Building a Life Outside the Gang : Community service: Linda Maxwell challenged a group of at-risk girls to let her help them. They did--and they’ve gained a positive view of themselves and those around them.

As a volunteer walking into a classroom at Toll Middle School in February, television publicist Linda Maxwell was unprepared for coming face to face with hostility.

The class--for teen-agers who are considered “at risk” of dropping out of school--consisted of about 20 scowling, heavily made-up girls, most of them members of rival gangs.

“They were wearing black sweat shirts with long hair all down in their faces,” she recalled. “They had their arms on the table with their chins in them and they were glaring at me.”

Maxwell, the publicist for Glendale-based KVEA Spanish-language television and a former private self-esteem counselor, had planned to give the girls a one-time seminar on the value of proper dress in achieving success.

“They didn’t say a word the entire time,” she said. “They never said one word. So at the end I just looked at them and said, ‘You know, I don’t know how I can make a difference. I don’t know what I can do to let you know I care. I don’t know what it is you can get from me, but if there is something, please, let me know and I will happily give that to you.’ And one of them lifted her head up from the desk and said, ‘Come back next week.’ ”

And she did. Accepting that challenge in February, Maxwell has become the kind of committed volunteer that officials of the Glendale Unified School District wish they could recruit in growing numbers as shrinking budgets threaten special student programs. Since then, she has spent at least one afternoon each week in casual, after-school rap sessions with the girls at Toll Middle School and many more hours doing community work and other activities with them.

The youngsters receive no academic credit for attending the extracurricular meetings, but that hasn’t stopped them from participating. In fact, several who graduated from Toll last year are still coming back.

Together, they’ve helped Maxwell with the KVEA “De Mi Corazon” telethon to benefit abused children, volunteered for a fund-raiser to benefit Community Youth Gang Services, scrubbed the graffiti from the home of an elderly Glendale woman and cleaned up her yard as part of Glendale Community Clean.

Maxwell says community activity is integral in helping the girls with a more positive view of themselves and the city.

“It gives them a perception of the community that they don’t have,” she said. “That they’re welcomed and valuable. They lose their fear of going into neighborhoods where they felt unwanted. By the same token, people in the community look at them differently and view them as just kids.”

Underlying everything Maxwell does is the goal of easing the girls out of the gang life and preparing them for the working world.

And already 18 of the 20 girls in her class have either left gangs or vowed never to join. Of the remaining two, one is planning on leaving soon and another remains undecided.

Maxwell doesn’t lecture on the evils of gangs or directly encourage the girls to drop their gang ties. Instead, she said, she prefers leaving them to make that decision.

“At 15, 14 or 13 years old, to take yourself out of something that’s familiar--these are friends, family and neighborhood--out of every place you get agreement and comfort, to leave that and go on your own, I challenge any adult to do that.”

“It’s hard to let go,” agreed Cynthia, 13, an eighth-grader at Toll Middle School who doesn’t want her last name used, “But it’s for my own good. My grades have improved a lot. I went from Fs to a C+ average.”

Cynthia joined a gang when she was 12.

“I just started hanging out with a group of girls and they got me into it and I started being one of them,” she said. “Then I met Linda and everything is changing. I dress different, everything. She’s a real good friend to me and I just want to keep with her.”

Chasity Soto, 15, a sophomore at Hoover High School was deeply involved in gang activity at 13 and has had more than her share of run-ins with authorities. But in July, she became one of the latest girls in Maxwell’s class to cut ties with gang life--going through the brutal and frightening “jumping-out” ritual in which a handful of gang members beat the departing member for up to 30 seconds.

“Linda showed us there was nothing good in gangs and if we left we’d get a lot more out of life,” Soto said. “(Gang members) aren’t there for you all the time. Only when you’re there for them. And Linda, she had nothing to do with us and she was still there for us.”

Since joining with the group, Soto says, her grades have climbed from “straight Fs” to A’s and Bs. And this year she’s joined the Hoover High School cross-country team.

Sandra Banner, assistant principal at Toll, said Maxwell’s purpose when she began her sessions with the girls was to augment the five-year-old at-risk classes offered at Glendale’s three junior high schools and two senior high schools. But this year, her work has become more important than ever.

In September, budget restraints forced district officials to cut $490,000 from at-risk programs, eliminating most classes and counseling, said Donald Empey, deputy superintendent for educational services.

The loss of those classes--which enrolled more than 600 students--have made volunteers, such as Maxwell more important than ever, Banner said.

“Thank goodness we have Linda,” she said. “If I could replicate her 10 times over, believe me, I would,” she said. “We have boys who could truly benefit from this type of program, but there’s no one who’s doing it.”

Ledi Rodas, a 16-year-old sophomore at Hoover High School speaks for many of the girls when she says she considers Maxwell a surrogate big sister.

“She’s great,” Rodas said. “She can make you somebody. Our talks with her are good and when we go to the movies with her or help her in her campaigns it just makes us feel better about ourselves.”

In addition to the weekly after-school meetings, Maxwell often plays host at dinners for the girls, arranges pool parties for them and takes them jogging with her every Saturday morning. She’s also taken them to movies, to dances and even to a Chinese Circus with tickets donated from organizations interested in helping the youth program. Last Friday, she arranged for them to tour IBM in downtown Los Angeles.

When the students need help with schoolwork, she arranges tutors for them, using college students from Glendale Community College.

Maxwell rewards perfect attendance of the after-school meetings with a monthly drawing for a free haircut, style and make-over donated by her Burbank hairstylist.

But the teen-agers are quick to say that little effort is needed to encourage their participation in the group, which they’ve named, “Still Standing Strong.”

“We talk to her about boyfriends, school, work and she just makes us better every day,” Rodas said. “She’s just positive.”