SOUTH BAY COVER STORY : Educating George : Family, counselors work to save Lennox teen-ager from lure of the streets. With their help, he has begun a turnaround.

George Lupersio, 14, wandered outside the Bird’s Nest, an airy glassed-in building at Loyola Marymount University. Inside, Latino students from Lennox Middle School who had spent the night at the college were enjoying a continental breakfast.

While they ate, college administrators encouraged them to apply to the university in a few years. If they go, most will be the first in their families to attend college.

Munching on a danish, George, an eighth-grader voted most popular by his class, surveyed Loyola’s campus and considered his options.

“See, at school I get respect for being smart, but on the street I get respect for being cool,” he said.

George, like many teen-agers who grow up in neighborhoods where gangs and gunfire punctuate the day, is at a crossroads.

As George sees it, his choices are to go to college or to join a gang. Over the past two years, the appeal of education and a career--possibly as a zoologist--have battled with the lure of street life.

Both the streets and school have their advantages, he said, but Loyola’s manicured lawns--as well as its growing numbers of Latino students--had dazzled George and his Lennox classmates. So that particular Sunday in March, education had the edge.

At other times, the bleak streets of Lennox, a poor community that serves as a port of entry for many Latino immigrants, has had the stronger pull.

Last year, George hung around with gangbangers on the streets of Lennox, even though he wasn’t in a gang himself, swore at peers and adults alike, tagged buildings--and loved it all.

A prized possession is a taped episode of the television show “Kidsview,” on which he appeared in a segment on Los Angeles taggers.

“Right now I’m thinking positive, and about my education,” George said. “But if I have to think negative, then I will.”

The tough talk comes from growing up in a tough family. When George was 6, his father, Armando Lupersio, died in a car accident, leaving George’s mother, Zoila, to support four children. Zoila, who is a supervisor at Dodd International, which provides food services to airlines, is often asleep when her children are home. So with their mother preoccupied and their father’s strict discipline gone, the children turned to the streets.

George’s oldest sister Miriam, 19, works as a teacher’s aide at Lennox Middle School and has stayed out of trouble. But his sister Briseida, 18, says she was a hard-core gang member for years, stealing, beating up people, running the streets of Los Angeles and causing trouble. Mara, 17, also joined a gang and now is detained in Camp Kirby for violation of parole stemming from an earlier conviction for attempted murder. Mara’s boyfriend, Rene Ramos, whom George loves like a brother, is in Camp Munz for violation of parole from an earlier assault conviction.

The turmoil in his life, at one point, made George almost unapproachable.

“There was a time that he was so angry that you couldn’t even talk to him,” said Lennox Middle School counselor Pam Rector. “He still has a lot of anger, but now at least you can talk to him while he’s in the middle of it.”

George’s turnaround has begun because adults have bombarded him with attention. Rector and Rachel Romero, another middle school counselor, say they find his mix of brains and rebellion irresistible; they treat him like a son. Briseida, who runs the library resource room at Lennox and goes to college at night, has set rules for him and monitors his every activity.

Also, Loyola Marymount University student Armando Mena has become a mentor and surrogate big brother, helping George with homework and showing him that he too can go to college.

George is simply too bright to let fall through the cracks, Romero and Rector say.

In September, 1992, his vocabulary was on a 10th-grade level, and the California Basic Skills Test showed him in the 78th percentile of eighth-graders nationally--a good showing for any school, but especially good at Lennox, where about 90% of students begin school with limited proficiency in English.

Last year, in the seventh grade, he was suspended three times and was put on academic probation. George finished that year with a D average. But this year, in part because of the extraordinary attention he has received, he has at least a B average. School officials say it may be higher by the time final calculations are done.

Lennox school officials say their mission is to keep students out of gangs and away from guns, to teach them to speak and write English well and to plant a yearning for college in their minds. But even for those with a mission, George is viewed as special.

He’s a boy they think they can save.

So Romero and Rector take him to plays: “Romeo and Juliet” and “Helen Keller.” To movies: “Schindler’s List,” among others. They take him out to eat and to events at Loyola Marymount University, where Rector is president of the alumni association.

The outings are rewarding for the adults too: Take him to a play, and he remembers the lines. Show him a book--”Seinlanguage” or “Monster”--and he’ll read it too--just to prove he can.

At “Schindler’s List,” Rector cried through the movie while George patted her on the head murmuring, “There, there.” The additional support, particularly palling around with Rector, has made George happier.

“This is going to sound kind of stupid, but I think I was so angry last year because I didn’t get enough attention,” he said. “I know it’s a dumb reason, but I think that’s it.”

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Helping George Lupersio means helping him manage his anger. His temper strikes as fast as a rattlesnake.

“I’m just always angry,” George said. “It never really goes away. But it’s getting better. It used to be that any little thing would make me mad and I’d stay that way the rest of the day. Now it goes away sometimes in a few hours.”

If George does not complete high school and go to college, it will be because his temper gets the better of him and he winds up in jail, Rector said.

“It’s the anger,” Rector said. “I don’t think he’s going to pick the path that leads to (gang life), but one angry moment could make him do something he could regret and could put him in the justice system.”

Little things, an insult or slight offense, can spark a fight. Criticism can make George moody for hours.

George and Briseida say they inherited their temper from their father, Armando Lupersio, who died eight years ago. He had an anger that blazed like lightning and could deliver a punishment that would be remembered for life. But he also loved to joke around and was proud of his children, of his daughters’ brains and beauty and, particularly, of his only son. With his death, the joking left the family, and only the anger remained.

“He was a great man,” George said. “He worked hard and he always had time for us. He would take me out and he taught me about sports.

“It was cool. We were all good little kids then,” he said.

After her father’s death, Briseida said she started hanging around with gangs. But her father’s memory, Briseida said, convinced her to give up gang life and go back to school.

“I was always smart and he would say that if anyone was going to make it, Briseida was,” she said, wiping away tears. “And there I was around guns and crack.”

“One of the biggest things that’s had an influence on George has been Briseida’s complete turnaround,” Rector said. “Now he’s got a model in his family. He sees that you can decide that you’re done with the nonsense, you’re gonna go ahead and do that daily ritual of getting up every morning and going to work.”

Briseida, lithe with dark hair and eyes, is serious almost to the point of being stern.

“I’m not a happy person,” Briseida said. “But when my family does well, then I’m happy.”

She works during the day and takes classes at El Camino College at night. It has been two years since she quit the gang and returned to adult school to earn her high school degree, but she has not forgiven herself for her past, partly because of her influence on George.

“I was running with the worst crowd for years, hanging out in Hawthorne back then, Compton, Inglewood, L.A., Watts, everywhere. I was crazy,” she said.

George was awed by the respect his sisters commanded from others on the streets, and he wanted to be like them. Now he has adopted Briseida’s emphasis on education, and as she has moved farther away from gang life, George thinks less about the streets.

“She’s my biggest influence,” George said proudly, “because once she was (messing) up, but she turned around and now is doing good.”

If George does not do well, it won’t be because he wasn’t warned. In a letter last week, Mara’s boyfriend, Rene Ramos, wrote to congratulate George for completing eighth grade.

“The biggest thing I’m afraid of is you turning out like me or your sister,” Ramos wrote. “The life we chose didn’t have nothing to offer us but time and death.”

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Rector and Romero want to see that George has other choices. Normally, after leaving Lennox Middle School, George would go on to Hawthorne High School. And there, more because of George’s personality than the deficiencies of the high school, they believe George would act out in whatever way necessary to gain the respect of other teens on campus.

At Lennox Middle School, when George is tempted to misbehave to win respect from the youths, consequences from Briseida, Romero and Rector are swift and fierce.

But those three will not be at Hawthorne High School, which has 3,000 students, some of whom belong to the numerous gangs in the area. So Romero, Rector, Mena and Briseida are pooling their resources to come up with the $2,500 tuition needed to send George to Junipero Serra Catholic High School in Gardena. It only has about 600 students, and Mena will teach there next year.

“If George goes to Hawthorne High School, it would be very bad,” Rector said. “He would feel too much pressure to be a big man on campus and would act out.”

George agrees. “It’s just not very nurturing there,” he said.

“Rachel and I joke around about how we’re both single and haven’t even had kids and now we’re budgeting for private school,” Rector said.

Educating George, however, is necessary, Romero said, because it will someday be George’s turn to take the lead in helping his family.

“You know how when a flock of geese flies, there’s one that takes the lead and then when it gets tired another one comes up and it falls back a little? Well, right now Briseida has the lead, and I know it’s taking its toll on her. Hopefully one day George will step in and take the lead,” Romero said.

“But I think we’re lucky to be given the opportunity to mold this kid’s life and help him become a success,” Romero said. “Whatever money, time, attentions and laughter we put into him, if he becomes a success, it’ll all be worth it.”