RESEDA : 2 Officers Are Helping Turn a Life Around

A 15-year-old boy who was born with a harelip and cleft palate will receive long-awaited surgery thanks to the efforts of two police officers who work as his instructors in a police-sponsored gang-intervention program.

Casey Crouch of Van Nuys was a straight F student who was on probation for shoplifting when he was referred to the West Valley police gang-intervention program, Jeopardy, based in Reseda and run by Los Angeles Police Officers Tony Newsom and Mike Piceno.

The officers researched services for cleft palates, located doctors willing to do the work for low MediCal reimbursements--or no reimbursement at all--and finally set up appointments for Casey with a medical team at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center in Sylmar, where doctors will perform a series of surgeries despite the fact that his family can’t afford to pay, said acting Associate Hospital Administrator Carolyn Rhee.

Since learning of his upcoming surgery, Casey has turned around his school record, earning three A’s a B and a C in his most recent semester, Newsom said. And he’s gone from being an occasional runaway who threatened to quit the Jeopardy program to a role model for other teen-agers who excels in karate, Newsom said. “He now knows there is light at the end of the tunnel.”

Casey said his earlier flirtations with “racking,” (shoplifting clothes then selling them for money), poor grades and crime stemmed from having nothing better to do and little hope.

“I went to class, but didn’t do the work,” he said. “I didn’t give a damn, I didn’t care. . . . Now I have something to look forward to.”

“Ninety-nine percent of his problems are his looks,” said his mother, Dotty Crouch.

Crouch said Casey’s mouth and nose were partially operated on at birth, but the operation was never completed. Casey needed to grow before further work could be done, she said. Later the family moved from Ohio to California and didn’t have the money to pay for what could be $25,000 to $30,000 in plastic surgery and braces. Crouch’s efforts to find doctors to accept MediCal or do the work free met with failure.