Bad Boy Makes Good : Cop’s Promise Turns Trouble Into Celebration

Police Officer Manny Rodriguez was warned by Palm Springs High School authorities that Elika Staggs was trouble.

“They said, ‘He’s bad; he’ll hurt you if he can and he’s been booked for attempted murder,’ ” recalled Detective Rodriguez, 34, who was then a campus officer. “He hated himself and the world.”

The cop and the kid met a few weeks later in late September, 1985, when Staggs was threatening a group of students and a bus driver with a knife.

Staggs, then a slightly built 15-year-old, deranged by his favorite mix of PCP and hard liquor, was waving the knife and laughing when Rodriguez boarded the bus, observed the crowd of terrified faces and drew his .357 handgun.

They faced off in the bus aisle and stared into each other’s eyes for a long, silent minute, Rodriguez recalled. The kid laid down his knife. The cop holstered his weapon. They began to talk.

“I told him I escaped from a communist country, Cuba, with my family,” Rodriguez said. “I told him that in Los Angeles I had had my share of fighting and trouble when I was his age.”

Then the cop said: “Elika, you can make it.” He promised that if the youth kept out of trouble and graduated with his class, he would personally present him with an award.

Last week Rodriguez made good on his promise in an awards presentation officiated by Palm Springs Police Chief Tom Kendra. By the time Staggs graduated Thursday night, he had made up more than 170 units by attending regular classes, night school and summer school, according to Palm Springs High School authorities.

In that time, his grades were B or better and he won a scholarship to the College of the Desert in nearby Palm Desert, where he plans to study business. He has also been active as a youth minister at Palm Springs Apostolic Church.

Holding up what Rodriguez said may be the “first and last award for outstanding achievement given to a gang member by the Palm Springs Police Department,” Staggs said: “Manny is a man of his word.”

‘The Hardest Thing’

“It’s easy to get high, to kill yourself,” Staggs, now 18, said in the living room of the small, plain white house he shares with his parents in the depressed north end of Palm Springs. He added: “School is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

Only memories remain of his former life.

“I was a failure for many years,” said Staggs, whose right arm is badly scarred from a fight that ended when he was thrown through a plate-glass window.

“I hang with a new crowd now,” he said, clasping the hand of his admiring fiancee, Valencia Keyes, 18, who also graduated Thursday.

“His story is a good one for the other kids to hear,” said Paris Earls, principal of Palm Springs High School. “He’s made a tremendous change. He sure was a rowdy one.”

Staggs’ sister, Jaazer Craig, 22, said she flew from her home in Jacksonville, N.C., to be with her brother and the family Thursday night. “I’m so proud of him. He was so bad that we never thought he’d graduate,” Craig said. “I came out to help him celebrate.”