A Close-Up Look At People Who Matter : Activist Is on the Lookout for Lost Youths

Alex didn’t like Augie when they met two years ago.

“I didn’t really want to hang out with him,” said 14-year-old Alex Colmenares of San Fernando. “I liked to be out on the streets.”

But Augie Maldonado understood. “I think he didn’t trust me,” said the 53-year-old activist.

Maldonado of Pacoima is the founder of a group called Salud, which tries to help youths resist the lure of the streets and save them from the demons of drugs and alcohol.

Alex was among a group of youths who would hang out on Kewen Street in San Fernando. Maldonado, working nearby, often invited them to join him for a cold drink or a snack.

Maldonado finally won over Alex when the boy’s mother was hospitalized and Alex and his brother stayed with him for three days. The boy no longer has the same street friends.

“Now I know they’re not my friends,” said Alex, now a member of a Salud youth club. “They’re troublemakers.”

Maldonado started Salud out of his garage in 1986 as a recovery program for addicts. Now Salud also sponsors a boxing and fitness program for youths at Los Feliz Park and the Starting at Home Youth Club, to which Alex belongs.

Youngsters in the club, open to those age 8 to 18, plan their own events, from volleyball games and pizza parties to trips to Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm. Most of the members met Maldonado through family, friends or a local church.

“He’s our boss and our friend,” said Linda Fries, a 15-year-old from Sylmar and one of the club’s leaders.

“That’s why he can work with kids so well, because he can be one of us,” said Elizabeth Corrall, 14, of San Fernando.

“When you are working with kids, one of the biggies is to keep your word, your commitment. And, you’d better be there for them,” said Maldonado, who in 1992 worked for a year with Los Angeles County’s Friday Night Live youth program. He left the county program to devote more time to the youth of the northeast San Fernando Valley.

Maldonado’s close ties to the community have become one of his most useful tools in getting across his message. When kids ask him about drugs, he will tell them, “Go ask your parents. They’ll tell you what I was like. That I was a nice guy, but a drug addict.”

A heroin addict who off and on lived 17 years of his life in prison for drug-related convictions, Maldonado has been clean for more than 10 years. He left Pacoima to get away from drugs, but returned later to find the community in the midst of a crack epidemic. So he formed Salud, which means “health” in Spanish.

In 1987, Maldonado joined with other local activists to fight the crack epidemic that had turned Pacoima into what he called a “war zone.” Despite heavy police presence, drug-dealing went on even within a few feet of busts, Maldonado said.

Community members believed that the main problem was the proliferation of liquor stores, which had become meeting spots for dealers, users and prostitutes. The activists held marches and anti-drug rallies and finally succeeded in persuading the city to impose conditions on the liquor stores to discourage loitering.

They also were successful in bringing about a crackdown on liquor sales to minors. And the community turned around.

Maldonado and other community members also have campaigned against forms of liquor advertising including billboards.

“We’re after the same clients,” said Maldonado. “For them, it represents a dollar. For us, it represents lives.”

So Maldonado’s battle to reach youths continues--one at a time.

But like other nonprofit groups, Salud is seeking sources of funding. In May, the organization received $72,000 from the San Fernando Valley Partnership. But that money will run out in January, Maldonado said.

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