A Trigger to Trouble : Carrying a gun at school in L.A. can bring tough consequences. For three students, the stories are different . . . but the task of rebuilding their lives is the same. : ‘He made a big mistake. Everybody has good times and bad times.’

At 13, Gerardo Herrera is a tinkerer with a teen-ager’s fascination for guns.

But on Feb. 24, his curiosity got the best of him when a friend slipped a broken .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol into his hand in a crowded hallway at Richard Henry Dana Junior High School in San Pedro.

Gerardo had arranged to buy the gun for $25. But after he could not come up with the money, he passed it along to someone on the street who could pay.

School officials learned about the soured transaction a day later and called the two students to the office. Gerardo told school officials that he never considered the gun a threat because it was broken.

“He told me it didn’t work, so then I told him that I want(ed) to buy it from him,” the seventh-grader wrote in a letter to school officials.

The explanation did nothing to alter his fate in a district suffering the aftershocks of two shooting deaths--one days earlier at Reseda High School and the other nearly a month before at Fairfax High School.

In Gerardo’s case, no gun was found, and neither student was arrested. But their statements and written confessions were enough for them to be expelled. Gerardo was suspended from Dana and allowed to attend an “interim educational program” at Cooper High School until an expulsion review committee made its final recommendation to the school board.

Gerardo was questioned by the review committee.

“Why did you have the gun at school?”

“I wanted to take it apart,” he replied.

“Didn’t you know it was dangerous?”

“I wouldn’t have bought it if I thought it worked.”

In May, Gerardo was called to the principal’s office at Cooper and told he could no longer attend school because the expulsion had been finalized.

Maria Reyes called the school to determine what options were available for her grandson.

“They told me that all the doors of Los Angeles schools were closed to him,” Reyes said. “They said you can try to get him in school in Orange County or at a private school. But that’s not possible. We don’t have money and we don’t have transportation.”

Gerardo stayed home.

“Every morning, he has breakfast and watches television,” she said. “We don’t let him leave the house until after 3 p.m., when other kids are home. And even then he is not allowed to play on the street.”

Gerardo also occupied himself with his main love--fixing things. He repaired a broken radio and toyed around with a motorcycle in the back yard. His room was cluttered with model airplanes and toy cars.

His grandmother says he’s a natural tinkerer, a boy who is mischievous but not a troublemaker. Although his grades had been slipping, Gerardo was not a gang member, had no criminal record and never missed a day of school.

“He made a big mistake,” Reyes said. “Everybody has good times and bad times. This is a bad time, but he will survive this.”

After a month, an attorney with the Los Angeles Legal Aid Foundation appealed the decision and forced the district to withdraw the expulsion order because of a due process error.

“Most of these kids (being expelled for gun possession) are just kids,” said Carol K. Smith, the Legal Aid attorney who handled the case. “They are being asked to understand things and have absolutely no lapses in judgment. But that is why they are in our public schools: to learn.”

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