Jiffy Lube Founder Tries to Help Juvenile Delinquents : Vision: The former football coach has taken over a Maryland reform school plagued by escapes, crowded conditions and violence against employees.

After proving that a reform school kid can become a millionaire, James Hindman wants to show juvenile delinquents they can be successful and that he can make a profit setting them straight.

The 58-year-old founder of Jiffy Lube has taken over one of the state of Maryland’s biggest headaches, the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School, a reform school plagued by escapes, crowded conditions and attacks on employees.

Hindman, who grew up in an Iowa reform school, said he knows firsthand about the potential promise of juvenile delinquents.

“I have a dream and a vision of what these kids can be, not what they have been,” said Hindman of his latest venture, Youth Services International. “I tell them, I’ve been where you are and I know a way out.”

Hindman’s proposal to help juvenile delinquents while making a profit may seem like the rantings of a dreamer, but his record as a dreamer is impressive.

The stocky, tough-talking entrepreneur made his first million in the early 1970s buying and selling nursing homes. Semi-retired at 40, he landed the head football coaching job at Western Maryland College in Westminster in 1976, leading the team through four winning seasons.

One day, a player complained it was no longer possible for an average person to become a millionaire, Hindman said.

“He said, ‘I’m just going to work at Social Security because no one can become rich anymore.’ I said, ‘What kind of pinko told you that? I’ll do it and take a lot of you fellas with me.”’

In 11 years, Hindman built Jiffy Lube from an eight-store chain to the nation’s dominant quick lube franchiser with about 1,000 outlets, although he accumulated about $150 million in debt in the process.

In 1990, Pennzoil bought an 80% stake in publicly held Jiffy Lube for $35 million. Hindman received $1.3 million and about $250,000 a year for five years in consulting fees.

Now Hindman says he wants to pay back society and once again prove wrong the doubters by making Youth Services International a success. The company has about 665 youths under its care at juvenile correctional facilities in Maryland, Iowa, Tennessee and Utah.

Carol Hyman, a spokeswoman for the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services, said it is too early to tell how things are going at the Hickey School. But state officials are pleased with the work Hindman’s business has been doing at the Victor H. Cullen school in Sabillasville, Md., which Youth Services has been running for more than a year.

“They have a very caring staff. They work very well with the kids, teaching them responsibility and accountability,” Hyman said. “Overall, they’re doing a very good job.”

Hindman said he can turn a profit at the Hickey School even though the Rebound Corp. of Denver, another for-profit rehabilitation contractor, backed out of a three-year, $50-million-a-year contract to run the reform school after only 18 months.

Bill Botkin, director of marketing for Rebound, said overcrowding and promised improvements to the facility that were never made were the main reasons Rebound and the state decided to break the contract.

A reduction in the number of youths at Hickey and improvements made since Rebound left should make the job easier for Hindman’s company, Botkin said.

“I think they’ll have an easier time of it from a variety of standpoints,” Botkin said. “It’s still not an easy thing, but they have reduced the population.”

Hindman said he hopes to replicate the success of Sam Ferrainola, who heads the Glen Mills School for youth in Concordeville, Pa. The school has built successful academic and athletic programs using a positive peer pressure approach in which older students push younger students to achieve.

Ferrainola, however, said he doubts a for-profit corporation can care for youths as well as Glen Mills, a nonprofit corporation.

“We have four meals a day, a full-time dentist, 13 vocational programs and 14 varsity sports,” Ferrainola said. “Our kids who can get into college, we pay their first year.

“You try to do that if you’re a profit-making organization. Sure, he means to do well, but I don’t think he can run a school profitably on the model we are based on.”

Hindman said running the school profitably and rehabilitating its residents are not conflicting goals.

At the Hickey School, 70 cents of every dollar spent goes toward labor costs. Hindman says he wants to lower that by having students at the school do as much as they can, not only to save costs, but to instill a work ethic.

One example is the push mowers Youth Services brought in after learning the state wouldn’t allow youths at the school to use power mowers. Such chores are integrated into a reward system to teach students the value of hard work, he said.

“We have to give them the opportunity to see they can make their life better, and they’ll work in return to get it,” he said.

The second key to the equation is convincing students of the importance of education, Hindman said.

“I learned very early on that knowledge is power. Education gives you choices. I knew I had to learn to earn,” he said.