Dying Man’s Gift Holds Promise for 6th-Grader : Legacy: When Victor Maul saw Rudy Campbell interviewed during the riots, he broke down and cried. Then he decided to set aside $15,000 for the teen-ager’s college education.

Only the Los Angeles riots and network television could have linked Rudy Campbell with Victor Maul.

Rudy, 13, lives with eight other youngsters and three adults in a three-bedroom apartment in Lincoln Heights near downtown Los Angeles.

Maul lives in San Francisco. He is a 47-year-old former computer technician for Travelers Insurance who is dying of AIDS.

As the riots started April 29, when Rudy left the back gate of Virgil Junior High School on Vermont Avenue, a CBS news crew was waiting.

“They came right up to me and started asking how did I feel about what was going on,” he says. “I answered them while I started walking home.

“Some other people came from the front side of the school and saw the interviewers and said, ‘What are you doing here?’ They started swinging at the cameras with bats.

“Someone came around the corner with a news van and told me to get in. . . . They brought me home.”

The next day the crew interviewed Rudy again outside his school and in his apartment.

His voice overriding vivid video pictures of violence and looting, the sixth-grader told a national audience that the scene around him made no sense. He also worried that his school might be harmed and his education postponed.

“I’m going to see half the school burned down,” he said.

Maul, watching in San Francisco, was touched. Many residents lose their hopes and values in rough neighborhoods, he says, but this articulate youngster had retained his faith in learning.

“He had kept his eye on what it was going to take to get out of there--education,” Maul says. “I sat there and blubbered. It took me five or 10 minutes to quit.”

A short time later a doctor told Maul he had only a few months to live. He wrote a will directing that $15,000 be put aside to provide a college education for Rudy.

“America has been good to me,” he says. “This is one way I’m going to pay back this country a little. Rudy could come out and be a real negative to society. I’m trying to make it so he comes out a positive.”

Friday, Maul visited Los Angeles lawyer Glenn Sonnenberg to draw up the papers to carry out his wishes. Sonnenberg is on the board of the Fulfillment Fund, which had been asked to administer viewer donations for Rudy (some other small donations came in to CBS). The Century City-based organization provides mentors and college scholarships for disadvantaged youth. Saturday, Maul and Rudy went to Disneyland together.

“This money isn’t going to get the kid a private school,” Maul says, “but it will draw interest for several years, and he’ll be able to go to a state school and get a good education.”

That prospect excites Rudy, a small, soft-spoken youngster who likes science and history and wants to be a football player.

“I’ve got something to work for,” he says. “I just want to make it and get out of school. To do something.”

Rudy’s sister, Jeanie Kurazawa, 24, is raising her five children and two others whose mother is in prison for selling drugs.

Rudy and his brother, David, 15, have lived with her for four years, since they began feeling that they were treated unfairly in the home of their stepgrandmother. Rudy’s mother lost custody of the boys when she left Rudy, then 2, and David, then 4, alone when she went to the hospital to give birth to another child, Kurazawa said.

The nine children are joined in the household by Kurazawa’s father and her fiancee.

Kurazawa moved the family from their north Vermont neighborhood after the riot. After three moves in four months, they came to this upper half of a duplex in Lincoln Heights.

Several tiles are missing from the kitchen floor and a sectional couch, a television and a dining table are the only furniture in the spacious living and dining rooms.

Graffiti covers neighborhood walls, and cars are scattered across lots and front yards. But a clear, crisp morning after recent rains offered a breathtaking view of the city skyline.

Because of the moves, Rudy’s school records are not together, so he won’t be able to enroll in new classes until February.

Kurazawa says that when Maul began calling them several months ago to talk about the scholarship, Rudy didn’t understand.

“He thought everything was a joke because he’s never had an opportunity like this. I explained that this is a chance for him to ensure a roof over his head, a good job to look forward to. That there are people like Victor Maul who will help. He was like ‘Wow!’ ”

“He’s a nice little boy,” says Maul. “He’s a little shy. He’s got to do better in school. He’s getting Cs, and Cs aren’t going to make it.

“We (Maul and the Fulfillment Fund) are seeing if we can’t get that straightened out and get a mentor working with him before he’s a freshman in high school.”

Although Maul regularly donates to charity, he’s never made a gift this large. He has savings and has withdrawn half the value of his life insurance policy.

Diagnosed as HIV-positive six years ago, his health started to fail last winter.

“I’m supposed to be dead,” he says. “Two months ago, I was in the hospital with pneumonia and a lung infection and really struggling.”

But he recovered. “I don’t look sick any more,” he says. “If you saw me, you wouldn’t know I have AIDS. You go through good and bad periods. Right now, I’m evidently going into a good time.”

He does not plan to become too involved in Rudy’s life.

“They don’t know me from Adam, and I don’t have any right to inject myself on their lifestyle,” he says.

“Plus, I can’t afford to get wrapped up in that family. I’m facing my own mortality. That takes precedence, to me anyway. My doctors tell me, ‘Don’t stress.’ And if I got involved trying to help the family more, there could be a big stress factor.

“I’m going to write a letter to be given to Rudy when he graduates college. It will say, ‘This gift was given to you by a stranger to help you. Now when you run into somebody who needs a hand, you help him.’ ”