With a Little Finesse : Police Officer Befriends Teen-Agers With Problems

Despondent over constant conflicts with her dysfunctional family, an unhappy 12-year-old girl at Toll Junior High confessed to Glendale Police Officer Rick Young that she was contemplating suicide.

Young befriended the girl. He talked to her about her problems. Now 21 and living in Alabama, the young woman still regularly calls and writes Young.

A Hoover High School senior, meanwhile, said that when he was about to drop out of junior high, Young encouraged him to quit a local gang and stick with school. Young “just seems really dedicated to youth,” the boy’s mother said. “He is a very good role model.”

Young is such a good role model, in fact, that when the city temporarily curtailed its “campus cop” program at three junior high schools last fall, more than 750 protesters signed petitions and dozens of angry parents marched on City Hall.

After the public outcry, the city quickly restored money for this school year and a new officer was assigned in December. The program’s future is still being discussed by the city and the Glendale Unified School District.

Behind the public demand is Young--a 6-foot-3, 200-pound police officer who has his own way of searing a brand into the tough hides of rebellious teen-agers.

He uses finesse.

“It’s easier than you think,” said Young, 37, an 11-year member of the Glendale Police Department. “Kids are dying for adult attention. In our society today, there just aren’t people taking the time to listen to kids.”

As the School Resource Officer at Toll Junior High for eight years, that’s what Young did best--listen. Young also filled in occasionally at the other junior highs in Glendale, and visited his former charges when they went on to Hoover High.

And now, though he was promoted to sergeant and heads a patrol division, Young still spends time at Toll, Hoover and the other schools in the district. “He has an uncanny ability to know what is going on before it happens,” said Maureen Miller, former president of the Toll Parent Teacher Assn. “He was able to anticipate things that might happen and take care of them before they did.”

Miller’s admiration for Young is shared by other parents, and by students and teachers. Young, they say, is an unsung hero--a man who quietly carved a special niche epitomizing the goal of a school-police-community relations program.

“Rick is just Rick and no one ever replaces Rick,” said Toll Vice Principal Sandra Banner. “He is very special--warm and loving. . . . He is the one person in my life that I have met who is totally committed to community.”

Resource officers assigned full time to each of the city’s three junior high schools teach classes, counsel students and work to cut down on dropout and truancy rates. Though no exact figures are available, Young says about 20% of junior high students used drugs when he started in his job and about 10% do now. That’s still higher than officials would like, but Young said the program has “made a dent.”

Young’s approach to dealing with teen-agers, particularly those in danger of dropping out of school, is simple: “You just need to be their friend.”

He blames “our fast-paced society” for putting negative pressures on youngsters that influence them to form alliances that lead to drug abuse and gangs. Commercials and family habits suggest that drugs ranging from aspirin to alcohol relieve pain and discomfort, he said.

Even participation in sports or other teen-age activities such as dances require that youths be able to afford expensive athletic equipment or prom tickets, he said. “The reason we have so many gangs is that we have out-priced activities for kids,” Young said. “They have no goals, no leadership, they just sit around and get into trouble.”

Young is working with service and church groups to develop programs for teen-agers. He is president of the West Glendale Kiwanis Club, which sponsors track meets, barbecues and parent awareness programs.

He’s also on the executive committee of the local Boy Scout Council and helped Glendale Presbyterian Church set up a free weight-training program for teen-agers.

Young, who has a degree in recreational administration from Cal State Los Angeles, originally planned a career as a National Park Service ranger. But a Park Service hiring freeze forced him instead into law enforcement, and he joined the Glendale police force in 1980.

Two years later, he became a school resource officer, a program sponsored by the city since 1969.

Because of his rapport with teen-agers, the Police Department in 1990 assigned Young to help start an anti-gang task force. After what Young refers to “as an exciting year of shoot-outs and cars flipping over,” he returned to counseling 12- to 15-year-olds at Toll full-time until his promotion last year.

The anti-gang stint, though, provided an unexpected bonus: Young met his wife, Debbie, an emergency room nurse, while he was interviewing victims of violence at Glendale Memorial Hospital. They were married last April.

And even though Young has moved on to new duties, his legacy remains.

Former Toll student Claudia Arevalo, 21, of Saugus, said she was barely passing classes and “not getting along” with her family when she met Young seven years ago. “Whenever I had any problems, I would go talk to him,” she said. “He was always there to listen.”

At Young’s insistence, Arevalo joined the Police Explorer program and decided she wanted a career in law enforcement. Her grades improved to mostly A’s by the time she graduated in 1989 from Hoover High.

Now working as a studio security guard, Arevalo said Young “is my best friend; like my adopted parent. He was my role model.”

Sandra Guerrero, 18, also became a Police Explorer at the age of 14 while a student at Hoover High. She is continuing studies at Glendale Community College and hopes to pursue a career in criminal law while she works as a part-time secretary at the Glendale Police Department.

Guerrero said Young’s success with teen-agers stems from his unwavering friendship, even when the youngsters get into trouble.

“He treats everybody the same, no matter if they are involved in gangs or drugs or whatever,” Guerrero said. “Students feel comfortable around him and they know they can talk to him about anything. He sees kids in trouble as just kind of lost. He does everything he can to help reform them.”