Gallery: Neighborhood watch groups' success linked to being good neighbors

One leader is a 79-year-old Panamanian immigrant and stroke survivor.

The other is 63 years old and blind - the victim of a gunshot wound to the head 40 years ago on the streets of Los Angeles.

Despite the personal challenges they have faced, Mearily Clark and Ruben Hernandez have both taken on additional tough circumstances in crime-ridden areas to become the linchpins for two of the most successful neighborhood watch programs in the San Gabriel Valley.

"When I moved here in 1985, it was horrible," said Clark, a resident of Kings Villages apartments in Northwest Pasadena. "There was `No Neck' and those guys. You couldn't walk here at night, sweetheart. Now, it's cleaned up."

When Ruben Hernandez moved to the North Whittier area 25 years ago to be closer to his wife's family, he said to himself, "This is a nice neighborhood, but it belongs to the criminals."

So, after handing out lots of fliers and overcoming people's doubts about following a blind man, he formed a neighborhood watch group.

It started with meetings of just three or four people. "Then it grew and grew," he said.

Now, the area is 95 percent graffiti free, gang free and crime is low,

More than 30 San Gabriel Valley communities last month celebrated National Night Out, an annual block party and community building event celebrated by neighborhood watch groups intended to send "a message to criminals letting them know that neighborhoods are organized and fighting back," according to the National Night Out organizing group.

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Neighborhood watch groups' success linked to being good neighbors