New <i> Machismo</i> in Logan Heights : Youth for Progress Finds a Substitute for Gangs

Fernando Bernardino is a slave to rockabilly.

He wears tight-fitting jeans, a big Western belt, cowboy boots and a bright red shirt that might go well in a bowling alley. He listens to Los Lobos and the Blasters, his favorite bands, and walks with a cocky swagger.

He figures he’s earned it.

To Bernardino, identity and pride are major concepts. If you grow up in Logan Heights like he has, you learn pretty quickly the need for asserting yourself.

And your machismo .

You’re bused to La Jolla for school, he says. You’re a constant target of rival Latino gangs in a neighborhood so tough you can almost feel the fear. You’re put down in an affluent society, most of which, he says, only sees Logan Heights as “they peer down their noses from the windows of Mercedeses, passing over the bridge.” That’s the Coronado Bridge, looming over the neighborhood like a dragon.

Massaging his exaggerated crew cut, Bernardino says he found himself--his identity--in Logan Heights. To be exact, in a barn-like building on Logan Avenue that he calls “the place . . . or you might say, my home.”

Bernardino, 18, is what the counselors and leaders of Youth for Progress call a success story. He, like many kids who pass through the door, was a candidate for the wild side of life. He has never been in trouble with the law, but plenty of his friends--now pool-shooting, Ping Pong-playing amigos --have. He was never a gang member, but plenty of his friends once were--friends he has won over inside the gray-walled building that seems to radiate an entirely different color.

The main way Bernardino benefited from the program was finding himself at a critical time. At a turning point--early adolescence--he could have joined a gang. He could have gotten in trouble with the law. He could have kept drifting.

Boxing turned him around.

He cultivated that sense of identity and pride in boxing, one of several recreational programs offered by Youth for Progress in its Logan Avenue location and three others in San Diego County. Youth for Progress has been around, under one name or another, in this or that location, since 1967.

The Logan Avenue location, the first and strongest, was started by Simon Judge, who felt that “the kids” needed a place to play. Judge’s interest remains that of the program’s--the underprivileged and disadvantaged of the county.

Connie Dawson Hernandez, 33, was one of those kids. Confidence is the first word she mentions in flashing back to the Logan Youth Center, the original name and one of three since ’67.

She gained the confidence to get a job, to assert herself in a community she didn’t always understand. She gained the confidence to win friends and influence people, to be herself.

She gained confidence in marriage--she met her husband of 14 years at the center.

Most of all she learned basic skills from a man--Simon Judge--whom she calls “simply tremendous. . . . Ninety-nine percent of the people who went through there owe him dearly .”

She learned typing, filing, taking minutes, organization, arts, crafts. . . . It was confidence of a professional kind that led to her current job with Pacific Bell Security. Many of her colleagues with the phone company were proteges of Judge’s.

She learned not to be ashamed of “the neighborhood” and knows what Bernardino, a boy of a different generation, means in talking of the “power of confidence.” Whether he goes to college or plots an immediate career path, he now has the confidence, he said, to make a decision. In his case, boxing was the motivator.

“It may seem like a brutal sport,” he said, “but it taught me discipline and self-sacrifice, qualities I never had before. And, it taught me love. For this place, man. For this place.”

Lately, Bernardino and his friends from the neighborhood have been trying to pay back a bit of what he calls “the debt.” Fifteen of them worked long into the night, several nights straight, to get the building painted for a recent commemorative occasion--one that brought Mayor Roger Hedgecock and City Councilman Uvaldo Martinez out recently to pay homage to the center.

“I’d keep painting,” Bernardino said, “just to show these guys how I feel.”

It may seem like a noble cause--helping the Bernardinos of the world grow into model citizens--but you won’t be able to tell it by the funding now. The halcyon days of Judge’s era (1967 to 1973, when he retired) are long gone.

Pamela Mills-Peterson, the energetic executive director of Youth for Progress, said it’s no longer “trendy” to fund such programs, or to look with favor on the social workers who run them.

“In the ‘60s, we were respected,” she said. “Now we’re looked on as fools. Private enterprise and Yuppiedom seem to think we’re total incompetents. ‘Can’t you get a job in the real world?’ they seem to say, as if this isn’t the real world.”

The real world of Mills-Peterson and Tony Ramirez, the director of Logan Youth and Family Services, is the barn-like building in Logan Heights. And the faces and lives of such people as Bernardino. It’s a world of troubled lives and drug addiction, warring gangs and beaten wives, kids who have no name, no place to go, no future in hand.

Ramirez said many of the kids now seen by Youth for Progress are “first-time offenders, narcotic or drug users, habitual truants, kids wanted for battery, breaking or entering or just gang-related stuff.” Youth for Progress receives referrals from the San Diego Police Department and juvenile authorities in what is commonly called a “juvenile diversion” program.

But Youth for Progress is more than that, its fans say. It’s an open door for kids just wanting a place to be--and a little respect.

“Most of the time,” Mills-Peterson said, “these kids get no respect. They’re mistreated every possible way. Many times, a gang is their only family. They get in a gang and all of a sudden, people notice them. Oftentimes, it’s the only acknowledgement they get.”

Mills-Peterson claims a 95% success rate with such youngsters, meaning 95% have no further contact with the juvenile justice system. Often, Youth for Progress is the last resort--the last exit after therapy and “the system” have failed.

Despite its victories, and its history, it is faring no better than other programs in winning notice from the people who dole out money. The San Diego County Board of Supervisors is expected to slash funding for Youth for Progress by 38% in mid-November (to take effect Dec. 1). Advisory boards have recommended the cuts, which, “unless a miracle occurs,” Mills-Peterson said, will eliminate the South Bay program that serves many of the youths “most desperately in need.” The center in Logan Heights (now funded by the city) and two in Spring Valley will remain. One of those, however, is an arm of United Way, and not a juvenile diversion wing. Called La Presa, it serves Mexican-Americans with legal referrals, translations and other matters.

In all, Youth for Progress will suffer a cut from $349,565 to $218,189 a year, Mills-Peterson said. In addition to South Bay Youth and Family Services, she expects a 33% cut at Spring Valley (roughly $48,000 a year). This, in her view, is hardly surprising. Youth for Progress endured a 58% cut in 1982, which she sarcastically terms the “first great wave of Reaganomics.”

She blames Reaganomics--and “the current mood”--for the loss in South Bay. “That’s 600 kids out on the streets,” she said, “with absolutely nothing to do.”

It’s a troubling thought, considering what Youth for Progress did in 1980, when it orchestrated a peace treaty between murderous gangs in South Bay. They had bludgeoned and killed one another for 35 years. And since, she said, the barrios have been peaceful.

City Councilman William Jones, whose district includes several barrios, believes the center will conquer its funding woes. He’s urging more private funds, as well as joint city-county concerns.

“I know the individuals there will rise to the occasion,” he said. “They always have.”

Tony Ramirez, 32, once was a gang member himself. He ran with two gangs involved in drug trafficking and organized crime.

Now he’s one of the role models Jones praises.

His old friends slipped away once he walked in the door of what was then known as Teen Post 2 (its second name). He finally figured out they were “friends” best left behind. He’s happier now, converting kids to the trouble-free life, using his own tale as testimony.

Ramirez is one of three masters-level counselors at Logan Youth and Family Services. He helps youths from the ages of 8 to 21 (mostly 12 to 18, he says, and 75% male) to deal with the problems of barrio life. Most are Latino, with small percentages of black, Asian and Anglo.

Logan Youth and Family Services, like its sister endeavors, offers job placement and development services, job readiness training and hours of street-tinged counseling. It also offers recreation and fun--boxing, foosball, Ping-Pong, pool, break dancing. These, Mills-Peterson said, are funded by private donors. Government, she said, apparently feels that recreation isn’t necessary.

But it is in terms of environment, she said. She believes “environment” is one of the main reasons hardened youngsters end up straight--and out of jail. It’s important, she said, since Youth for Progress gets “truants” no one else wants or everyone else has failed with.

Ramirez’s favorite was a young Latino boy who might best be described as a kleptomaniac. His mother was the leader of a burglary ring; her lover the person who tortured and abused the children who were sent out to steal. Once, when police showed up at the woman’s house to find a roomful of stolen goods, she pointed a finger at her son. He was the one locked up and questioned.

When delivered to the door on Logan Avenue, he was, Ramirez said, as bitter as anyone can be. Now he has a job, a crime-free record, no contact with his mother and is well on his way to finishing school.

Victor Aguirre, 20, another kid from “the neighborhood,” felt he was headed on a similar path. He likes the center on Logan Avenue “ ‘cause it’s close to my pad, man. I won’t go away, to get in trouble.” He talks of the center, and its power against temptation, like a man who drinks too much trying to avoid booze.

He used to be in a gang. Now he shoots pool among friends. He feels “safe.” Logan Youth and Family Services helped him get a job at North Island Naval Air Station.

“I used to ride around Point Loma, La Jolla, and think, ‘Wow, I’d like to be rich.’ But even if I was, I’d still be Victor,” he said. “I’ve learned to be a little more content . . . with who I am, who I’ll always be.”