A Brotherly Shove : Success: Kevin Moore says his early friendship with David Anderson helped put him on the path to medical school. The pair were matched up 20 years ago through a Big Brothers program.

Kevin Moore did not have much to look forward to--until he found a stranger to look up to.

The fatherless 8-year-old watched as his mother scraped by in one of Los Angeles’ toughest neighborhoods. He saw his two older brothers on a downward spiral: One would soon be murdered, the other would be lost to drugs.

Then computer tax whiz David Anderson stepped in.

The man from El Segundo befriended the boy from South-Central Los Angeles, introducing him to museums and camping trips, professional football and pizza parlors.

The friendship thrived for more than four years. When it ended in the mid-1970s, Kevin was enrolled in a junior high school program for gifted students and the newly married Anderson was settling down to raise his own family.

In time, however, Kevin would become a high school dropout. Anderson’s marriage would break up and he would move to Northern California.

Seventeen years later, the pair has been reunited on a happy note.

Anderson was a guest of honor this week at a Crenshaw district party celebrating Moore’s graduation from the Stanford University School of Medicine.

“He had a positive influence on me,” said Moore, now 30. “Who knows? The time Dave was with me might have been the time I went into a gang.”

Said the 49-year-old Anderson: “I was very surprised when he tracked me down. But he said he was graduating and felt I contributed to him going on the right path.”

Stanford officials said Moore will be near the top of his class of 84 on commencement day, June 13. Starting July 1, Dr. Kevin Moore will specialize in emergency room medicine at Atlanta’s Grady Memorial Hospital as he begins a three-year residency, which will be administered by Emory University.

Moore and Anderson praise the Big Brothers program that united them in 1972. The organization has linked 8,500 pairs of boys and men in Los Angeles over the past 38 years, including 520 current pairs.

Anderson said he signed up with the Big Brothers program after having spent four years as a big brother to a boy in San Francisco. That experience had been a positive one, and Anderson discovered that Los Angeles officials had a waiting list of boys looking for older role models.

There was no awkwardness when he met Kevin, then a skinny boy with a large Afro and a quick wit.

“He was a kick. No matter what you discussed, he was with you. He was very sharp and perceptive,” recalled Anderson, now retired and living in Napa. “He was good to be around. He and I hit it off.”

Moore said he never noticed if the sight of a white man and a black boy raised eyebrows 21 years ago.

“It was the first time I’d ever been around white folks,” Moore said. “I’d seen them on the streets, but never had any interaction. I’d watched ‘The Brady Bunch’ on TV and thought that all white people were rich, had great manners and were smarter than the rest of us.”

He said his friendship with Anderson showed him that people are alike.

“That was a huge thing for me to learn--definitely a lesson that paid off,” Moore said. “It’s hard to succeed in life if you think other people are better than you.”

Self-esteem was crucial for Moore after he became bored with studies at Dorsey and Inglewood high schools and dropped out before his senior year. He landed a job as a bank teller.

“At the bank, I was working under people who weren’t using their brains,” he said. “I realized that because they had college degrees, they had power over me. I realized that without a degree, nobody would ever take me seriously.”

Moore enrolled at West Los Angeles College and graduated from Occidental College. At Stanford’s medical school, he became a student leader and worked as a mentor for disadvantaged high school students in the Palo Alto area, said university spokesman Mike Goodkind.

Moore decided to go into medicine for the good of the community and for personal satisfaction, he said.

Moore credits his mother, Brenda, for his academic skill.

“She bought a set of World Book encyclopedias for me when I was 5,” he said. “I remember the day the lady came by selling them--we were on welfare and we spent money that we really didn’t have. But my mother wanted me to have them. I read the World Books until I was 16. I’d sit in front of the TV set and read them for fun.”

It was Brenda Moore who sought help from Big Brothers for her son.

“I could see the mistakes I was making with my two other sons. I saw that Kevin needed a strong father figure, a role model, around,” said Moore, who is now a nurse.

“They asked me if I minded if his big brother was white. I told them I wasn’t teaching Kevin prejudice, that we’re all brothers.”

Moore doubts that he would have dropped out of high school had he continued with Anderson. He said his friend would have probably steered him directly to college admissions offices.

In Atlanta, Moore plans to become involved with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and to do research into violence prevention. Eventually, he hopes to teach emergency medicine.

For now, his sights are on graduation day at Stanford.

His mother will be there to applaud as he receives his degree. So will his big brother.