KELLER -- Twenty years ago, as Myiesha Taylor heard the news that her father had been killed in the opening hours of south Los Angeles' chaotic and violent descent, her future career took shape in her mind.
Dwight Taylor, a 42-year-old standout basketball player who was trying to buy groceries for his family on the wrong night of the year, died in an emergency room as the riots crystallized into a live-action horror film for the nation just hours after the acquittal of four policemen accused in the videotaped beating of Rodney King.Myiesha Taylor, a high-school senior, would save people like her dad someday."After what happened to my dad, I became aware of how much I wanted to make an immediate difference in people's lives," she said.She didn't just dream it or think it. She did it.Taylor, 38, is a board-certified emergency-room physician and a former chief resident at one of Los Angeles' toughest hospitals. She can reflect on her father's death from some distance, emotionally and literally.Taylor lives in Keller now with her husband and three children, transplants to Texas three years ago.Having worked in the ER at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas and as a professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, she runs the health clinic at the Dr Pepper plant in Irving and works weekends at the Texas Regional Medical Center in Sunnyvale, a Dallas suburb. Both jobs allow her to be a mom more, which is her main goal for now."Honestly, not a lot has changed in LA since the riots," she said. "We needed a better environment to raise a son."The riots, fed by a complex mix of distrust of the criminal justice system and economic animosity among blacks, whites and Koreans, riveted the nation. But they represented so much more to residents of Southern California, for whom the episode continues "to have a major lasting impact," said Leland Tadaji Saito, a professor of sociology at the University of Southern California.Saito, who lives near campus in the heart of south-central LA, said an agreement several years ago between low-income neighborhoods and developers of the Staples Center and L.A. Live project to set aside money for affordable housing and parks is a prime example of an economic relationship that isn't as one-sided as it once was."1992 was a major wake-up call to community organizers and labor unions that the old ways of doing things weren't working anymore," Saito said. "Out of the '92 civil unrest emerged a progressive coalition to directly deal with some of the underlying issues, particularly in affordable housing and job opportunities."'Survivor,' 'overcomer'In 1992, Myiesha Taylor was a high-school senior in Long Beach, Calif., where she lived with her mother. Her father lived in Compton, between downtown LA and Long Beach. It was the only place he had ever lived except for a few years in the late 1960s and early '70s when he attended Long Beach State University on a basketball scholarship awarded by then-coach Jerry Tarkanian.Dwight Taylor, still a fixture on neighborhood courts, worked off and on at the All Seas Fish Market, where customers called him "fish man." He looked out for people who couldn't afford food and, with the owner's blessing, often gave leftovers to people, according to news stories at the time.On April 29, hours after the jury's acquittal, it became clear to the fish market owner that he needed to shut down. Someone had shot off the padlock on the Korean-owned business next door, and thousands of people were running in the streets, according to news reports.It was 6:30 p.m., and Taylor crossed the street to a grocery market to buy milk for his family before heading home.Someone opened fire in the parking lot.Dwight Taylor, two bullets having penetrated his neck and chest, walked back to the fish market to seek help from a friend. He got into the back seat of the friend's car, and they drove out of the lot. Not far away, they came across an ambulance, and Taylor walked to the paramedics.The ambulance took Taylor to California Medical Center, the closest hospital but one not known for trauma care.That's where he died some hours later.Louis Watson, 18, and Greg Davis, 15, also died in that parking lot, the first of 53 people killed in the next week of rioting and looting. Thousands more were injured, thousands were arrested and hundreds of buildings were torched. (No one has been prosecuted in the deaths of the three men, but police speculate that Watson was the target of gang members and that Taylor and Davis were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.)Myiesha Taylor knew nothing about what happened that night until the next morning.She still remembers her disbelief when she was told her father was dead."You have this idea watching the riots on TV that the only people who are going to get shot or killed are doing things they shouldn't be doing, that they're someplace they shouldn't be," she said. "You're not expecting that a dad of four kids who goes out to buy milk for his family is one of those who will get killed. But Los Angeles was in complete disarray."High school graduation loomed in June. She and her father had talked of her plans to go to Xavier University of Louisiana, a historically black college in New Orleans. He was very proud.That summer, she might have had second thoughts about a college so far away. But her mother would not hear of it."My mom is a survivor, an overcomer," she said. "She won't let you wallow in your sorrow. She told me, 'You have your plan. Go do it.'"'Major challenges'Taylor graduated summa cum laude from Xavier with a degree in chemistry and turned her attention west again. She returned home in 1996 to attend the University of Southern California School of Medicine, a decision made mostly to ensure that she had a support system of family and friends for the long road that was medical school.She worked in the Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center for five years, including one year as chief resident in the emergency room. King/Drew, which closed in 2007 after repeated patient care scandals, was a "fantastic place to train as an emergency physician," she said."The military sent their people to King/Drew to learn how to treat gunshot wounds," she said.Twenty years after the riots that changed her life, Taylor sometimes sees reasons to be pessimistic."When I was a kid, we lived in Compton and in Long Beach," she said. "We didn't have a lot of money, but we felt safe, honestly. I felt like we had access to a dream, even though we didn't have much. I don't think the current generation of young people feel that same sense of optimism that they can do better. The adults in these kids' lives don't seem to prepare their children to ever live outside of their community."Almost three years ago, she and her husband, William Schlitz, and their children -- Haley, 9, Ian, 6, and Hana, 4 -- moved from California to Keller. They had visited Fort Worth for a wedding and liked what they saw. They started checking into schools and houses, and they were sold.But Taylor sometimes thinks society and race relations have improved and will continue to.Saito concurred. The election of President Barack Obama is proof that many people have moved beyond previous generations' prejudices, he said."Things are different, and in many ways, they are better," he said. "There have been significant improvements in reducing racial segregation in housing and neighborhoods, for example. On the other hand, there are still major challenges of issues around race and class."Taylor sees the most hope in her own children and their peers."Young people and kids don't seem to have the hangups that older adults do," she said. "They don't self-segregate, and they don't seem to stereotype. They're exposed to kids of different races and ethnicities, kids of multiple races, and the differences between people don't seem to bother them as much. I think that is good for America long term."Chris Vaughn, 817-390-7547Twitter: @CVaughnFWHave more to add? News tip? Tell us
