Casting a Wide Web for Robbers

Today, as the fabled neighborhood recovers from decades of decline, many residents point to Mahteme and his little corner market as the community's spirited heart. So they all felt victimized by the break-ins and robberies.

"Any one of us could have been in that store and been the victim of that crime,'' Myla Moss, an advisory neighborhood commissioner, said of the most recent armed robbery. "It's just unnerving."

When Mahteme, an immigrant from Ethiopia, bought the store at Fourth and T streets six years ago, he resisted the bulletproof glass and metal bars that armor so many other urban markets. His shop sports a fresh coat of mint-green paint, with cream-colored "eyebrows" painstakingly painted over its windows.

Inside, pictures of restored neighborhood homes share pride of place with a neon Budweiser sign. There's a deli on one side and racks of wine, along with the usual necessities. Customers' toddlers dawdle in the aisles, playing with the merchandise as staffers smile.

"The market is kind of the epicenter for the community,'' Moss said. "Everyone goes there."

Moss, a lobbyist for dental schools, moved to LeDroit in 1999 because "I didn't want to be a Beltway bandit, living in my car. I wanted to live in the birthplace of black intelligentsia."

Andrew Dreschler, an executive at an opinion research firm, is part of the new wave of younger professionals who have renovated neglected houses and populated LeDroit's brick sidewalks once again.

While house-hunting in 2005, Dreschler decided to buy a home in the neighborhood after walking into the corner market with no security glass or bars on its windows, sharing Mahteme's dream of a safe, urban haven.

"I moved into this neighborhood because of this store," Dreschler, 32, said.

The notion of safety -- and Mahteme's resolve not to surrender to fear -- didn't last.

Before last fall, Mahteme's market had been burglarized twice in several years. But one morning in October, three robbers barged in, one pointing a gun in Mahteme's face and striking him in the right eye with the weapon. It was only the beginning of a sad series of break-ins and robberies.

"After I got robbed [in October], I didn't want to come back, believe me," Mahteme said. "But after I opened that door, everybody [in the neighborhood] followed me. These are good people."