Former Gang Warlord Now Fights for Clean Environment Through Recycling

A. Lee Johnson remembers those damnable days and nights in New York City, battling for survival as a teen-age gang warlord, fighting in gutters littered with beer cans and bottles. Today, his fighting days are over, but he’s still mixing it up with bottles and cans.

In fact, Johnson, now 36, is collecting them and other recyclables in such great numbers he’s winning awards for it.

“I think being in the gang may have made me feel I should give something back to society,” said Johnson, director of the Orange Coast College recycling program, where 100 tons of material is collected each month. “A lot of my contemporaries are either dead or still in jail.” Johnson, a Caucasian, said that his 60-member gang was 90% black and that “that meant I had to prove myself all the time.”

But time has changed him, and now he’s fighting for a cleaner environment. In fact, the college program he directs was just named the top volunteer recycling program in the nation by the National Recycling Coalition.

“Our primary motivation is to keep the environment clean, educate the community and make money for scholarships,” said Johnson, of Costa Mesa, who once owned a private recycling center called “One of These Days.” “I named it that because I thought one of these days recycling would becomes a normal activity.”

He also coined the name “OOSOM” which stands for “Out of Sight, Out of Mind,” pointing out that “no one likes to look at trash or to think about waste. Recycling requires people to think about it.”

Johnson, who is married and the father of two sons, said: “I used to be a rabid advocate of recycling, but now I’m toning it down a bit and just trying to tell the facts of recycling.”

Instead of aggressively pushing his point in the talks he gives to community organizations, he now throws out such tidbits as: “every ton of paper you recycle saves 17 harvestable trees” and “there are 2,283 pounds of waste generated every second, and it’s all being placed in landfills, which create gasses.”

For recycling to work, he said, “there has to be behavioral modification for people who throw away recyclables, and that doesn’t happen overnight.”

For sure. Last year the 24-hour recycling center, with only two full-time and 10 part-time employees, operated $4,000 in the red. “But over the years we’ve given out $30,000 in scholarships,” he said.

And what about his fighting days? Johnson said he is at peace with himself, but a nearby recycling center worker volunteered: “He’s a pussycat, but you don’t want to make him mad.”

It was hardly an eyebrow raiser when Fred J. Drewette, 32, the chief financial officer and controller for Placentia-Linda Community Hospital, hired an assistant who was pregnant.

“She was the right person so I hired her,” said Drewette, who also hired women for three of the four manager positions under his direction. The other was already filled by a woman.

“I knew there would be temporary problems when my assistant delivered her child, but I knew we could handle it,” Drewette said. One of the other women has already been out twice on maternity leave.

“I make it clear that the job comes first,” he said. “although I understand there will be times when they’ll have to stay home with a sick child. But maybe the husband should stay home sometimes.”

Drewette, who was married a month ago, has the right attitude about hiring in the view of the Saddleback Valley Business and Professional Women’s Club. On Wednesday the club will present him its Golden Nike Award for promoting the advancement of women.

“What really convinced me . . . was his hiring of a management-level employee who was three months pregnant,” said Gerry Garcia, who nominated Drewette.

“I was stunned,” said Drewette, of Irvine. “I just never received anything like this before.”

By the way, the hospital hardly plays favorites. A male nurse heads the hospital’s obstetric unit.

Acknowledgments--A new V-6 engine has been donated to Cypress College by General Motors Corp. in recognition of student Frank Gee, 20, of Placentia, who recently won fourth place in a 50-state Vocational Skills Olympics in Phoenix. He earlier won the state contest.