Helping Offenders Beat Law of Averages : Internships: Pepperdine professor’s ‘Success Team’ program gives troubled youths a second chance. He has helped two dozen turn their lives around.

Three years ago Heather, 22, got in her car while high on drugs. She caused a collision that killed a pregnant woman and was convicted of manslaughter.

Richard, 18, was convicted last year on a drug-related felony and received a 13-month sentence.

But because of the efforts of a Pepperdine University law professor, their stories do not end there.

William Haney Jr. is trying to help them turn their lives around.

Haney, 52, put Heather and Richard on his “Success Team,” an informal internship and seminar program he began seven years ago to give youthful offenders a second chance.

He said he hopes to help young people find the path to success. The program, called “Community Development and Training Program,” is aimed at youths near the end of their sentences with good incarceration records.

Haney spends as many as 80 hours a week on his project at three youth facilities, one in Camarillo and two in Malibu.

He scouts out promising youths who need guidance and arranges to get them into seminars he conducts at the facilities on topics such as finding a job and being successful in college.

“I’m addicted to it,” he said. “When you see young people like this, you just hate to leave them in the system,” he said.

He estimates that he has helped about 25 youths over the years.

Heather is one of four youths interning with Haney.

A baby-faced blonde with a quick smile and a gentle manner, she started taking drugs at 17 because of a “lack of direction,” she said.

The accident happened in May, 1990, just after she dropped out of college. She went to Sybil Brand Institute for nine months, then to the California Youth Authority, where she is completing the last few months of her sentence and receiving drug counseling. When she talked about the accident, Heather cried, saying she wished she could let the dead woman’s husband know how sorry she is. “I said it to him before but I don’t know if he believed me,” she said.

“My biggest difficulty is getting her to forgive herself,” Haney said.

He takes her from CYA to Pepperdine every Tuesday, and puts her to work filing, answering phones and making copies. His wife, Sandra, handles the “Dress for Success” end of the “Success Team”; she bought Heather a suit, shoes and jewelry for work instead of the regulation blue T-shirt or sweat shirt, jeans, white socks and white tennis shoes she wears at CYA.

Haney also helped Heather fill out college applications, and last week he found her a job in the Pepperdine Law Library.

The CYA staff supports Heather’s participation. “She’s exposed to a very positive environment that she probably would not have on the street, let alone in an institution,” said CYA senior youth counselor Martha Barrientos.

Richard, well-spoken, well-mannered and thoughtful, endured difficult family circumstances. His father is incarcerated, his brother was paralyzed from the waist down in a drive-by shooting, and his mother has never visited him since he was locked up. In and out of youth camps since he was 12, Richard was so heavily connected to gangs that when he arrived at the Camp Gonzalez facility in Malibu, he knew 200 of the 900 people there.

He said he has committed more gang- and drug-related crimes than he can bear to admit. “Anyone can gangbang. It’s so easy,” he said. “There was nothing else to do.”

But Haney saw Richard trying to teach himself how to type with a book and an old typewriter while the rest of the youths at Camp Gonzalez were watching TV. “He’s the best kid I have ever seen. He’s really creative. I think he is mentally gifted,” Haney said.

He gave Richard an internship in his program.

Three weeks ago, Richard was released from Camp Gonzalez to Haney’s custody. Richard has been living in the Haney home ever since.

“He has fit in beautifully,” said Sandra Haney, who often drives him to his two evening classes at a community college. During the rides, he studies and asks for help with vocabulary development. “He’s excited about education. With everything I deal with him on, he’s hungry to learn,” she said.

“He goes almost everywhere with me,” Haney said. “We have some deep talks. I care for him like my own son.”

Heather and Richard see Haney’s involvement as a blessing because they are exposed to positive outlets they would not otherwise have: “I used to watch TV a lot and see actors doing stuff like working good jobs. I said, ‘Nah, that’s another world.’ Now I have access to that world. I’m glad that someone took an interest in me and went to the trouble to help me out,” Richard added.

Heather thinks Haney has given her a shot at success. “I don’t know if I could achieve a professional career if I didn’t have someone like Professor Haney. It’s still hard for me to think and talk about what I have caused. But he helps me look toward the future.”

Both of them hope for bright futures: Heather would like to study at Pepperdine, and Richard said, “I have a feeling that I will end up in law school.”