Barrio Buddy : Passionate About His Roots, East L.A. Native Runs Youth Center Like Brother

When Danny Hernandez took a nighttime aerial tour of Southern California, he didn’t ask the pilot to fly over Disneyland, Beverly Hills or Hollywood.

“Take me to Whittier and Lorena in East L.A.,” Hernandez commanded.

“Hey, there’s City Terrace! That’s where I live, man!” he shouted as the befuddled pilot complied with his unusual request.

Sixteen years after that flight with college buddies, Hernandez still tells the story as an illustration of his passion for the community. “East L.A. is all I really ever cared about,” he says.

Friends and colleagues say Hernandez’s commitment to the predominantly Latino barrios of the East Side has given him a special mission as executive director of Hollenbeck Youth Center in Boyle Heights, which many consider the best inner-city recreational program of its kind in Los Angeles.

His work has garnered little notice outside East Los Angeles, but he is a familiar figure around the worn-looking gym on 1st Street where the center is housed.

Since Hernandez, 45, took over as executive director in 1980, the center has grown from a shoestring operation on a $30,000 annual budget to a full-blown program that offers league competition for boys and girls in sports from baseball to volleyball.

Its budget now approaches $1 million a year. As many as 5,000 youngsters take part in the center’s organized activities. And during the holidays, up to 10,000 young people get packages of food and toys at the facility.

About 70% of the nonprofit center’s budget comes from private sources. To bolster the coffers shortly after he took over, Hernandez fired off fund-raising letters to major companies in town. Nearly all of his early pleas were rejected.

“People told me it was a waste of time, but I kept on trying,” Hernandez said.

Enlisting the help of Arthur K. Snyder, then the area’s councilman, Hernandez convinced Los Angeles Dodgers owner Peter O’Malley that the youth center was worthy of support.

By 1984, an annual fund-raising luncheon saluting the Dodgers was established.

Hernandez eventually persuaded organizations and corporations--including Unocal, Occidental Petroleum, Pepsico, Coors Brewing and the East Los Angeles Community Union--to donate money and services to the youth center.

Hernandez also has managed to sign up stars such as Linda Ronstadt and Arnold Schwarzenegger to support and attend fund-raising efforts.

With Hernandez at the helm, the center has racked up accomplishments and fostered talents:

* Boxer Paul Gonzales, an ex-gang member from the nearby Pico-Aliso housing project, won a gold medal at the 1984 Summer Olympics.

* Another boxer, Los Angeles Police Officer George Lopez, trained at the center and fought at the 1988 Summer Games. And 125-pound fighter Ruben Palomares is an Olympic hopeful.

* Last summer, the center staged its own version of the Olympics, a nine-day Inner-City Games. About 40,000 people participated in events ranging from a five-kilometer race to gymnastics competition.

* And by 1993, an ambitious $1.5-million expansion is expected to be completed, doubling the gym’s size to 30,000 square feet and allowing the center to increase its sports and educational programs.

Along with the businessmen and officers at LAPD’s Hollenbeck Division who founded the facility in 1972, Hernandez is the heart of the youth center, many say.

“He’s from the community and he knows the kind of life the kids are living,” said longtime volunteer and fund-raiser Hank Castillo. “He never separates himself from the kids, saying ‘I’m an adult and you’re a kid.’ He acts like a big brother to a lot of the kids.”

For Hernandez, a graduate of Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights, normal office attire is sweaty gym clothes and a well-worn pair of athletic shoes.

Before dawn each day, he leaves his Commerce home--where he lives with his wife, Beatrice, and 13-year-old daughter, Priscilla--to run four miles. He then has a ritual cup of coffee at the neighborhood Jack-in-the-Box.

Despite his preference for gym wear, Hernandez these days restricts himself mostly to the administrative side of his $42,000-a-year job. He leaves the coaching and other gym-related duties to staffers and volunteers.

Some regulars at the gym, first drawn by the sports programs, hope to become leaders in Hernandez’s mold.

“He’s one of a kind,” said youth center staffer Natividad (Nati) Correa, 23, a Boyle Heights native who as a youth came to the center to play. “He leads by example.”

Correa said he is most impressed by Hernandez’s persistence at helping others. “Sometimes, I think it’s not worth it. But Danny makes it worthwhile. And that’s what I want to do.”