Turning Lives Around : Programs in which youngsters serve as volunteers give them a chance to help others--and themselves.

He’s street-savvy and 20, going on 40, his upper torso emblazoned with assorted tattoos--symbols of a world he tries to escape but which stalks his every step.

When 280-pound Gilbert Espinoza speaks to teen-agers in the San Fernando Valley, they’d better listen.

You see, Espinoza is a gang member who shoots straight--from the lip and the heart, armed only with a stockpile of free advice whose value is priceless.

By serving the Volunteer Center of San Fernando Valley’s Teen Outreach Program, he tries to salvage lives of youngsters who may be flirting with the same wrong turns and dead ends that dogged Espinoza’s own tortuous life in East Los Angeles.

In a society awash with headlines of gore and greed, of youngsters warring in the streets and asking “What’s in it for me?” Espinoza offers a flip side, a way out, a testimonial aimed at helping young people grapple with those consequences.

So too, in their own ways, do teen-agers Joannie Yoon of Van Nuys, Claudia Anzora of Lancaster and David Simonds of Quartz Hill, among countless other youngsters in the San Fernando, Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys.

They ask no quarter. They expect not even a “thank-you.” All they glean is a rush of self-esteem from enriching someone’s life here, from straightening out another life there, from acquiring a skill or knowledge that may brighten their own futures.

“I feel so good about myself when I do these kinds of things,” says Joannie, 16, a Van Nuys High School junior who volunteers at Valley Presbyterian Hospital and assists youngsters and adults with arts and crafts in a program called L.A. Works.

“I try to get my friends to go too--and that gives me satisfaction because I feel I’m helping my friends get the same feelings I’m getting.”

Adds Claudia, 17, a senior at Paraclete High School who has logged more than 1,200 hours as a volunteer at Antelope Valley Hospital: “People at school say to me: ‘Oh, my God! Why do you do that? You don’t get paid!’ It’s fun. I’d rather be here than sitting at home doing nothing.”

For David, 17, a straight-A student and varsity swimmer at Quartz Hill High School, volunteering in the emergency room of Antelope Valley Hospital nurtures his ambition of becoming a cosmetic surgeon.

“I’ve been doing this for four years,” he says. “I think it really pays off in terms of what you want to do.”

His supervisor, Margie Sly, who directs the hospital’s junior volunteer program, laughs as she nods toward David, the cosmetic surgeon-to-be.

“He’s going to come back here when I’m 40 and give me a deal,” she says.

Volunteering in her program is so popular, Sly says, that more than 120 Antelope Valley youngsters, ages 14 to 18, participate--in tasks such as caring for newborns in the nursery, assisting bedridden elderly and creating computer printouts of standardized forms for doctors. Another 100 teen-agers are on the program’s waiting list, she says.

“It looks good on their college applications, and it’s good for job applications,” Sly says of volunteering. “Most of our kids who apply for jobs usually end up getting the job. The employer looks at that and says, ‘My gosh, they gave time to their community. They’re involved.’ ”

Many youngsters in the program improve their grades at school, she adds, and more than half pursue careers in medicine--as doctors, nurses, paramedics, pharmacists, pediatricians, veterinarians and respiratory and physical therapists.

And male participants such as David don’t exactly complain that the ratio of girls to boys in the program is 20 to 1.

“You can look at the whole list of girls in Ms. Sly’s office,” he says. “You don’t even have to ask them for their phone numbers!”

At the Teen Outreach Program’s offices in Panorama City, meanwhile, coordinator Rick Tamura says volunteering dramatically changes many teen-agers’ lives for the better.

“It’s just as simple,” he says, “as someone asking them, ‘What are you doing this afternoon?’ and the teen-ager being able to say, ‘Oh, I have to go to work at the radio station, or the education center,’ or wherever.

“It gives them a different perspective on life. I think it’s the greatest thing that’s happened to these kids.”

Espinoza, whom Tamura brought into the program, says he dropped out of school after the 10th grade to join the front lines of gang-banging and crack cocaine dealing.

“I tell them that the streets ain’t no future, to keep going straight, to keep going to school,” says Espinoza, now a Teen Outreach Program advisory board member who says he straightened out when he served as an extras coordinator for “American Me,” a 1992 anti-gang film starring Edward James Olmos.

“You think they don’t want to get involved? Believe me, they do! I’ve got friends who just got out of jail. They want to start volunteering and talking to the kids--about what’s going on in the jails and on the streets--because when we join a gang, we take it as a game.

“But when you’re inside, you realize it’s not a game. You face the consequences.”

He insists that “there’s no more gang-banging for me because there ain’t no future in it,” but also that he hasn’t abandoned his gang companions.

“See, I’m still a gang member because once you’re a gang member, I believe you’re always going to be one,” he says. “But I don’t do the stupid things I did before.”

Indeed, Espinoza hopes to tour the nation with Olmos and others, showing a documentary video produced by Olmos titled “Lives and Hazard,” about his and other gang members’ experiences. Espinoza also wants to share his message with fifth- and sixth-graders, particularly those who are inclined to join gangs.

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“I’m not going to change them,” Espinoza says. “They’ll only change if they want to change themselves.”

In his own neighborhood, he recalls, he counseled a 10-year-old boy who wanted to drop out of school, telling him about his own work on the set of “American Me.”

“One day,” Espinoza says, “he came over and said, ‘Hey, Gil, I started going back to school and I got a certificate!’ ”

“For what?”

“For a speech that I gave,” the boy said. “I got first place.”

“What was the speech about?”

“About the future and about how I think the gangs should change and the city should change.”

“Where did you learn all that?”

“I remembered everything you told me.”

Espinoza smiles. “That’s what keeps me going,” he says. “If I can change one life, that’s good enough for me.”