GIVING FREELY : Pola Spends Days With Troubled Youths, Afternoons as Unpaid Westlake Assistant

How is it that a guy who never relinquished so much as a yard in his final three seasons as a Pacific 10 Conference fullback, can’t stop giving now?

Doesn’t want to stop, for that matter?

Kennedy Pola, who was born the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated, is a giver like Don King is a talker, like Donald Trump is a spender; his time, his knowledge, his self.

When Jim Benkert was hired recently as Westlake High’s football coach, he went home and dialed a phone number: Kennedy Pola’s.

Pola accepted Benkert’s offer of a position as an assistant, but when Benkert eventually broached the subject of money, Pola balked. Only not in the sense one would expect.

“Kennedy does not want to be paid,” Benkert said. “He is sincere in this is what he wants to do. He insists on not taking any money. He’s definitely a giver and not a taker. In fact, when I asked him about it, he looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘I’m not going to be paid. Put the money into the program.’ ”

Benkert is in the process of surrounding himself with a coaching staff of former players, including Terry Tumey and Tommy Taylor of UCLA, both of whom were recommended by Pola. But it is Pola who has made the biggest impact to date. Benkert and Pola were fellow members of Crespi’s coaching staff last season.

“Coach Pola gets you pumped up, really, because he gets so fired up himself,” said Luke Crawford, a returning running back for Westlake. “He’s a good motivator.

“After last year’s season, everybody was down. But when we heard of all the experience we were getting and the new offense, we were all happy.”

Pola, however, does not limit his enthusiasm to the high school football field. His work, as a representative for Griffin Homes, a large Southern California land developer, is perhaps most impressive.

What Pola actually is is an alternative.

The mammoth former USC fullback works the streets of Pacoima like a hustler plays a pool hall. The bait is Pola’s 6-foot-1, 270-pound frame, his gregarious personality and a chance at an alternative life style. The children of crime-ridden Pacoima are the catch.

Pola, who is part of a staff of such workers, is the front man of sorts for Griffin Homes.

“The problem out here is youth,” Pola said. “A lot of the kids live with their grandmothers and there are no jobs available. It’s really tough. Drugs are everywhere. Being a part of a gang is being a part of something .”

Which is where Pola and the staff at Griffin Homes, which is building a townhouse complex in Pacoima, comes in.

Among other things, they provide jobs on the construction sites, run basketball leagues, offer counseling and generally provide a positive image in a neighborhood badly in need of one. Pola, it seems, is driven by the concept of helping the children who, before they met him, didn’t realize they could help themselves.

“I love kids,” he said. “I love working with anybody who wants to do anything with their life. And you don’t do it by telling them, but by showing them options. By being there every day. Every day .

“Out here, you can’t promise and not keep up.”

Since December, Pola, 25, has wandered the streets during the day and at night, offering his alternative.

“I deal with the kids, the drug dealers and the gang bangers,” he said. “For the first three months they thought I was a cop. But I’m not here to turn in the drug dealers, I’m here to challenge them. I’m here to challenge them for every kid in this neighborhood.”

They are new challenges for Pola, who is of Samoan descent. His old ones consisted primarily of keeping his ailing knees, the subjects of eight surgeries, in good enough shape to last through one more Saturday afternoon. He played at USC from 1982-85, carrying the ball 139 times for 681 yards. He was a blocking back who went unclaimed in the National Football League’s draft in 1986.

But shortly thereafter, a Tampa Bay Buccaneer official contacted him and offered him the job of blowing open holes for a rookie running back out of Auburn named Bo Jackson. Jackson, however, never signed with Tampa Bay, and Pola’s knees had seen enough anyway. He left training camp early and returned to Southern California to marry Diane Griffin, his college sweetheart. Yes, those Griffins.

“They say when you’re down,” Pola said, “and you can find some other incentive that will help you leave it, you will choose it.”

Terry Tumey met Pola at the Rose Bowl. In fact, they met like one would figure a nose guard and a fullback would meet: paint to paint somewhere around the 50-yard line.

Tumey was in the midst of his first of three seasons as an All-Pac-10 player for UCLA.

“I tackled him,” Tumey said, “and said, ‘Aren’t you Kennedy Pola?’ Then I helped him up and shook his hand.

“We were acquaintances before. Now I consider us buddies. Now that we’re graduated.”

So, when Pola approached Tumey about helping out with a certain high school football program in transition, Tumey consented. It will be his first try at coaching.

“I knew nothing about Westlake except they were having a little trouble with football,” said Tumey, who will help coach the defense. “I thought I’d see what the other side was like. I wanted to be the wagon driver instead of the one pulling it.”

Tumey also is employed by Griffin Homes, where he has grown closer to Pola.

“Kennedy’s a great guy,” he said. “He’s got a lot of personality and gives a lot of himself.”

Several days a week, Pola sheds his size-54 sports coat and makes the drive from Pacoima to Westlake, where he and Diane live, for football practice at the local high school. As Pola sees it, some of the problems in the two areas may be different, but he figures he can help nonetheless.

You see, it’s not about football, necessarily. It’s about giving.

“That’s what I’m trying to show these kids,” he said. “This is not all you have. Let me show you something else.

“I want them to do so much better. If they need to use me to do it, they can do it. I’m happy with my life, and I want others to be happy, too.”