Taking a man's castle

Jose Meza labored for 25 years building his automotive paint business from a one-man operation run out of his Wilmington home to a family company with nine shops across the Los Angeles area.

With that kind of hard-earned entrepreneurial success, Meza could have bought a home almost anywhere. Instead, he chose to stay in the community he loves, where he and his children went to high school - largely low-income Wilmington.

"I said, `I want to build a dream home for my family close to my business,"' Meza said. "I built it thinking this is going to be my house forever, until I die, thinking of my grandkids."

Meza bought empty land in a residential area bordering Wilmington's downtown a decade ago and slowly began to construct his castle - a five-bedroom home with six bathrooms, a pool, a guest house and a five-bay garage for his classic cars.

His dream didn't last long.

Less than six years after it was completed, the home is now vacant, encircled by a padlocked metal fence and fortified with plywood behind its windows. Meza, forced out by a court order, is battling an eminent domain lawsuit filed by the Los Angeles Unified School District...

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