An Island of Hope : Neighborhood: The Jackie Robinson YMCA is a beacon in a depressed neighborhood. It sponsors job-training and counseling while keeping its doors open to both seniors and children.

Recession, Jock Johnson says, is not the word. Depression is a more appropriate term for what’s happening in Southeast San Diego and in poor neighborhoods across America.

“A recession other places is always a depression here,” he says, sitting in a building in a neighborhood surrounded by crime. “The middle-class keeps saying ‘recession,’ but in the so-called underclass, it’s a depression. It definitely affects the way people think.”

Johnson paused and took a deep breath.

“The frustration level here,” he said, “is always a little higher.”

Johnson’s business, however, is one of hope, which is the mission of the building he supervises--the Jackie Robinson YMCA, near the corner of 45th Street and Imperial Avenue, not far from where names like “Crips” and “Bloods” are household words.

Like many African-American leaders, Johnson sees the Robinson Y as a beacon of change. It sponsors job-training and counseling programs, offers an open door to seniors and children and provides a refuge when the world outside is not so safe.

Its function may seem simple, but Johnson sees it as absolutely necessary.

“Either you spend money at a place like this to run positive programs or,” he said, “you feed and clothe people at County Jail, the Metropolitan Correctional Center or the (R.J.) Donovan Prison. It’s your choice. It’s always a hairier price if someone breaks in your house, or, God forbid, somebody gets hurt.”

Johnson has been able to educate the community, and the government, about the value of the cause. Since 1985, when he arrived at the Y, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has given it three major “block” grants--$202,000 in ‘85, $223,000 in ’87 and $266,000 in ’87.

The Y then received a matching private contribution from the Sol Price Charitable Foundation, which donated $734,000. An architectural face-lift ensued, as well as a day-care center, teen center, new tennis court and an upgraded swimming pool.

“In ‘85, we had 50 members. Now,” Johnson said, “we’re close to 500. We’ve become a focal point in the community.”

It remains a hardened community. Spokesman Bill Robinson of the San Diego Police Department says the corner of 30th and Imperial, just a few blocks west, may be the worst in the city, in terms of high-crime activity involving firearms and drug dealing.

“As far as the crime area of the city, it includes major portions of Imperial Avenue,” Robinson said. “The boundary goes as far east as 54th, as far west as 30th. Although police have made inroads in narcotics trafficking, there remains a lot of narcotics in the area.”

Assistant Police Chief Rulette Armstead, who once was a captain in the Southeastern Division, said, “There’s definitely a lot of crime in the area--specifically, gang and drug activity right in that area.”

But just as many black-owned businesses were spared from harm during the Los Angeles riots, Armstead said the Y “has never had trouble with drugs, or gangs, nor have we had complaints from Jock or anyone on the staff.”

Armstead said the center “provides so many opportunities for children, ones they wouldn’t usually have. They have basketball, which keeps a lot of kids off the street, and many fund-raising events throughout the year. It’s a very viable institution--the kind we don’t have nearly enough of.”

Johnson said those who use the Y are constantly aware of the presence of drugs and gangs but that so far--”Thank God and knock on wood”--the building has been spared mischief from troublemakers.

He concedes his Y may not be as state-of-the-art in appearance as the yuppie-friendly Downtown Y, or the one on Friars Road in Mission Valley, but its services attempt to be broader than tightening pectoral muscles.

“I’ve never had a kid come up to me and say, ‘You know, the Mission Valley Y is prettier than ours.’ I know it’s prettier, because they have more money,” he said. “It’s the spirit you bring to a place that makes it what it is.”

His work is not without disappointments.

“You see a lot of kids coming through the program. With some of ‘em, one minute they’re doing well and the next they’re not,” he said. “And with many kids, it’s the reverse. Some kids who come in are pointed out as kids at risk. But you see them later and their attitude is totally different.

“If I’ve learned anything, it’s that all these kids are smarter than heck. They look around and if they don’t see positive things, or some immediate potential, then they take the quick alternative--quick money or joining a ‘family,’ which for most means a gang.”

The Y was built in the 1950s and went through several incarnations before being named the Jackie Robinson Y, in honor of the Brooklyn Dodgers infielder who broke baseball’s color line in 1947.

Edith Anderson, 73, has been a fixture at the Y since 1960.

“I’ve been in this community since 1944,” she said. “I’ve seen it all grow and change and not always for the better. The younger folks just moved out. That’s mostly how it happened. Of course, a few of us older ones are still here.”

Even at her age, Anderson said she loves to work out. She uses the Stairmaster and goes to the Y “as much for the social life” as for the benefit of keeping fit. Even with the money the Y has received lately, Anderson says it’s not enough and that the needs are still great.

“We need more lighting outside,” she said. “We need to maintain everything we have.”

Anderson said the neighborhood “needs more parents and adults, and more organizations, to be concerned about children. They need to be taught better values.”

Asked to be more specific, Anderson said she worries about kids at the Y “who want these high-priced, name-brand shoes--these Nikes--they see on TV all the time. Neither they nor their parents can afford them, but they want them anyway. These kids are always trying to live up to some silly TV commercial.”

Pamela Boykin, a 14-year-old student at Standley Junior High School, uses the Y for many of the same reasons as Anderson, who’s almost six decades her senior. Boykin is in a Y-sponsored group called Pride.

Much of the focus at the Y involves pride, self-esteem, feeling good about one’s self in the face of bleak surroundings. The murals and sayings on the wall are an expression of this ethos, as are the “role models” they commemorate--the great Jackie Robinson, and of course, Martin Luther King Jr.

Boykin’s pride group does its homework together each day and talks about everything from adolescent emotions to changes in the neighborhood. Boykin wants one day to leave the area, to go to law school, to fight for justice and change in a courtroom.

“One day,” she said, “I hope to be a judge, and I believe I will be.”

Johnson longs for the Boykins of the Y family to achieve their dreams, but he concedes the obstacles sometimes seem insurmountable.

“Our greatest concern right now is the frustration of people wanting to improve the quality of their lives,” he said. “In most cases, it relates directly to job opportunities, job training. I see the family structure eroding, and it’s very frustrating.

“It’s breaking down all over the place. I see a lot of single-parent households, with mothers, for the most part, running entire families. If you asked 100 people down the street what would help to alleviate the problems in the area, they would say, ‘Jobs, jobs, jobs . . . ‘ Just having some place to go, some place to earn an income, means so much to someone.”

Despite the problems in “the ‘hood,” as the kids call it, Edith Anderson intends to stay.

“I’m not moving. No way. I’m proud of where I am,” she said. “If I can help one person, one child, my living is not in vain. The best place for me to meet that someone is right here--at the Y. No sir, I’m stayin’.”