bloody, emaciated, half-naked and wearing a chain around his ankle. Authorities arrested the boy’s guardian, a married couple, and a neighbor on suspicion of keeping him chained inside a house on Tennis Lane, around the corner from the gym.

The cases have "devastated" him and his wife, said Siffing, who recalls how, years ago, their daughters walked to school and they never feared for their safety.

"We never had these kinds of problems," he said. "You have a lot more latchkey kids now, a lot more parents working over there in the Bay Area doing what they need to do." He hesitated before adding, "You wonder how much they really have invested in this little town."

Not everyone sees things that way.

Cynthia Haskell, a San Mateo native who moved here 10 years ago, counts herself among the "darn Bay Area people" who are sometimes viewed warily by lifelong residents.

If anything good has come out of the Cantu case, it’s that it has helped bridge the divide between "old and new Tracy," says Haskell, who is married to a Tracy firefighter.

She said she was blown away by the tens of thousands who flocked to the scene to hand out photos of Sandra and look for her after she disappeared.

"I feel like there’s a lot of separation here between the people who have been here forever and the people like me who have only been here for 10 years … but I was so proud that so many came forward to look for her after she disappeared. It didn’t matter who you were," she said.

The disconnect between newer and older residents is fitting for a city on the border of two worlds — the conservative-leaning Central Valley and the more liberal Bay Area.

For many longtime residents, the Altamont Pass, the passageway through the foothills that separate Tracy from the East Bay, remains not only a physical divide, but a figurative line in the sand.

Tracy is one of seven cities in San Joaquin County, which until the 2008 presidential election, had not endorsed a Democratic candidate since 1964. (Obama won 54 percent of the county’s vote).

The predominantly white city has a lower median household income than cities closer to the Bay. Flags wave in front of homes and businesses, reflecting a patriotic pride among residents, who have enlisted in the war at a far higher rate than the rest of the East Bay. It’s a fact that may have contributed to another one of Tracy’s sad distinctions: the higher-than-average casualty rate.

With a population of 83,000, the city has registered 8.4 war deaths per 100,000 residents — a number far higher than any other city in the region.

Still, says Ives, far from being torn apart by its recent tragedies, the "community has come together around (them)."

"These kinds of things don’t change your character as a community — in fact, they might actually build your character, kind of dust you off and remind you of who you are as a community member," he added.

Of the Tracy tragedy freshest on her mind, that of Sandra Cantu, Haskell said, "So many people were volunteering to find her. We just all hoped to see her smiling face again."

Although the result was not what was hoped for, "I do believe it has brought us together," she said. "I believe that, somehow, something good will come out of her death — just somehow."