Troubled Youths Get Lesson in Responsibility, Courage : Oxnard: A unique, federally funded summer-school program pays poverty-level, at-risk youngsters $4.25 an hour to take classes and do community work.

The moment of truth for Lenny Lucero, a 17-year-old high school dropout working in a graffiti removal program: Emblazoned on a wall in front of him was the scrawled insignia of a familiar Oxnard gang--his own.

Ignoring the bonds of brotherhood and the risks of retaliation, Lenny dipped his brush in a can of white paint and obliterated the graffiti. In one courageous swipe, he broke with his past and started thinking about his future.

“If they ask me what I did that for,” Lenny said, “I’ll tell them it was my job.”

For the first time in their lives, Lenny and dozens of other troubled youth are learning the discipline and strength they will need to be responsible, employed adults. Taking part in a unique federally funded summer-school program, they are gaining experience in the working world while at the same time restarting their education.

Run by El Concilio del Condado de Ventura, a nonprofit Latino advocacy organization in Oxnard, the seven-week program pays poverty-level kids $4.25 an hour--minimum wage--to take remedial math and English classes in the morning and work in the community in the afternoon. Weekly workshops, more like group encounter sessions, build self-esteem.

The money gives the students the freedom to go back to school. For almost all of them--many former or current gang members with criminal records--the program is their last best chance to straighten out their lives while they are still young.

“These kids have the potential to go the wrong way,” said program coordinator Kathy Marrujo-Thurman, “but we’re here to help them make the right choices.”

The 71 youths enrolled this summer are either in the Mentor Program or the Future Leaders of Youth Tomorrow (FLYT), both for males 16 to 21, or in the Teen Mom Program. Most of the youths are referred by their probation officers or law enforcement agencies.

“It takes a lot of courage for a lot of these guys to come into the program,” Marrujo-Thurman said. “Their friends say, ‘Hey, how come you’re not driving around with us? It’s summer. Why not come with us and get in trouble?’ ”

The FLYT program is potentially risky for the boys. Although some of their community work is done in the bucolic environs of Lake Casitas--cleaning barbecue pits, clearing trails--the boys often have to go into their own neighborhoods “and are put in the position of being hassled,” Marrujo-Thurman said.

Recently, a graffiti removal crew at an Oxnard park was confronted by neighborhood youths known to some of them. A conflict developed. Two boys squared off and a fight seemed likely until Linda Saucedo, a wiry 35-year-old program supervisor, stepped between the pair and diffused the situation.

Saucedo is typical of the commitment of the 12-member staff but her story is hardly typical. A drug addict from the age of 22, with tattoos running down both forearms, she was in and out of prison and treatment programs before going straight nearly three years ago. A graduate of Oxnard College, she feels her connection to the street helps her relate to the students.

“I talk their language,” she said. “I walk their walk.”

Eliminating their own gangs’ graffiti, she said, is the first step the students take toward change. “The kids think differently now,” she said. “Before, it was ‘No, we can’t do this. It’s against barrio ethics.’ Now they do it because it’s their job. We planted that seed.”

Despite the checkered history of many students--”We’re not working with choirboys,” Marrujo-Thurman said--El Concilio has probably had fewer discipline problems than the average high school in the two years the FLYT and Teen Mom programs have existed, she said. And no students have been kicked out.

As in regular summer school, students cannot miss more than three classes without being expelled. For some students, the penalty for ditching class is a warrant for their arrest. These are students who are on furlough from a Ventura County juvenile facility and have to report to El Concilio by 8 a.m.

A warrant has been issued for only one of her students, but it was based on a misunderstanding that was later cleared up, Marrujo-Thurman said. The program is designed to get the students to make commitments they can keep and it also acclimates them to a structured daily routine.

“This helps me get used to getting up early and going to work,” Lenny said. “Now I can get a job.”

In trouble with the law since childhood, Lenny has rearranged his lifestyle since starting the program. “Now I go home early because I’m tired instead of going to Colonia with my friends and doing something wrong,” he said.

Lenny, who is planning to go back to Oxnard High School and graduate, is in the FLYT program. Older youths who handle responsibility well are put in the Mentor Program. Now in its first year, the program enables students to work alongside people in the business community learning clerical skills and how to deal with the public.

Art Mendez, 19, works as a receptionist for an Oxnard company. Even though he has been kicked out of more schools than he can remember, he has suddenly developed a thirst for knowledge.

“I’m older now and see education as important,” Mendez said. “It feels better to be in class. I pay attention now so I can learn.”

The birth of a daughter two months ago may have had something to do with his newfound attitude. “I want to do the best I can for her,” he said. “After work I go home and stay with her and my girlfriend and kick back. I don’t see my friends as much.”

The Teen Mom Program works with expectant mothers and mothers with babies. The girls do office work after taking remedial classes in the morning. The workshops seek to empower them as women and help them avoid bad relationships with men.

“How many of you feel he has control over your lives?” guest counselor Rosa Moreno asked a class. “He told me not to go to college,” a girl said.

“He’s 23 and still acts like a young gangbanger,” said another.