Graduates With a Degree of Difference : Education: Students who traded rap sheets for diplomas are honored. All spent time in detention facilities.

The old Jose Pelayo hung around with gang members, had a rap sheet for petty theft and was sent off to juvenile camp for joy-riding with friends in a stolen car.

But Saturday morning, the new Pelayo strode to the microphone at the John Anson Ford Theater in Hollywood in cap and gown, delivered a moving speech and accepted an award for his scholastic achievement--a perfect 4.0 average. The 18-year-old from Paramount was there to receive the diploma that had eluded him during his first try at high school.

Pelayo, who is going on to Cerritos Community College to study computer science, was one of 107 graduates honored at the special commencement exercise--Crips and Bloods, burglars, armed robbers and drug dealers among them. All used their time at youth detention facilities to focus on their books, away from the distractions of the streets.

“Some of them haven’t had parents since they were born,” said Barry J. Nidorf, the county’s chief probation officer. “They’ve been in foster homes and institutions all their lives. A good deal of them were victims of abuse, either emotional or physical. Many of them have been on an illegal substance. They have more than three strikes against them.”

Cedric Anderson, who taught Pelayo at the Southeast Community Day Center School in Bellflower, said: “They don’t like school. They don’t like teachers. They don’t like schoolwork. . . . We try to redirect that to a positive state of mind.”

The number honored in “Operation Graduation” is small compared to the thousands that enter the county’s juvenile justice system every year. But the ceremony is uplifting for the probation officers and teachers working in the trenches, for the families who never gave up hope, and for the young people with diploma in hand.

“The parents that are here today never gave up and they had a thousand reasons to give up,” said Sam Douglas, a teacher at the Santa Monica Child Development Center. “But we can’t give up no matter how bad the offense. Give up hope on someone and throw them away and that person could have been the one to find the cure for cancer.”

Pelayo’s mother, Maria, visited him frequently in camp and said she knew he would straighten out. His story is a common one--a gradual drift from normal child to rebellious lawbreaker.

“I just started hanging around the older guys in high school and I kind of wanted to be like them,” said Pelayo, one of 13 children. “Then I started ditching classes and it just got worse and worse.”

It was during his sophomore year that Pelayo stole a car with some friends in Long Beach and was sent off to Miller Camp School in Malibu for five months.

“He made up his mind that he was going to change things,” said Pelayo’s probation officer, Anna Hinkle. “He could have gone on to become a gang member and continued with his criminal activities. Camp taught him, ‘Ugh, oh, I’m going to be held responsible for my actions.’ ”

Classes were not optional in the juvenile camp, and every other aspect of Pelayo’s life was dictated by others. He did not enjoy the experience, Pelayo told the crowd during his graduation speech, but oddly he is glad he went. Teachers there encouraged him to focus on his studies. He also met a friend who helped inspire him not to return.

The friend was released five days before Pelayo and they exchanged phone numbers and addresses and talked about how they were going to make something of their lives. On the day Pelayo was leaving, the friend was back, this time on a murder charge that carried a sentence of 30 years to life.

“That helped me promise myself,” Pelayo said, “that I would never go back to camp again.”