CRUSADER IN PRIME TIME : ‘TOMA’: THE STORY OF A DRIVEN MAN

people whose manner is as intense as David Toma, ex-cop and anti-drug crusader.

Yet Toma has been the model for two prime-time TV series (“Toma” and “Baretta”). And he now stars as himself in “Toma: The Drug Knot,” originally planned as a “CBS Schoolbreak Special” but now set to air in prime time Sept. 10 on the network.

He plays an ex-cop named Dave Toma who goes from school to school assaulting teen-agers with his message: with love and communication they can find alternatives to self-destruction.

Toma is an overwhelming individual whose style is to break through listeners’ shell of indifference or scorn and make them admit their problems to themselves and to people who can help them.

“I go to schools and talk to the kids and they tell me, crying because for the first time they’ve opened up, ‘I came here thinking I’d throw paper airplanes at you and here I’m crying in your arms.”’

TV has long resisted giving a straight depiction of this zealot convinced he must save the world, kid by kid. The emotions he arouses are too messy to be contained in most dramatic formats.

“I’ve always thought my message has to go on TV,” Toma says. “While I was a cop in New York, I did what I’m doing now for no pay for 17 years. In 1971, I decided I needed a little fame. I did ‘The Mike Douglas Show.’ When I told the guys at work that someday they’d do a TV show based on my life, the department sent me to a psychiatrist. Then Hollywood called and in 1973 ‘Toma’ went on the air.”

“Toma,”’ starring Tony Musante, became “Baretta,” starring Robert Blake. “‘Toma’ was close,” Toma says. “‘Baretta’ I don’t want no part of. I’m ashamed of it. I had trouble with Blake. I gotta tell you, I’m not too well liked by the top people in Hollywood.”

Toma scorns most of what’s on TV. “I keep telling them, ‘Don’t make up no stories. Listen to what the kids are saying.’ I got about 40 million stories I want to put on TV, but I want to do it right.”

“Toma: The Drug Knot” does it right, in Toma’s view, because it’s only partly scripted and it includes large doses of straight Toma. Long uncut scenes depict him haranguing students at Pacific Palisades High School. The fictional part of the program shows Toma counseling actors playing kids with drug problems. Virtually all of Toma’s dialogue is impromptu. “They can’t tell me after 30 years, ‘Here’s what you should say.”’

Toma knows what he should say. He can’t help saying it over and over and over, grabbing his listener’s shoulder or knee and locking his eyes in for the duration of his message, which is, briefly:

“I’m from the streets. I know. I know about trouble. I’ve been shot at and attacked with knives 30 times. I lost my 5-year-old son, who died in my arms. I was an addict myself (to a prescribed pain reliever). I’ve lived in hospitals and jails. My family’s been threatened by the mob. I’ve been through a living hell all my life. I’ve learned through pain.

“Everybody’s got problems. You’re not alone. I’m gonna show you a way out. It doesn’t have to be drugs. It all comes down to loving and touching. We’re a society of, ‘Don’t handle me!’ All I do is touch ‘em and tell ‘em, ‘There’s another way, man.’

“When I go to a school, it isn’t to talk about drugs. I talk about life, love, communication. Drugs are only a symptom. When something is wrong, kids run to drugs. In this society, everyone wants everything now. I tell kids I didn’t get here overnight.”

When Toma gets wound up on this subject, which is 95% of his waking hours, he is a formidable presence. His mouth and his face and his hands are all working to break down his audience, whether it’s one person or a thousand. If a man like this weren’t working for good, there’s no telling what harm he could do.

Does his “mission,” as he calls it, ever depress him? After all, despite his efforts, as he says, 140 teen-agers kill themselves every week in America. He answers, “You talk to kids. They give, you get. You grow with it. I don’t need fame from this show. I’m on top, every day.

“I know my power. I know it comes from God. God gave me this gift and I have to use it. I go into a school--and I got thousands of schools on the waiting list--and the kids say, ‘Who’s this jerk?’ Then I show ‘em that I love ‘em. I knock ‘em dead.

“Emotionally, it’s tough, seeing thousands of kids every day, kids screaming to get near me, so many of them saying, suicide, suicide, suicide, and crying, ‘Please help me,’ when they laughed at everybody who tried to help ‘em before.

“I’ve been close to nervous breakdowns many times. I was in Alaska a few weeks ago in a hotel. I spend 200 nights a year in hotels. I was so depressed I felt the walls caving in. The usual thing for most people is to have a few drinks or take a couple pills. I got on the phone to my wife. Bang! The depression was gone.”

At home in New Jersey, Toma has four grown children “and a son who would have been 29.” The boy died 24 years ago in one of those scenes too intense for TV. Toma got home, and one of his jobs as a policeman that day had been to save an infant who was choking to death. Then his own son began choking on a piece of food, and Toma couldn’t save him.

Toma constantly lacerates himself with this memory. Maybe he feels that by trying to save everybody else’s children he will make up for not saving one of his own. In any case, he is a driven man.

Driven back now to TV, he says, “The average stuff on TV, you watch to forget your problems. You go to bed, you still got the same problems. I told the people at the networks--and CBS was the only one that listened--’Millions sit and take what you give ‘em, but they don’t need it. Give ‘em something they need, give ‘em a real way out, they’ll let you know.”’