Commitment to Clinton Led to Commitment to Serve : Youth: California girl joins army of volunteers to highlight the potential of President-elect’s national service program.

Not far from the U.S. Capitol but light years from the exclusive black-tie galas that are such hot tickets here this week, Gia Daniller spent Monday with an army of other young people laboring to transform a long-abandoned theater into a model of public service.

Daniller is a 22-year-old college graduate who helped canvass Los Angeles campuses for Bill Clinton last fall. She has come to this red-white-and-blue bedecked city seeking a position in the incoming Administration or a congressional office or public interest group.

But the spirited Californian hasn’t waited for a job offer to pitch in.

In a bid to highlight Clinton’s commitment to a national service program, Daniller helped fellow young activists organize an event intended to produce concrete results and, simultaneously, prod other idealists to undertake similar ventures in their communities.

It was billed as an “urban barn-raising.” Amid the blare of hip-hop music, about 1,000 young people decked out in blue jeans and sweat shirts took up paint brushes, shovels and brooms in a low-income, black neighborhood in northeast Washington to begin to turn the cavernous Atlas Theater into a community center, coffee shop and performance space.

“Everyone is so psyched to work,” Daniller said as members of community youth groups from Washington and elsewhere toiled around her. “No one wants to stand around.”

In the space of two hours on a bright, frigid afternoon, the previously rundown front lobby brightened under a new coat of cream-colored paint and the black walls of the Art Deco theater came alive with orange, green, blue and red murals. Spread out on the floor, workers of all races knelt to create abstract canvasses.

“It’s setting an example of what you can do when people join together,” Daniller said from beneath a white work cap. “The psychological impact--all the people who came to the inaugural for festivities and fun and really wanted to do something will see what can be done.”

Daniller, whose parents live in Tarzana, is a University of Pennsylvania graduate who helped register 10,000 students and raise more than $75,000 for the Clinton campaign during two frenetic months leading up to Nov. 3. She moved here last month--drawn by the allure of a President-elect for whom she has unabashed reverence.

“I would not have come here if he had not won,” Daniller said. “This can already be a disillusioning place.”

For the past three weeks, she helped secure donated supplies, distribute leaflets and plan Monday’s event. She become involved through her political work with Steve Barr, co-founder of Rock the Vote, which seeks to increase the participation of 18- to 24-year-olds in politics. Barr, a Venice resident, was a driving force behind the national service project.

The Atlas Theater was donated for the first year by the H Street Community Development Corp., a local organization seeking to revitalize the neighborhood--a mixture of neatly tended row houses, boarded-up buildings and small businesses. In subsequent years, the rent will be a nominal $5,000.

Eventually, program sponsors say, this “generational space” may include such things as a health clinic, day care center and national think tank for issues concerning young people.

“There are millions of Gia’s,” said Barr, himself a relatively ancient 33. “Gia shows you what can happen when a young person is exposed to organizations that respect and challenge her and include her in the creation of something.”

During the campaign, Clinton proposed a national service plan that would allow students to work off some of their college loans by taking reduced-pay jobs as teachers, nurses or other types of public servants. Last week, Clinton named senior campaign aide Eli Segal to head the effort “to recreate the spirit of service and commitment among the young that President Kennedy sparked with the Peace Corps.” Segal stopped by the Atlas Theater on Monday.

Daniller got a taste of the problems that she hopes Clinton will address when she embarked in a friend’s car to purchase 100 pairs of work gloves. A gaunt woman approached the car, motioning toward her mouth and pleading for money to buy food.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, I don’t have any money. I just have a credit card,” a shaken Daniller told her.