CRIME AND THE ELDERLY OF L.A. : Violence in the Autumn of Life : JACKIE CHAMBERS : ‘I Went to the Hospital and I Didn’t Recognize My Own Sister’

Jackie Chambers always watched out for others.

The problem was that the 90-year-old woman did not look out well enough for herself.

Chambers lived in a small second-floor apartment in a tough area of Long Beach. If suspicious-looking strangers came around, she would alert her neighbors.

But Chambers, who lived alone, had a dangerous habit: She would sit up at night behind a locked screen door, her apartment door wide open.

“I told her she shouldn’t do that,” said neighbor Evelyn Welch, “but she kept on doing it.”

On the evening of July 25, 1992, Chambers once again left her door opened. Earlier in the evening, she had spoken by phone to her twin sister, Marie Jackson. She told Jackson that dinner was in the oven and that she was going to eat in the living room while watching a televised speech by then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton.

“She never got to the kitchen,” Jackson said. “She never got to have her dinner.”

The thieves cut through the screen door, rushed in, beat the elderly woman, dragged her into the bathroom, closed the door and ransacked the apartment. They stole the money she had saved for her own funeral.

When neighbors saw the slashed screen, police were called and Chambers was taken to the hospital.

“Lord,” Jackson said, “I went to the hospital and I didn’t recognize my own sister, she was so beat up. I said, ‘Oh, no, no, that ain’t my sister. That ain’t my sister.’ ”

Despite her injuries, Chambers was expected to recover. “The prognosis was that she was probably going to get better,” Long Beach Police Detective Ron Pavek said. “But age worked against her.”

Jackie Chambers fell into a coma five days after she was beaten and died eight months later.

There are no suspects. “She was an easy prey to attack,” said Long Beach Police Detective Tim Cable. “There was no way she could protect herself.”