TAMPA - Many Tampa residents touched by the tragedy have a changed attitude about their hometown.

Josefina Diaz can still see those clothes covered in blood - starched shirts, pressed pants, perhaps a blouse, a dress. Swaddled in plastic, fresh from the cleaners. They were in Ricky Childers and Randy Bell's car when Diaz walked to the end of Hugh Street and peered inside.

Something about that scene at the end of her block - the wet, crumpled evidence of a routine errand, the realization that anything can happen in the midst of the mundane, even to those trained in tragedy - didn't just make Diaz shudder.

It made her see her hometown in a different, darker light.

``If people don't think a lot about what happened, then they really don't care about Tampa. Don't care at all,'' says Diaz, 42, whose maintenance job at a bank keeps six children in jeans and backpacks and a house on Hugh Street. ``When people give their lives this way, people in this city need to know they're doing it for us. And every time they see a shooting, see a cop, they need to know cops are good people.''

On the anniversary of Hank Earl Carr's rampage that left two Tampa police officers, a state trooper and a 4-year-old boy dead, Diaz clearly speaks for a lot of local folks. Like Teresa Wilkins, a job- staffing executive, who would endorse some form of gun control now. And Joanne Natalizio, a bank employee, who waited patiently for police to respond to a burglary she reported recently.

Both watched the proceedings with tears and regret and a sudden sense of responsibility. Natalizio, in fact, stood outside the Tampa Convention Center during the funeral for officers Bell and Childers on May 23, 1998, surprised that ``it changed my view of police officers completely. Honestly, I had not thought about how they put their lives on the line every single day.''

Thousands, apparently, had similar thoughts. The day of the funeral, people lined Tampa streets from center to cemetery. Down Florida Avenue. Along Adamo Drive. Beside 39th Street. Until, arriving at Myrtle Hill Cemetery on East Lake Avenue, the congregation of visitors and residents - many with handmade signs pledging pride and respect - stood solemn in the brutal sun.

Tampa police spokesman Steve Cole says even veteran officers were amazed at the public support, noting that 8,000 people attended the actual funeral.

``I don't think anyone in Tampa, anyone who was around the day it happened, will ever forget it,'' says Wilkins. ``How can you not respect these men and women? And why, when they try to protect us, why do people think they're the bad guys?''

Dan R. Dempsey believes Carr's rampage was a seminal event for the city - he was among the ministers to deliver a eulogy for the slain officers. He said then: ``We cannot have a moment ... this should be life changing.'' He says now: ``This tragedy pulled Tampa together more than anything I have ever witnessed. The Bay area suddenly became a community, not just a bunch of individuals.''

Yet something sad underscores even the most sympathetic comments. A subtle reality about life going on, about events moving ahead, about people just plain forgetting. They come from folks such as Tim Glisson and Rodney Perdomo, construction supervisors who recently sat eating lunch in the Shoney's Restaurant on East Busch Boulevard.

On May 19 last year, Shoney's employees roped off a table in the corner, on the patio. Set out the iced tea. Lit a candle. Because that's where Childers and Bell always ate.

``I don't think it changed our city,'' Glisson says. ``There are just too many other things going on. We showed our respect, now it's back to status quo.''

Perdomo agrees. And he worries about a world where respect for the law and the people who enforce it has eroded to the point that ``criminals will shoot a cop in a heartbeat. That's why I think cops and schoolteachers should get combat pay.''

Over on Hugh Street, where the trees sing with cicadas on a recent, sleepy Sunday afternoon, residents' sentiments are mixed. Rosetta Mitchell says it scared her a little. Arthur Turner says it proved Tampa is ``just another big city.'' John Cephas, who was washing his car when the shooting occurred, says it merely reinforced what he already felt - that there needs to be a national ban on handguns.

Farther down the block, Matricia Stubbs shrugs and says simply, ``It was the talk of town, but not really the neighborhood. One day can't change people's minds.''

Perhaps. But on that one day - and for a few weeks afterward - Bay area residents did seem to rally around respect. By late November, the Gold Shield Foundation had accumulated some $240,000 in donations; the Central Florida Police Benevolent Association received about $68,000.

Other fundraisers accounted for thousands of dollars more.

Students at a Dade City elementary planted trees to honor the fallen in January. And late last month, the state House of Representatives unanimously agreed to name a part of State Road 54 after Trooper James Crooks, another Carr victim.

Meanwhile, J.J. Watts, the artist who created the memorial outside Tampa's police headquarters, is at work on a sculpture honoring Crooks. It will be erected outside the Florida Highway Patrol office near Busch Gardens.