Kim Hartigan didn’t need to be convinced that gangs are a problem in Yuba City. A young victim of a drive-by shooting once staggered onto her front lawn, collapsed, and died.

Hartigan was one of about 75 parents and grandparents who attended a lesson Thursday evening about how to recognize and discourage gang affiliation and activity.

According to Yuba City High School Resource Officer Al Ortega, the Yuba City Police Department’s most recent count of local gang members exceeds 2,000. And those, he said, are only the documented foot soldiers.

“You’ll run into 50 of them at the mall in the course of a day, and you won’t even know it,” he said. “They’re tatted (tattooed) up, but you don’t see that.”

The “shot callers are the quiet ones,” he said. Gang leaders are generally quiet, well-schooled through prison time, and harder to track down, he said.

Members of more than 70 gang subgroups have been documented in Yuba and Sutter Counties alone, according to a list provided by Ortega and Yuba City Unified School District Board Member Lonetta Riley, who also presented gang information Thursday.

The list includes local branches of well-known Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay Area-based gangs like the Bloods, Crips, Nortenos, Surenos and Brown Pride, as well as more than a dozen Asian gangs and sub-gangs and several East Indian groups.

Recent trends among gangs include an increasing level of subtlety in the ways members announce their affiliation.

“They’re toning down the colors,” said Ortega. “They’re really not blazin’ anymore.” At the high school, he said, he now looks at the color of pens students use, and for graffiti on the inside of notebooks and on the backs of calculators. He looks at the photos on cell phones. With girls, he looks for trends in make-up and nail polish.

“How do we know if our kids have friends like that?” Hartigan said after the presentations.

“Some of it (gang affiliation) is obvious and some of it is not. I’m trying to learn what to look for.”

Ortega knows what to look for because he’s seen it all.

He spread clothing items, accessories and school supplies - all confiscated from the high school and bearing gang signage - out on the front of the stage in the Gray Avenue Middle School auditorium for parents in attendance.

Among the things Ortega has taken from students are ballcaps bearing an “N” for Norteno.

“When I ask what the ‘N’ stands for, they’ll say, ‘Nebraska.’ When I ask where Nebraska is, they have no idea,” he said.

One suspicious clothing item alone, however, does not a gang member make, he said.

He said when he spots one sign, he looks for others. Three or more gang-related belongings on a student results in intervention.

The Yuba City Police officer has more than six years of experience investigating gang-related crimes.

Riley too has plenty of criminal justice cred.

She has worked as a teacher and trainer of law enforcement officers, and currently works as a training consultant.

On Thursday, Riley asked the crowd if anyone could remember the first drive-by shooting in Yuba City. No one raised a hand.

“This is a problem,” she said, “because it means that we’re used to it now.”

A recent proliferation of gang-related graffiti in Yuba City, she said, is evidence that the problem is getting worse.

Graffiti, said Ortega, “is like a gang newspaper.”

Antoinette Escobedo has a 17-year-old daughter and 15-year-old son at Yuba City High.

She knows about gangs from her years growing up on Dorman Avenue, she said.

“We worked hard to show them (our kids) something different.”

She and her husband, “watch them (the kids) and keep up with who they hang out with.” But Ortega and Riley, she said, armed her with more information.

That information included suggestions for discouraging gang activity.

Know where your kids are and what they’re doing, get to know your kids’ friends, keep your eyes out for signs of gang affiliation, they said.

“Get to know your neighbors - that’s really important,” said Ortega. If suspicious activity occurs outside your home at night, “turn the lights on,” he said. “They’re like roaches. Light makes them leave.”

“And you’ve got to know what you’re buying your kids,” said Riley, who pointed out that one naive purchase of gang-related clothing, “could get your child killed.”

Most importantly, keep your eyes open for gang signs, “and if something’s not right,” said Ortega, “call me.”

Appeal-Democrat reporter Nancy Pasternack can be reached at 749-4712. E-mail her at npasternack@appealdemocrat.com