Healing Process : Derek Jones Recovered From Drive-By Shooting to Play Basketball Again; Now He Tries to Spread Message to Youths

The streets around Long Beach Poly High are tough, but they are also home.

Derek Jones grew up in the neighborhood, learned to play basketball there and was shot there. He suffered critical injuries in a 1987 drive-by shooting.

The neighborhood is still home, four years after Jones worked his way back to play a final basketball season at Cal State Fullerton.

After being nearly killed by a shotgun blast, Jones put his game back together on the outdoor courts at California Community Center on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, across from Poly, struggling to regain the skills he had before the damage to his left arm.

Months after physical therapists had told him he would never play again, Jones kept plugging away, rehabilitating himself in midnight sessions when nobody was around to see him fail.

These days, Jones, 26, can still be found on those courts. But now he is working with youngsters, coaching them and organizing activities in his job as a recreation specialist with the Long Beach Parks and Recreation Department.

In the mornings, Jones conducts practices for Poly’s freshman-sophomore girls’ basketball team, which he coaches. After school, he is at the community center, where he coaches volleyball, football, baseball and basketball.

Many of the youngsters are just starting high school. When Jones tries to steer them away from gangs, his best argument is a silent one, the scarring on his upper left biceps that others’ eyes sometimes rest on before looking back at him for an answer.

“It happens all the time, all the time,” Jones said. “A lot of kids ask me. I try to be straightforward and tell them you don’t have to be a gang member for things like this, for bad things to happen to you. I explain to them exactly what happened, the kind of lifestyle that I led, which was far removed from gang activity, but I was still a victim.

“You know, it’s not always what you do, it’s sometimes who you know or where you’re at. You kind of have to be on a constant lookout for things like that. You want to be as far removed from that kind of environment as possible. You really can’t get away from it, but you don’t have to put yourself right in the middle of it.”

It can be an effective message.

“Yeah it is,” Jones said. “A lot of the kids take it to heart.”

But, to his disappointment, not all.

“One or two guys, they were pretty much decided they wanted to be in gangs,” Jones said. “I didn’t lose them, but I couldn’t reach them. They didn’t have the time to put in over here, where I could make some impact or influence. They didn’t have the time.”

Financial problems have trimmed many of the workers’ hours, but Jones doesn’t punch a clock. At his home nearby, where he lives with his mother and a sister, he has a computer. Sometimes, after the community center closes, boys and girls go over to play computer games. Jones also organizes outings to Clipper games and other events.

“I’m off at 6, but there’s still daylight, there’s still stuff to get into,” he said.

The Long Beach Police Department considers the area around Poly a trouble spot, with a higher crime rate than the rest of the city and considerable gang activity.

Though Jones said things have been quieter since the riots last spring, the overall trend is not encouraging.

“I think it’s gotten considerably worse, to the point where it’s scary,” he said. “We’ve had certain incidents up here where we’ve had to leave early. Gangs come to the park. They usually meet here. They’ll be here celebrating certain things, things that are only important to them. It starts off maybe as a celebration, but it usually ends with some sort of fight. We’ve had a couple of drive-by shootings--no one was injured. A lot of graffiti problems. We’ve had a couple of break-ins. Things like that.”

Growing up, Jones’ skill at basketball and the influence of his mother, Katherine Jones, kept him out of trouble.

“My mom was constantly on me about staying away from trouble, and then the basketball gave me an outlet, something to do,” he said. “When you have a lot of free time, then it’s kind of easy to be forced into doing things that aren’t good.”

Jones played high school ball at Millikan. By his junior season at Fullerton, he was starting and averaging nine points a game. Then came the shooting.

Jones was preparing to leave for his senior year at Fullerton when it happened.

“It was right in front of my house,” he said. “I used to live over on 17th between Martin Luther and Alamitos. It depends on how you look at it, but more or less I was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Even though it’s sad to say that in front of your house was the wrong place at the wrong time, but you know. Hanging out with my friends, who, like I say, had a different lifestyle.”

It was a Sunday afternoon in August, and Jones was standing around with friends when a man approached and singled out Jones, the tallest, to ask about buying drugs. Jones says he told the man, “I’m not into that.”

But, according to Jones, a boy of about 13 spoke up, saying he would make a sale. Then, during the transaction, the boy snatched the money and ran. When some of Jones’ other companions started beating up the man, Jones says he intervened and helped him to his car. Later, the man returned and shot into a crowd, hitting Jones.

“I’m not sure if he was shooting at me, or remembered me from asking me first, or maybe he was just shooting at the crowd because he remembered that it was a crowd of people that beat him up,” Jones said. “I should have known better from the start. You’re accustomed to things like that happening. The guys who had beat him up were already gone.”

Jones says that he and several others identified a man who was in custody as the shooter, but the man had an alibi that stood up and he was never charged.

While Jones struggled to rehabilitate--for a time, the left-hander could not even use a spoon with his left hand--Fullerton lobbied the NCAA to grant him a sixth year of eligibility, which is a rare concession. George McQuarn, the coach at the time, said he was doing it more for Jones’ mental outlook than because he had a real chance to play again. But Jones surprised everyone, returning to play during the 1988-89 season.

It was the season John Sneed took over as coach after McQuarn had resigned during preseason practice.

With Cedric Ceballos, Mark Hill, Wayne Williams and Jones in the lineup, the Titans were picked to win five to 10 games. Instead, they finished 16-13. Jones started every game, averaging 12 points and seven rebounds and blocking a school-record 56 shots.

The night Fullerton beat Nevada Las Vegas in overtime at Titan Gym on Williams’ three-pointer, Jones saved Fullerton at the end of regulation with the first three-pointer of his career.

But looking back, Jones is still frustrated about how his college experience ended.

“I think getting the year back was fine, but I didn’t really have enough time,” he said. “I kind of saw my career heading in one way, and after the shooting it kind of detoured. I just wasn’t really physically able to play up to the potential I had before the incident. Before, I thought I had a chance to go pro. A lot of people thought so.”

His playing days aren’t over, though. Jones has played in a summer pro-am league in Los Angeles, and professionally for two months in Mexico. There have been offers to play abroad, in Colombia or in Austria, but he said he has declined because of his job at the community center and the birth a year ago of his daughter, Dominique Nicole.

Still, he is proud of his progress.

“Looking at me now and looking at me the year after the shooting, it would have to be a 100% turnaround, not only physically but mentally,” he said. “Back then when I was playing, I was so concerned about the hand, and I was so afraid that I would make a mistake and I’d have to hear from the press, ‘Well, he’s lost it,’ or ‘His hand won’t hold up.’ I was both physically hampered and mentally hampered.

“Now when I played out there in the summer pro league, it’s totally different than my last year in college. I’ve improved my shooting, dribbling, ballhandling. Some people say I’m a better player now than I was before I got shot.”

Jones thinks about what might have been. He also thinks about what is, and is proud to be someone the youngsters in his neighborhood look up to.

“When I was growing up, there were a whole lot of gang members who were older than me. And they kind of took notice that I was trying to stay away from that. Whenever things got a little tough, as far as gang activity, they’d always make sure I went home.

“Looking back, I didn’t understand it then because sometimes, not really knowing, you want to see it. You want to see the fight or whatever. They were on the inside looking out, and they tried to help me. I’m on the outside, and I want to tell the kids, ‘I didn’t go that way, you don’t have to go that way.’ ”

Maybe this time, Derek Jones is in the right place at the right time.