By Martin Ricard

SAN LEANDRO — For more than eight years, residents of the Estudillo Estates neighborhood labored on a project to get a monument installed in the community proclaiming their pride.

Then, last year, all their hard work paid off when they cobbled together enough money to pay for a sign themselves — a small coffee bean- and peach-colored stucco and Styrofoam slab imprinted with the name of the neighborhood in Indian clay letters.

Then, just like that, all that hard work was destroyed. In March, a tour bus slammed into the sign, smashing it to pieces.

"Unbelievable," Deborah Cox, president of the Estudillo Estates homeowners association, thought at the time.

"It was a shock," said Estudillo Estates resident Denice Ballas, describing the neighborhood's reaction.

But now, the residents' hope has been restored. With the help of the city and a few connections, the sign has been replaced, ending a neighborhood saga that has been full of joy and pain, but mostly irony.

Cox said the homeowners association board had always kept some money aside in the hope that one day a monument would be installed.

But when San Leandro embarked on a citywide project several years ago to install monuments at the entrances of neighborhoods, it had no money or land for an Estudillo Estates sign.

That's when the neighborhood association's members decided to take action, setting out to discover how they could

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complete the project themselves.

"We were always having sort of a discussion," said Ballas, secretary of the association. "So we were like, 'We really need to do this.'"

The association also was looking for a reasonable price, because the concrete monuments installed by the city in other neighborhoods were estimated to cost $15,000 or more.

Luckily, a resident worked for a sign-making company that agreed to help out the neighborhood, and the city had just completed the median improvements along MacArthur Boulevard. So the association decided to place its new monument there, and made an agreement with the city to pay for it up front as long as the city maintained it over time.

"It was a source of pride," Cox said. "We're all proud of our neighborhood."

So it's no wonder residents were distraught when the tour bus crashed into the sign March 3. According to a police report, the bus driver was heading south on MacArthur Boulevard from Bridge Road and apparently swerved to avoid a bicyclist crossing the street.

To many of the residents' surprise, the city took swift action to get the sign replaced. In a matter of two months, the city was able to contact the bus driver's insurance company and recoup the money to pay for a new sign. The new monument was installed last week.

"The city was very proactive with the group," said Johanne Dictor, the city's risk manager at the time who also happens to be an Estudillo Estates resident.

The excitement seems to have returned to the neighborhood now that residents have their beloved monument back. It was no laughing matter at the time. But now that the situation has passed, Cox said, residents can't help but embrace the irony.

"I think it was just weird bad luck," she said, adding that the chances of having the sign destroyed again are pretty rare.

"But if it happens again, I just hope they have insurance," Ballas joked.

Martin Ricard can be reached at 510-293-2480 or mricard@bayareanewsgroup.com.