Next stop: a world they’ve never seen

The brakes hissed as Tanya Walters pumped the pedal in the fog of a dark December morning. The school bus driver in big dangly copper-colored earrings slipped on her driving gloves, preparing to pull out of the bus yard. Another driver stopped her to hand over a check for $20.

“I’ll give you a receipt,” Walters told her. “Thank you!”

In 11 days, on Christmas, she would leave on an eight-day cross-country trip with 20 teenagers. Walters, a Los Angeles Unified School District driver, still needed $30,000. Her fundraising would allow students who had never been outside Los Angeles to visit Hurricane Katrina victims and tour colleges in Arizona, Texas and Louisiana. Other school bus drivers had chipped in much of the $7,000 she had raised so far.

“Whatever it takes,” Walters said. “I know in the long run it will pay off.”

In a community where it is dangerous for children to walk outside, Walters, 37, collects students on dark street corners and delivers them safely to school. But in her nearly 20 years on the job, Walters has not been able to shake the despair she has seen in students who step into her bus. How do you comfort the child whose best friend was killed? How do you calm the girl who is so angry that all she can do is curse you? How do you make a difference when you are not a counselor, not a teacher, only a bus driver?

All of her life, Walters has loved to travel. During school breaks, she saved her wages for trips to places like Louisiana, Tijuana and Colorado. Three years ago, Walters, a divorced mother of a 13-year-old, had an idea. What if the children she worried about had the chance to see beyond their neighborhoods? What if someone gave them a chance to dream bigger?

“That’s when I stepped into my purpose in life,” she said. “This is why I am here. This is why I drive a school bus.”

Walters founded the GodParents Youth Organization, a nonprofit traveling mentoring program for 8- to 18-year-olds that takes children to colleges, museums and historical sites. With no public relations background and no website, Walters relies on word of mouth to raise funds. In August, she took nine kids across the country in her van for a week. This month, she planned to take a bigger group -- if she could pay for it.

In the bus yard, just past 6 a.m., Walters tuned the radio to a jazz station. She pulled the 5-ton bus away from her red Mazda Miata convertible. She was on her way to pick up students who attend Audubon Middle School and Crenshaw High School, gathering donations from colleagues along the way. The giant headlights barely brightened the road swallowed by a thick haze.

Organizing the trip is “like going through this fog,” she said. “Just because there’s an obstacle I can’t see, I can’t stop. I got to keep on going, and in a minute it will lift.”

A tight ship

“Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention in the back. My name is Mrs. Walters.

“I run a tight ship,” she said. “No getting up. No acting up. Period. I will take you back to the school if you guys act up.”

Walters started driving a school bus at 19 after graduating from Los Angeles High School. Carrying 78 students from Birmingham High School in Van Nuys, she barely knew how to steer the bus, much less how to avoid getting beaten up by kids her age shouting and tagging the seats behind her.

“I was a hot mess that year,” she recalled.

A veteran now, Walters mostly drives well-behaved magnet students. She can control a busload of boisterous middle school students while parallel parking. She has had her share of “2 Live Crews,” as she calls them. One route last year, from Manual Arts High School to Friedman Occupational Center downtown, turned into her toughest yet. The students taunted her and refused to listen. A five-time college dropout who earned mostly Cs and Ds in high school, Walters had been one of them.

“Their goal was to run the bus driver off, and I said, ‘I’m not going anywhere.’ ”

Ebony Forrest, 18, one of the 2 Live Crew riders, had hated getting on Walters’ bus. “She was so strict,” said Forrest.

One day, after scolding Forrest and her friends, Walters asked if they had ever wanted to travel. What if they had the chance to visit Atlanta -- and its Morehouse College, Clark Atlanta University and Spelman College -- or the Grand Canyon or Oklahoma City’s bombing memorial site? The possibility intrigued Forrest, of South Los Angeles, who had never gone beyond Pomona or Las Vegas.

Forrest had something in common with Walters. Both lost their mothers when they were young. Walters was 5 when her mother died from hepatitis. Forrest was 4 when her mother died, and her father walked out.

“Everybody in my life, in my family, let me down,” said Forrest. “I didn’t really have a role model. I considered myself my own role model.”

When Walters drove into her life, it changed. Over the summer, Forrest traveled with Walters and eight students. The trip motivated Forrest to apply to college. “We’ve grown a real relationship,” Forrest said. “You don’t run into people like that often.”

Now, Forrest plans to travel with Walters again, this time to distribute backpacks stuffed with clothes and toiletries to children whose homes were devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Forrest would do her part to raise money, selling teddy bears and asking for donations. She understood now how important it was to make it happen, to raise the money, not only for her but also for the other students who had this opportunity.

An assignment

-- “I just want to get out of LA for a while. There is too much stuff going on out here. People are dying for what color they wear. I don’t think that’s an environment for someone planning to go to college.”

-- “I have been told I am wise beyond my years and I would like to do more. Only problem is I can’t afford much, so traveling is out of the question but I hope through your organization I will be able to.”

Everyone had to write an essay. That was Walters’ rule. Since she could take only 20, those who really wanted to travel would work for it.

One morning in November, 17-year-old Juanita Wells stepped onto the bus with a sassy attitude. Between boyfriend problems, bad grades and avoiding fistfights with girls at school, Wells needed a change. She wished she could move from her South Los Angeles neighborhood, where she has seen people beaten and shot by gang members and chased by police. She scoffed at the bus driver demanding she say “good morning” before taking a seat.

Walters had brought a notebook of pictures and testimonials from students who had gone on other trips. Wells flipped through it. She told Walters she wanted to go. Fine, Walters replied, but she had to write an essay. Days later, Wells got back on the bus -- without the essay. Wells said she didn’t have time to write it, could she go anyway?

“All I am is the vehicle,” Walters recalled telling her. “Nothing else. You have to want it more than I do.”

The next day Wells boarded the bus, handing Walters two crinkled notebook pages. It was an essay she wrote by hand during a field trip. It read: “In the 9th and 10th grades, I had given up on my future. But I had a wake up call and my future looked bright again. Now, I am from the ghetto black community, that’s not good for anyone. I’m trying to make it out and better myself. I have been keen to traveling the world but I never had the opportunity to do so.

“If you pick me I know I will not be wasting my time or yours.”

Walters put her name on the approved list of travelers.

Down to the wire

It was two months into the plan. Walters and her students would meet on Christmas night, departing from 120th Street and Crenshaw Boulevard in a chartered bus with television monitors. Walters had hired another driver to operate the bus. They would stop at Arizona State University and Southern Methodist University in Dallas, arriving in New Orleans two days later. Along the way, they would distribute the backpacks.

But they were short on travel money. They sold teddy bears, raised money in a Magic Mountain fundraiser and asked for donations from churches and neighbors. They still needed at least $10,500 to pay for the bus.

The final push would be in a service at the 13,000-member Faithful Central Bible Church, held at the Forum in Inglewood where Walters teaches Sunday school. Wells and the other students arrived in T-shirts printed with “GodParents Youth Organization.” The church bulletin ran an ad about the trip. The arena filled with worshipers. A choir sang Christmas songs. A bishop talked of getting through hardship with faith in God.

When the service ended, a friend walked up to Walters and tucked several bills into her hand. “You know who it’s from?” Walters asked. “We got to make we sure thank them.”

The donations kept coming. Three days before she was set to leave, Walters had raised $8,000. But it still wasn’t enough. So she cut costs. Instead of handing out 400 backpacks to needy kids, they would distribute 150. She would find hotels that offered complimentary breakfasts.

They still needed $19,000, but Walters was determined to pull it off. If she could not come up with the difference by Christmas, she said she would charge it to her credit card.

“I know in the long run it will pay off,” Walters said. “It’s an investment. It’s a pure investment.”

erika.hayasaki@latimes.com