So Many Youngsters, So Few Like Him : * Richard Chipres Makes It His Business to Befriend, Counsel Teen-Agers at Video Arcade

You don’t expect to get philosophy in a video arcade, but the one run by Richard Chipres in La Habra is a special place, run by a man showing how one person can make a difference, however small, in working with gang members.

Chipres figures that the problems of some of today’s teen-agers--drugs, gangs, graffiti--can be solved by good parents. If children look for love at home and don’t find it, they seek it from their friends. “Gangs are just families for kids who give up on their parents,” he says.

So when he opened Leo’s Arcade nine months ago, he decided to make it more than just a place for people to pop quarters into machines. It wasn’t easy getting past the look and the style of the customers, some of whom belonged to gangs. But Chipres stuck it out, for which he deserves everyone’s thanks.

The arcade gives teen-agers a place to get in off the streets, have fun and get some advice if they want it. It’s well enough known to be neutral territory for the gangs, and anyone wanting to stay and play has to enter without graffiti tools, like marking pens. Chipres doesn’t even have a change machine, forcing players to come to him for quarters and giving him a chance to get to know their names. After the names, come the talks, the pouring out of problems and the offering of advice. One teen told a reporter that while most adults talk at him and his friends, “Richard listens.”

Chipres knows the value of good parents, too. He and his wife, Angela, take in foster children, some of whom have been abused. He sets rules and enforces them. Teens who fight at the arcade are banished. But Chipres has also been known to loan a customer a few dollars, or put in a good word with a parent or parole officer.

The gang problem is complex, and solutions are hard. It’s good to see one man doing what he can, helping his community by helping individuals, one at a time.