Reversing Field : Albert Razo Is Using Football Talents to Leave Life of Drugs, Violence Behind

His heart on his sleeve, his family name tattooed on his arm, Albert Razo talked about smoking marijuana as a third grader and PCP as high school freshman. He talked about starting fights over such pressing issues as “Who are you looking at?” and about being arrested. He talked about a bad guy he knew a couple years back, a guy who looked, spoke, even threw a football the way he did. He talked about himself.

He talked about his family name, which he’s proud to show above the likeness of an Indian woman on his left arm. It’s also a name that, in the past two years, found its way into newspaper stories about his older brother Jose, who went to Harvard but came back to La Habra and was recently convicted of robbing fast-food and convenience stores.

Albert Razo, 18, talked about his life in La Habra, the only kind of life he has known and one he’s now itching to leave.

Reporter: You signed to play football at Cal State Northridge, a good Division II program. But there are some people who think you have the potential of being a Division I quarterback. They say that if you got some seasoning at Fullerton College that in two years you’d be a hot recruiting prospect.

Razo: I decided it would be best for me to get away from this area. There are a lot of different things around here that, if I went to Fullerton, would maybe stop me from pursuing my education. There are a lot of distractions, my friends, my peers, the gang members I used to be involved with. There’s so many different things that I’ve tried to overcome and that I don’t want to deal with in college. I have to get away.”

Albert Razo has a strong right arm. So strong that during the North team’s workouts for Friday’s Orange County High School Football All-Star game several receivers complained about the speed of Razo’s passes and the marks they left in their chests.

Razo, probably the North’s starting quarterback, hopes his arm is strong enough to take him away from all he did to himself and all that was done to him in La Habra.

In the worst of times he was smoking dope, giving up on school and ready to bash anyone’s face who looked at him in a manner that he didn’t feel fitting.

“You didn’t mess with Albert, you kept your distance,” said Dave Gutierrez, a teammate of Razo’s on the La Habra High football team who will play receiver on the North team. “He was his own crowd, he followed only himself, and you better stay out of the way.”

His third day on the La Habra campus--he had transferred from Servite High early in his sophomore year--Razo got into a fight and was suspended.

“I was a bad guy,” he said.

But he could always throw. He could throw a junior-sized football more than 70 yards while in elementary school.

John Barnes, Los Alamitos’ football coach and coach of the North team, marveled at Razo’s arm strength the first days of practice. Like others, including Razo, Barnes believes that Razo must improve on staying in the pocket and reading defenses before he becomes an exceptional quarterback.

“But all the raw tools are there,” Barnes said. “He reminds me a lot of Dave Wilson, who was a raw thrower at Katella, then went to Fullerton College and really blossomed.”

Dave Wilson now plays for the New Orleans Saints.

Still, Barnes had to be persuaded to put Razo on the team. Razo was hurt much of his senior year, posting his most impressive numbers as a punter. He averaged 46 yards a punt. But once Barnes got a look at Razo’s passes, he knew he had something special.

“He puts a lot on the ball,” Barnes said. “To throw like that, I’m sure someone’s had to work with him as a kid.”

But Razo said no one taught him. His athletic ability just came naturally. Unfortunately for him, his ability to get into trouble came just as naturally.

He was arrested four times as a juvenile. Three times for fighting, once for being in possession of stolen property. He hung with a local gang in La Habra, though he said he was never initiated. He fought their fights at parties and smoked their dope.

“They could be tough guys,” Gutierrez said. “One day they might smile at you, the next they might stab you.”

By the end of his freshman year at Servite, Razo was near bottom. His grade point average was down to a 1.2, a D-average. He didn’t pay attention in class, when he decided to go to class. He drove a motorcycle to school each day though he was still too young to get a driver’s license.

He felt fine when he was playing football--he played on a Servite freshman team that also had linebacker Garrett Greedy (signed with UCLA) and running back Derek Brown (Nebraska)--but away from the field he was alone.

“I had a huge chip on my shoulder,” he said.

When Servite coaches told him at the beginning of his sophomore year that they were moving him from the backfield to wide receiver, Razo got permission from his parents to leave Servite for La Habra.

He didn’t play football for the 1986-87 school year, “just loafed around and got in a lot of trouble. I was constantly on the street.”

On the night of July 6, 1987 Albert’s older brother, Jose, was arrested in connection with a series of armed robberies. That same night, Albert says he was smoking PCP, a highly toxic psychoactive anesthetic commonly known as “angel dust,” with some friends.

“I think that night changed everything for me,” Razo said.

Jose had been the Razos’ Abel to Albert’s Cain. Jose got good grades and was recruited by Ivy League schools, eventually attending Harvard in 1985.

But by July of 1987 that all ended.

“I had always looked up to him; I couldn’t believe it,” Albert said. “I didn’t know what was going on. My whole attitude changed about everything, it was like day and night.”

Razo says that a month after Jose’s arrest, he was totally off drugs. He sought advice from Bob Rau, then La Habra’s coach. Rau told him his football talent could take him away, but that it would require something of Razo.

“He said I had to change crowds,” Razo said. “It was real hard to do, I was close with some of those guys.”

But he made the break, approaching the gang’s leader, who Razo said is now in prison, and told him: “I have to get away from you because I got talent.”

Rau told him he had to go to class, that he wouldn’t be suiting up at La Habra with a 1.2 average.

“I never really liked classes like English, but I looked at my situation and said to myself, ‘You need to like English,’ ” Razo said.

By the end of his junior year, Razo’s grade-point average had shot up to 2.85.

His junior season he platooned at quarterback. As a senior, he was going to run the show himself. He had made such an impression as a junior, he was receiving mail from such schools at Nebraska, Oregon State and Washington State.

But a week before the start of practice, he broke his collarbone while riding a motorcycle in the desert. Lying in the sand, waiting for a friend to help him, Razo lost himself in a swell of tears. This, he thought, was the end.

“The first thing I thought was, ‘There goes my career,’ ” Razo said. “Then I broke down.”

The letters stopped, but he did get back in time for the third game of the season, just in time to reinjure his collarbone.

“Overall, it was a real frustrating year,” Razo said.

A couple of years before, Razo might have escaped by quitting. But Jack Nicholls, La Habra’s coach, said Razo always came to practice and worked hard.

“He helped all the younger quarterbacks,” Nicholls said. “I could leave Albert with the quarterbacks and know that he would get them through a drill. From what I’ve heard about him, he probably wouldn’t have done that a few years ago.”

To Razo’s amazement, Cal State Northridge recruited him. It’s not the out-of-state distance he was hoping for--”I wanted to get as far away as possible,”--but it was away from La Habra.

“I’m very proud of who I am today,” Razo said. “It’s hard to know all the stuff I’ve been through. I’ve seen both sides of the world, good and bad.”

And he has lived in both worlds. Asked what the young tough would think of Albert Razo today, eager to go to college, Razo said: “He’d think he was an idiot, a nerd.”

And what if Albert Razo saw the tough?

“I wouldn’t think anything, I’d just walk straight on by him.”

The interview nearing its end, Razo leans forward and his eyes widen. He’s talking about how he changed his life and went from no future to a Division II scholarship. His chest inflates while he talks about being asked to speak to incoming La Habra freshmen about the importance of going to class and doing the right thing.

Reporter: What would you like to see happen for Albert Razo in the next few years?

Razo: I’d like to see Albert Razo graduating from college with a Master’s in criminal psychology. I want to help juvenile delinquents. I want to be a probation officer and go into probation counseling. I want to help the young kids . This might sound strange, but I’d like to come back to La Habra and help the young Albert Razos.”