He Went Into Barrio to Help Others Get Out

The Hollenbeck Youth Center is an oasis in the desert of gang violence, poverty and depression of the spirit that the Boyle Heights section of East L.A. can be. Every so often, though, even an oasis will let you down.

The other day, a guy dropped in to shoot some hoops at the Youth Center, which is a stone’s throw from the Hollenbeck police station. He came out an hour later and his car was gone. He knew this was not good, because the Youth Center has no valet parking.

It does, however, have a basketball court, boxing ring and weight room. Here, for a few hours a day, street kids become gym kids. Gangs become teams. One local kid even became an Olympic gold medal winner. That was Paul Gonzales, the 106-pound boxer.

Upstairs is an office, a worn wooden desk and a 44-year-old cop named Al Stankie. Al is a former boxer, the only man I know who fought his way into the barrio . He is also the only man I know who once hijacked a cab in self defense.

About 24 years ago Al Stankiewicz was a basketball player at a small college in Pennsylvania. One summer he and a couple buddies came to L.A. to see for themselves if the Pacific Ocean and the California Girls were for real.

He saw the ocean and the girls. He also saw a poster urging him to “Join L.A.’s Finest.” He did. He worked undercover vice for the LAPD in South Central L.A. His work involved him in several shoot-outs and the Watts Riots. He decided his self-defense skills needed brushing up, so he trained at a boxing gym. When a fighter scratched from a local card, Al filled in.

He liked it and took a couple more fights. The LAPD had rules against this kind of moonlighting. He shortened his last name to escape detection, but Al finally had to make a career decision. His wife advised him to be a cop. Teddy Roosevelt advised him to be a boxer.

“Far better to dare mighty things,” Stankie says, quoting from memory the Roosevelt quote that inspired him to quit the LAPD, “to enjoy many triumphs, even though checkered with failures, than to take rank with those poor souls who neither enjoy much nor suffer much . . . “

For nearly five years Lanky Al Stankie fought (21-7-3 record), taught school (traffic safety), sold insurance (life) and bounced at a night club, all at once. The Grand Slam of tough jobs. He saved enough money to move his family into a nice home in Cerritos, quit boxing and rejoin the LAPD.

“The commander at Hollenbeck then was Rudy De Leon,” says Still Lanky Al Stankie. “He wanted to start a boxing program for the local kids, give them an alternative to gang warfare. He told me, ‘You spent the first part of your career putting bad guys in jail. Why don’t you spend the next part keeping guys out?’ ”

Al set up a gym in the basement of the police station. Thus it was that he had fought his way into the barrio. In police work, he had started at the bottom and worked his way to the basement. A couple years later, in ‘77, the Hollenbeck cops and neighborhood businessmen combined forces and resources to build the Youth Center.

One of the first drop-ins was a youngster named Paul Gonzales. By ‘83, the kid was one of the world’s best at his weight, and competed in the Pan Am Games in Caracas, where he was robbed of the gold medal in a questionable decision. Only Al had a rougher trip.

Stankie paid his own way to Caracas. He arrived at the airport, hopped a cab and suddenly felt uneasy. His street intuition told him the cab driver and an accomplice were about to mug him. So Stankie cold-cocked the cabbie and hijacked the hack. He sped into town, ditched the cab and coached Gonzales to a silver medal.

On his way out of town, stopping for a quick refresher, Stankie was jumped by several bar patrons who disagreed with his views of the Gonzales decision. He spent a couple hours in jail, until justice prevailed.

For the three years preceding the ’84 Olympics, Gonzales lived with the Stankie family in Cerritos, and trained with Al at the Center. You know the rest. Paul won the gold medal, the first Chicano ever to do so in an individual sport.

Al seems to have a touch with kids. His two sons are college baseball players (“Andy runs the 40 in 4.1,” Al brags. This would make Andy the world’s fastest human by about two-tenths of a second.). His daughter is a high school track standout.

And at the Center, the kids come off the streets by the dozens every day. They all have fun, and some of them turn into pretty good boxers, which beats most of the alternatives in this neighborhood.

“This kid could be a champion,” says Stankie, producing a handbill for an Olympic Auditorium main event between Youth Center alum Adrian Arreola and former banty world champ Lupe Pintor. “Adrian could win this one; he’s ready. But then, all managers talk like that.”

Two nights later, Arreola stopped Pintor in seven rounds.