GUIDING THE WAY : POSADAS PARADE NEW FACE OF BLYTHE STREET.

Byline: Beth Barrett Daily News Staff Writer

A decade ago, the last place on Earth Maria Carrasco thought she'd be Friday night was preparing a Christmas party for posadagoers on Blythe Street.

That's because 10 years ago while driving a friend home to the street - then one of the most notorious in Los Angeles - she was ambushed by about a half dozen drug dealers.

``When they realized I wasn't there to buy anything, they started throwing rocks and bottles, breaking the windshield of my car,'' said Carrasco, who now manages the 2-year-old Regency 50 apartment complex, a cornerstone of the neighborhood's revitalization.

A posada - the traditional eight-night Latino celebration of caroling - would have been impossible then, she said.

``We couldn't walk on the streets,'' agreed Nicholasa Ramirez, a 14-year Blythe Street resident and posada participant. ``They (gangsters) robbed, beat, even killed people on the streets.''

But Friday night was the fifth night of the largest resident-organized posada to date on Blythe Street, with nine apartment buildings participating in providing refreshments for residents at the end of each night's march.

The celebration is a testimony to an experiment in neighborhood restoration that began in 1992 when the city kicked off its first community impact team. A team is a coordinated group of government agencies that focuses on a single, well-defined neighborhood.

At one point, 50 city organizations and agencies were active in the Blythe Street community, said Stephan Margolis, the Los Angeles Police Department's Community Policing Coordinator. For a time, the street was even blocked off, the kind of measure justified by the deplorable state of the street, city officials said.

``It was a neighborhood under siege,'' Margolis said.

A remnant of the team remains, including a concentrated LAPD presence and about $6 million in federal loans administered by the city's Housing Department to provide low-income housing, city officials said.

But, the legacy of the program lives on in the community-driven Residents United of Blythe Street, which meets each month in the Regency 50 to address continuing community needs and to plan events, like cleanups and tree plantings. As many as 200 people attend the meetings, Carrasco said.

``The residents were strong before, but it was hard for them to be a community with the kind of crime level they were facing,'' said Lisa McMurray, Blythe Street project manager with the city's Housing Department. ``The city made it safer for people to go outside, for kids to go outside, to have 100 people marching in a posada in the streets.''

The evidence of the community impact team's work - now being extended to other parts of the city - was vividly apparent to Carrasco last spring when a property management firm entreated her to at least look at the apartment complex, sweetening the deal with a a benefit package not commonly available.

``When I learned the address, I said `Blythe Street!' and hesitated, but I went to look anyway,'' she said. ``We made the left turn and, there were no gangsters, no people hanging out, no graffiti! I looked at the building and said, `This is nice.' ''

Instead of the dark roadway Carrasco had remembered from the night of the attack, she found a street alight with bulletproof street lamps, also a legacy of the team, she said.

There are still gang problems in the community, but people like Ramirez who have lived through the troubled years say their neighborhood has made huge strides, and that today it is a defined community with leaders, projects and goals.

The posadas began coming back, for instance, about five years ago, she said.

This year's event has drawn the largest crowds, with some of the evenings attracting a couple of hundred participants, Carrasco said.

``Before there were no community groups,'' Ramirez said, saying fear kept residents inside.

``But the team benefited us a lot,'' she said. ``The youngsters you used to see in the streets, now they've turned their lives around and have gotten involved in the community.''

As importantly, she said, the street is hers again.

``Sincerely, after 8 p.m. I never went out onto the street,'' Ramirez said. ``Now, I go out after 10 p.m. and I feel there is no danger.''

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Photo: (color) Consuelo Sanchez and Javier Guardado lead a procession of carolers along Blythe Street on Friday.

Phil McCarten/Daily News