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4201 Wilshire Blvd. Suite 600 • Los Angeles •
CA • 90010 • Phone: 323-556-5720 • Fax: 323-556-5704
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Fran Reichenbach
June 28, 2003. Chances are, if you live in the Hollywood Hills you know of Fran Reichenbach in some way. Maybe not by name. Maybe not by face. But during the two-month Hollywood Hills crime spree, many residents have been kept up-to-date on the series of home invasions and robberies through Reichenbach’s leg work.
Reichenbach, who is involved in several neighborhood groups, runs the website beachwoodcanyon.org, which has crime reports, updates and tips related to criminal incidents in the Hollywood Hills.
She regularly fetches the crime blotter from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Hollywood station and has used it as a tool to find the trouble spots in the area.
When her daughter was growing up, Reichenbach told her, “Don’t let me hear about you driving through Yucca and Ivar.”
As one of the community leaders receiving regular updates on the Hills crimes from Cpt. Michael Downing of the Hollywood Division, Reichenbach is a source of information for residents.
She sends out e-mail alerts, updates her website and includes crime information in her quarterly Beachwood Voice newspaper - which she lays-out herself.
She used to publish all the crime in the blotter that happened in her neighborhood but later stopped the practice, she said.
“It took up a lot of ink,” says Reichenbach, a tall, serious-looking woman with long light-blonde hair. “That was a big one. And there was a certain morbid curiosity that it inspired. I found it much more productive to read them myself and give a brief report.”
But despite her deep involvement in the neighborhood, Reichenbach shies away from taking credit for her efforts, pointing to the help given by others.
“I’m touched by the level of involvement of the neighbors,” she says. “Some of the neighbors I have never known before and their support is amazing.”
If a controversy erupts in the Hills, chances are Reichenbach is on the case. When officials were discussing opening a needle exchange in a Hollywood clinic, she helped lead the charge to kill the idea - and recently succeeded.
When the fire department was weighing putting a new station near the intersection of Garfield Place and Hollywood Boulevard, Reichenbach was among the vocal activists opposing the move. That idea also died.
She has helped several residents organize neighborhood watch groups, she said. She spends an hour to an hour-and-a-half each week walking the neighborhood and calls the city to pick up any bulky items she notices, she says. She organizes meetings, such as the one a few weeks ago that drew 130 people eager to learn about the recent crime spree, she says.
She is president of the Beachwood Canyon Neighborhood Association, president of the Franklin-Hollywood Hills Community Council’s action team and took an active role in forming the Hollywood Gower Neighborhood Association.
By the way, she also posts information on her website from two other neighborhood councils, she says.
She doesn’t work, but even so, how does she find time to be involved in so many things?
“That’s a good question,” says Reichenbach. “That really is. Because at times I wonder that, too. You just kind of put one foot in front of the other and do what it takes.
“And there are a lot of people working with me, too. Once in a while, when I start feeling sorry for myself, I look around and say, ‘Geez, there are lots of volunteers at work.”
Although she has lived in the Beachwood Canyon for 19 years, she first got involved six years ago, when she opposed a proposed development in the Hills.
“The whole thing ... is that I had committed six years ago that I was going to serve the community, period,” she says.