Behind the elementary school, air pours out of the auto body shop's silver vent with a shrill whistle. Some would call it a warning.

The whining sound -- like that of a clogged vacuum cleaner -- carries a few hundred feet over a lush creek, through a chain-link fence and across the empty playground of National City's Kimball Elementary School.

The school is a plain building, trimmed with teal, stuccoed in gray and surrounded by black asphalt. It is a place where two in every three students are still learning English, where 85 percent of children qualify for free or reduced lunches.

It is an island in a sea of industry, surrounded by auto body shops with names like Steve's West Coast Automotive, where ratchets whir and metal grinds.

And, says Robert "Dukie" Valderrama, it is the scene of a crime.

For two decades, Valderrama, a Port Commissioner and National City native, has told this story to anyone who will listen. And yet for all the recitals, his deep brown eyes still well with emotion when he talks about his son, Randy.

Randy's story: It is the late 1970s. He is healthy. Vivacious. Loves learning. The school system dubs him gifted and sends him across town to Kimball. He spends about a year there. And then he starts getting sick.

He is not yet a teen, and he is losing energy. Tests reveal toxins in his blood. The family tests their home and don't identify any source. Valderrama says a process of elimination leads them to Kimball School.

Randy's health, Valderrama says, has never been the same. Even now, at age 29, he'll get sick if he smells the wrong odor. This is hard to understand, Valderrama knows that. But Valderrama says his son's immune system was compromised. As a result, he says, he will never lead a healthy life.

"It started here," Valderrama says. "No question in my mind."

Valderrama is standing in front of the school as he says this. He studied here, too, more than 40 years ago. Back then, this neighborhood -- called Old Town -- looked nothing like it does now.

He waves his right hand at the changed landscape. Old Town used to be homes, he says. All homes.

Now, 17 auto body and paint shops are interspersed among the modest residences. The National City-based Environmental Health Coalition estimates that at least three other auto paint shops operate without permits.

Local residents and environmental advocates say the pairing is toxic. Anecdotally, they cite an increase in asthma and other health complications and blame it on those emissions whistling out from within the neighborhood's industrial structures. No formal studies have been conducted to gauge the true health impacts in the neighborhood to confirm their suspicions. But the issue is gaining steam in this South Bay city, as the National City City Council earlier this month took the first step toward removing the plants from the neighborhood.

Old Town has become an example of how not to design a neighborhood. Tony LoPresti, an Environmental Health Coalition policy advocate, blames it on decisions made half a century ago, which dumped polluting businesses in a poor, disenfranchised Latino neighborhood that was the political path of least resistance. This is not unusual in San Diego County, where people of color are more likely than whites to live near Superfund sites and polluting businesses.