Hope Lingers After Fame for Boy Who Said No to Drugs : Courage: Publicity over youth’s refusal to sell cocaine has faded, but donations have provided a nest egg for his family.

All the TV cameras have gone away. The tinned food, used clothes and checks have stopped arriving. Six months after being feted nationwide for turning down $100 offered by a drug dealer to sell crack cocaine, Sixto Perez, now 12, is back to reality in the La Puente trailer he shares with his parents and five siblings.

Acclaim for his act of courage and $20,000 in contributions from as far away as England and Tennessee have dramatically changed Sixto’s outlook on life for the better, but he still faces many hardships.

Sixto no longer goes to sleep hungry. He wears pants that fit and shoes without holes. And the boy who was once taunted by classmates for living in a “dump” now holds his head high at school.

“He has improved so much in the last year. He has hope for himself,” says his school teacher, Jeannie Thiessen, who helps the family out and has become a confidante.

The family has moved into a larger trailer in the same rundown park along an industrial stretch of Valley Boulevard where they have long lived. Sixto’s father, Pedro Perez, once a migrant farm worker who spent months away from his family following the crops, now works making pallets at a nearby factory.

But unskilled labor does not bring in much money, and the Perez family, who came from rural Mexico, has found it hard to break out of poverty. When Pedro Perez received a job offer to work at a print shop in North Hollywood, he never even went to the interview. The family cannot explain why.

Meanwhile, Iphigenia Perez has become pregnant with the family’s seventh child. And one person, scenting money, has been hanging around, urging Sixto’s father to take some of his son’s money to start a business with him, a family friend said.

For a young child, Sixto is acutely aware of the luck that fate has bestowed upon his family. And he worries that it may be fleeting.

“Pretty soon all the money will be gone,” the boy mourned recently to a family friend, “and we’ll be just like we were before.”

But Thiessen believes otherwise. She has joint power of attorney over the trust fund that was set up for Sixto’s education and the family’s living expenses and she intends to safeguard the money. Although $4,000 has been spent on food and necessities, the bulk remains untouched.

“I see us getting those kids out of poverty,” Thiessen says with determination. “I really do.”

Sixto became famous last summer, after a drug dealer approached him at the convenience store where he worked after school for $20 a week to buy milk and shoes for his siblings. The dealer flashed a wad of bills, pulled out some cocaine and asked Sixto to sell drugs at his elementary school. But the boy, who was warned about drugs in a school program run by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies, refused, then told the store owner, who chased the man away.

An avalanche of praise and rewards followed. Sixto, who has severe dyslexia, began blooming in the classroom. Thiessen says that as his grades and enthusiasm shot up, the boy’s self-confidence grew to the point where he now talks about going to college.

The seed was planted several months ago when Sixto’s class was invited to tour Cal State Long Beach and meet with learning-disabled college students who are earning degrees thanks to a special program that provides support services, equipment and instruction.

Since then, the university has adopted Sixto’s class at Los Robles Elementary School in Hacienda Heights and several benefactors have promised financial help so he can one day obtain a degree in mechanical engineering, Thiessen says.

“Yeah, I’m going to college,” says Sixto shyly, playing with a shoelace. “I never thought about college before.”

Although Sixto is determined to succeed, life keeps throwing up obstacles. He fell 20 feet out of a tree and the family--which has no medical insurance--had to spend hundreds of dollars for a hospital visit and X-rays. Luckily, Sixto was not seriously injured.

Someone stole the red bike Sixto received as a gift, and he worries about violence in his neighborhood, where children as young as 9 have been recruited into gangs. Still uncomfortable talking about himself, Sixto prefers sprinting across the playground to chase a soccer ball. But show him a mechanical gadget and Sixto becomes entranced.

Immediately, he wants to push all the buttons, pull it apart, understand what makes it tick. Teachers say he displays a lively sense of humor, a strong will and mechanical aptitude.

Julie West, the teacher’s aide who works with Sixto, invited him home one day, thinking he would like to explore the avocado groves behind her property.

Instead, he headed right for the tool room. “He was absolutely fascinated with it, he wanted to know what’s this, how to use that,” West recalls. “He even tried the electric drill. You could just see the wheels moving as he figured everything out. He has quickness and dexterity.”

Sixto, who is in the sixth grade, reads at the second-grade level. But that is an improvement over last year, when he could barely read or write.

During one reading session, Sixto slowly and hesitantly sounded out a sentence in his English class. But he did it flawlessly: “She said: Stand still or you will slip,” the boy read.

“Excellent sounding-out,” West praised him, but Sixto only frowned and turned away.

There are nine students in this special education classroom, all suffering from various learning disabilities and, within their ranks, Sixto is well-liked.

Many of his classmates display a newfound respect for Sixto. Parents come up to the boy and say, “Oh, you’re Sixto Perez.” He is famous, having been interviewed on CNN, on dozens of radio and TV shows and for newspapers, including La Opinion. A TV movie has been proposed. Arsenio Hall sent a white stretch limo to whisk him from the La Puente trailer park to Hollywood to appear on his show.

When the talk-show host slipped the boy $250, Sixto used part of the money to take his mom, Thiessen and the limousine driver out for hamburgers. But he soon grew sick of the media attention and ran to hide in his room when TV crews showed up.

His mother, is more sagacious. “I tell him, Sixto, this has brought good things for our family. They are honoring you.”