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Providing the Key to Unlock Hope

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On the second day of the looting, I stood in front of a video-stereo store in a shopping center at the corner of Slauson and Crenshaw not far from my house. I had gone down to take a look, partly as a reporter, mostly out of curiosity. People were pouring out of the store, loaded down with stacks of movie videos and stereo equipment.

As I watched them leaving with their bounty, larceny crept into my heart. There were no police around. It would have been nothing for me to walk in and take something. But then “morality” kicked in. With my luck, I thought, somebody would capture me on videotape and I’d end up on the evening news.

I would be publicly disgraced. A reputation that I had earned over years would be flushed down the drain for one rash, stupid act. I’d lose my job. With no income, I could lose my house and my car. There would be no money for movies and concerts and expensive dinners. A vacation would be out. There would be no money for my son’s college education.

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And all because of a video tape or stereo equipment that I could easily purchase.

I was relating this story a few months ago to a friend, Donovan Green, a manger for Pacific Bell, active USC alumnus, and father figure to many of the young men he coaches on his summer league basketball teams.

“You know, Ron,” he said. “I had the same experience. For a split second it entered my mind.”

What, I asked Donovan, was different about us and the people who looted. We weren’t necessarily any more moral or honest than they were.

“It wasn’t worth it for us,” Donovan said. “We had something to lose.

*

Two years ago, Tracey Davis, a high school dropout who was “just hanging out,” was one of the people who didn’t feel like he had anything to lose. So he took something, “a sweat shirt, some jackets.”

That was before he ran into the Los Angeles Urban League Automotive Training Center. The center, funded for three years by Toyota, trains men and women in automotive mechanics and puts them to work.

Earlier this week, the center celebrated its first year in business and its 100th graduate. Davis, 19, graduated with honors.

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When Marion McGee first saw Davis in February, he didn’t have high hopes.

“He looked like a ‘banger, his pants sagging, his hair a certain way,” McGee said. “But he did everything I asked him to do, and more,” including going back to school to get his high school diploma.

As far as Davis is concerned, the program saved his life, and maybe even somebody else’s.

“It was 10 of us who were supposed to come down, but only four of us did,” he recalled. “One guy didn’t pass the test. The rest of them are now either dead or in jail. If it hadn’t been for the program, I’d probably be just like them. If I hadn’t gotten something right then, I probably would have started doing something else, like robbery or selling drugs, anything to make money.”

He’s now working at Toyota Lexus Service, an automotive repair shop in Gardena. The first real job he’s ever had.

Working alongside him is Carlos Noyes, 19, another graduate of the Automotive Training Center. Noyes probably would have been in the streets looting two years ago as well, but he was in jail that day.

Noyes’ vocation had been armed robbery.

“I didn’t have no job or nothing,” said Noyes, who finished high school while in jail. “I tried a number of times, but I just kept on getting denied, and I got tired of it, so I did the little ‘jacks’ for quick money.”

He stumbled onto the program when he took a friend down to apply and decided to take the entrance exam himself. He passed and was accepted. And now, he’s in a different world. Gone are most of the homies, replaced by a new set of friends, the striving graduates of the center.

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“Some of my old friends can’t accept the fact that I’m working,” he said. “A lot of them say things like, ‘He’s a punk now.’ The ones that call me a punk, I just ask them, ‘Are you going to pay me for kicking it out here on the streets? You going to pay me for claiming this hood or claiming that hood?’ I don’t want to go back out there. There’s nothing out there.”

*

There were about 60 graduates attending the anniversary celebration. The vast majority had never been gang members, had never been in jail, had never been in trouble. They were just men and women searching desperately for the key that would unlock the doors to opportunity. They praised the school, the instructors.

It was an inspiring ceremony. Men and women who had been lost had suddenly found something special--themselves. And they told me that no matter the adversity, that was something they would never again lose.

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