• Published in: The Queens Courier

Rafael “Ralph” Moreno strides along a dingy Roosevelt Avenue sidewalk, his shiny black dress shoes more distinguished than their surroundings. A stout woman bundled in a North Face jacket thrusts a red flyer at him. “Immigration attorney!” she shouts in Spanish, loud enough to compete with the rumble of the No. 7 train above.

There was a different kind of solicitation on Roosevelt Avenue in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when prostitution and the cocaine trade were booming, according to news accounts from that time. Tired of headlines about Colombian criminals, Moreno enlisted in the fight against crime.

“To hell with this,” the Colombian immigrant remembers thinking to himself. “I’m going to clean up our name.”

He would wear sneakers as he strolled Roosevelt Avenue, to be “any guy,” he said. “Honestly, I looked like I wanted to go to bed with a prostitute.”

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