Honest Work : Corrections: A career fair at the Ventura School shows young offenders how to escape their past.

Behind the razor wire of the Ventura School, former burglars, car thieves and gang members learned Thursday about becoming future sailors, firefighters and airline stewardesses.

The annual Career Fair had come to the California Youth Authority’s juvenile detention center in Camarillo.

This year, only a few local companies had set up booths in the medium-security lockup’s gymnasium, far fewer than last year, school officials said.

But many of the youthful offenders said they did not care.

They said the information that they collected Thursday could be their ticket to a future that could save them from their past.

Michael Lenoir, 18, rolled past the booths in the wheelchair that he said he has used since a bullet paralyzed his legs in a police shootout during his arrest in Compton three years ago on murder and robbery charges.

“It’s good to show us what opportunities we have out there,” Lenoir said. “When you go to the (parole) board, you gotta tell them what you’re gonna do. If it ain’t already set up, you don’t get out.”

Lenoir picked up pamphlets on computers from the Center for Employment and Training, and chatted briefly with the Navy recruiter, Petty Officer Mark Daniels.

“I feel I would rather come here and get my brain straight than be out there and get killed,” Lenoir said before counselors led out his group of male students and brought in a group of young women.

“It’s better if I go back in the community and make something of myself than be out selling drugs,” Lenoir said. “Maybe some day I can have a family and settle down.”

Daniels said the Navy has no access to juvenile offenders’ records, which are sealed by the court upon conviction and expunged upon the youths’ release if they obey the terms of probation.

Even juveniles convicted of felonies have a chance of entering the military if they obey the law, Daniels told state ward Josie Ramirez, 18, who is scheduled to serve time in the Ventura School until 1992 for possession of cocaine and heroin.

“I’m not sure what I want, but this got me,” said Ramirez, pointing to a TV, where the videotaped image of a gun-toting sailor flickered across the screen.

Ramirez said she arrived at the Ventura School several months ago with a bad attitude, thinking that “I couldn’t do nothing, that I wasn’t gonna be nobody.”

But the memories of repeat drug offenses and repeated lockups eventually changed her tune, she said.

“I was thinking one day. I go, ‘Awww, I’m 18, now’s my chance to do something for myself so I won’t feel down about myself,’ ” she said. “I’m tired about the old me, I wanna be somebody.”

Ramirez bit her lip lightly, chewing cherry-colored lipstick.

“And this is the place I’m gonna have to do it,” she said with a sigh.

Raymond Duran, a recruiter for the Center for Employment Training, helped wave after wave of youths in Ventura School jackets tap out messages on his IBM computer. Behind him, the vocational training center’s banner read Si Se Puede --You Can Do It.

“They’re asking a lot of positive questions,” Duran said. “Especially when they put their hands on a computer, it’s like, ‘Whoa, let me check it out!’ They get a printout of what they type, and they can take it back to their rooms with them and think about it.”

At other booths, CYA wards demonstrated firefighting equipment used by the school’s fire crews, and high-tech TV mixing equipment that will be used for KCYA, a new closed-circuit cable television network for the school’s 900 residents.

“This is probably one of the most positive things the institution has going,” said art instructor Doug Craig, watching the youths drift from booth to booth and browse through pamphlets. “Any exposure to a productive way of life is good for the wards.”

Outside, the toothed steel bucket of a diesel-powered backhoe jerked in a blue cloud of exhaust as a member of the International Union of Operating Engineers showed how it worked.

Andy Lesky, 19, watched, weighing the value of the information from the job fair.

“A lot of the guys aren’t gonna use it when they get out,” said Lesky, who is scheduled for release in April after serving 2 1/2 years for grand theft auto.

“For those that do take it seriously, it’s gonna be hard,” he said. “Everybody that’s here is here for a crime. A lot of them, getting out, they’re gonna want to make a buck. I’m not saying I am too, and I’m not saying I won’t. It’s gonna be hard. I’m so used to making a couple grand a week.”

Lesky wondered aloud if getting the job he wants in the California Conservation Corps could prevent his returning to the profitable but illegal job he had held since age 12 in Orange County--selling stolen cars to chop shops in Fullerton.

However, Gus Campos, the backhoe operator, had said earlier, “I’d encourage any one of these guys to get into the field. It’s the payoff.”

Campos, 23, pointed to the gang tattoo “Santa Barbara” etched into his neck, explaining that he gave up gang life after serving felony time in the Santa Barbara juvenile facility for drug trafficking and weapons possession.

After signing up for the union’s apprentice program, he worked his way into union membership.

“Shoot, the first job I ever got dispatched on was $15.40 an hour,” Campos said. “If these guys get a chance to see the machines work and see what happens. . . . Once you hit one little nerve and catch their interest and let them know that at the end there’ll be a payoff, they’re into it.”