THE SUNDAY PROFILE : The Good Fight : When he was growing up, James Washington had a reputation for talking with his fists. Now the football powerhouse helps those in his old Watts neighborhood find a better way to survive.

James Washington of Watts, Whittier and the Dallas Cowboys, the fierce hitter who is known in pro football as “Drive By,” acknowledges at least two other interests: making it as a businessman and helping people in the old neighborhood.

Friends from UCLA still remember the night of the first Phi Beta Sigma dance of Washington’s freshman year there. All evening, instead of dancing, he stood by the entrance to the frat-sponsored community fund-raiser. Around midnight, Sigma brother Vinson Boyce recalls finding him there. “I haven’t seen you on the floor,” Boyce scolded. “What are you doing?”

“Counting the house,” Washington said. “Nobody’s going to get in here free.”

Washington had gotten into the habit of looking out for himself, even when there was no one to look after him. Before age 10, living alone at times, he would sometimes steal a few bucks to share with less resourceful friends.

“I’ve been on my own, more or less, since the day my father skipped town,” he says. “He’s out there some place, if he’s still alive.”

His mother liked to drink.

“She had two choices, and she chose alcohol over me,” Washington says. “Those are all bad memories. Let’s talk about something else.”

He would have never survived, he says, without his maternal grandfather, his first football coach, two Jordan High classmates and his wife, Dana.

Of his high school friends, he says:

“It’s a tragedy what happened (to my family), but when I knew them, no kid was ever luckier than me. Keith Solomon kept me going to class. Richard Green kept me off drugs.”

Green has since dropped out of sight, and Solomon is dead. As he emerged from a fast-food restaurant one day six years ago, a neighborhood bully senselessly shot him.

Mourning his boyhood friends, Washington says:

“So many are dead.”

*

James as a boy was on the bubble, as they say in sports. He could have gone either way: street chemist or football champion.

--Dana Washington

*

In each of the last two years, “Drive By” Washington, a defensive back who stands 6 feet, 1 inch tall and weighs 210 pounds, has helped bring the Super Bowl championship to Dallas.

But to get to the title game last year, the Cowboys first had to beat San Francisco. On one memorable play, the 49ers sent their best receiver--record-setter Jerry Rice, 6-2, 200 pounds--cruising into Washington’s territory.

Washington smashed him flat.

And as Rice tried to get up, Drive By lifted an arm in triumph.

In the locker room, a reporter asked Washington: “How did that feel?”

“It felt great,” he replied. “I think I readjusted the guy’s vertebrae.”

On the field, Washington can be like that--unsmiling, brutal. But he isn’t always like that. In a more civilized setting, he can be sunny, merry, attentive.

One who knows nothing but Washington’s softer side is Sweet Alice Harris, a living saint who founded the Parents of Watts. She operates nine shelters for homeless parolees, pregnant women, the mentally ill and others, and in the off-season Washington helps out, giving those who pass through someone to look up to.

Says Sweet Alice: “You can’t imagine how wonderful it is having James around.”

His opponents in pro football don’t put it quite that way.

“The two biggest hitters of the ‘90s are (former) Bruins,” says veteran NFL coach Sid Gillman, “Ronnie Lott (of the New York Jets) and James Washington.”

Hitting, Washington says, is a skill he has been perfecting since high school. While classmates Solomon and Green were struggling for his soul, Washington was getting into fights--in hallways, alleys, anywhere.

“I used to go down that avenue to solve all my problems,” he says, “except I’ve never hit a woman.”

His last fight in Watts came on what turned out to be his last day at Jordan. After completing his course work for graduation at midyear, he had been anticipating one last, easy semester. As he headed for the basketball floor one afternoon, a friend approached him, crying. She said she had been sexually abused by a security guard.

As Washington tells it now, he went looking for the man, found him in an office and picked a fight, knocking him down and out the door.

“You’re suspended,” the school authorities told Washington.

“You can’t suspend me,” he said airily. “I’m leaving.”

That very week he enrolled at UCLA, returning to Jordan only once, on graduation day in June.

At 18, he fathered a child, a daughter named Shanel, whom he helps support.

“She’s wonderful,” he says. “She lives with her mother. I love my little daughter.”

*

No matter how bright you are, you can’t make it out of Watts without two things: role models and exposure. Somebody has to introduce you to the real world.

--Anthony George, Washington’s business partner

*

It isn’t easy to get from where Washington was to where he is.

For one thing, rising above a boyhood in a tough neighborhood means, he says, “you’ve got to lose your friends--leave them behind. If you don’t, they’ll eventually let you down. What you see and what they see are totally different.”

The man who raised him, his late grandfather Eddie Alexander, pounded that in.

At age 10 or thereabouts, Washington recalls, he and his friends got caught shoplifting. They were arrested and taken to the police station, where Alexander came to pick up James.

Putting him in the passenger seat of the family truck, Alexander drove a few blocks, then reached out suddenly and smacked his grandson in the chest so hard that the boy flew out the door.

“Then he stopped the truck and picked me up, took me home, and whupped me with a handful of hangers,” Washington says. “That made an impression.”

Washington remembers that he sometimes got along with his grandparents, but not his uncles or mother. “One died of drugs, one died of AIDS, and I don’t know what happened to Uncle Billy--or my mother, either,” he says. “Grandma was an invalid, but my grandfather worked hard and took good care of her and all four kids. And all four turned out to be bums.”

Along the way, Alexander also did what he thought was best for his willful grandson. Concluding that James was smart but too ornery to deal with, he built a little shack for the boy to live in behind the house. “I was a loner then,” Washington agrees, “and a troublemaker.”

When he was about to enter his teens, Washington’s mother persuaded him to move in with her for a while. He remembers being left alone one day with no food in the house.

So at dinner time, “I went down to the (supermarket) and made myself a ham sandwich,” he recalls. “They don’t arrest you if you don’t take the food out of the store. The best part was the soft white Weber’s bread. All we (ever) had at my house was hard bread.”

He walked around the store until he finished eating, then walked away.

To this day, he is a soft-white-bread freak.

*

I knew his mom (as a child) . She was a lovely little girl in those days when she came in with her brothers.

--Paul Brown, barber

*

The first time Washington saw the inside of the Continental Barber Shop, a Watts landmark, he was 5 years old.

“He came with Eddie Alexander--his grandfather,” says Paul Brown, who, with partners Joe Sampy and Frank Simmons has been running the shop for 36 years.

“That chair over there, Eddie set him down right there,” Brown says, pointing. “Then he turned to me and said, ‘I’ve lost one boy, but I’m not going to lose this one.’

“He was right about that. I don’t know what happened to Eddie’s oldest boy, but this whole part of the city is still damn proud of Pookie.”

That was Alexander’s name for his grandson, and to the Continental regulars it’s still his name.

“As in POOHkee,” Brown says.

For as long as he can remember--almost a quarter-century--Washington has been coming to this barber shop.

Three photos of him hang on the barbershop wall--along with those of many others. Hardly centerfold material, each pictures a celebrated homeboy--rappers and such--who made it out of Watts but returns to the Continental for haircuts.

When Washington slides into the open chair one summer afternoon, the customer to his left--Hardy Obey, a food distributor--tells his barber to hold it a minute and starts firing.

“You know Jerry Rice is my favorite player,” Obey says. “I’ve told you before. Next time, don’t hit him so hard.”

“Sorry,” Washington says. “I forgot.”

Another local walks in and takes a seat where others are waiting.

“I thought it was you,” the young man tells Washington. “I was across the street when you came in here, but I recognized you from the Super Bowl game.”

“Were you there?” Washington asks.

“No, I was in jail,” he answers. “They had some good instant replays of your touchdown. Congratulations. Where you off to (today)?”

Washington says he’s en route to a building he owns at 46th and Western. He hopes to convert the structure into another shelter for Sweet Alice Harris and the Parents of Watts. He will call it Shelter 37, after his jersey number.

The young man shakes his head.

“I wouldn’t go there today,” he warns, explaining that an off-and-on gang treaty is off in that neighborhood.

“People are getting ‘jacked there right now,” he says.

Washington thanks him for the tip, pays the barber, says goodby and hits the street. As he climbs into his black BMW, he rethinks his plan to drive up Western. His fresh fade cut and perennial headband wouldn’t be much help. His aging shotgun rider wouldn’t be any help.

“Let’s go another day,” he says.

*

It’s very sad. In South - Central, a lot of intelligent brothers don’t know any better than to screw up.

--Kelvin Tolbert, Washington’s business partner

*

Year-round, a pro football player protects and pampers his one priceless asset. And so Washington lifts weights seven mornings a week in the off-season at an uptown Whittier health club. He also works out twice a week at Los Angeles Southwest College, focusing on his speed with Coach Henry Washington, his old Jordan High mentor.

During one recent session, a young passerby stops her bicycle and, addressing Henry but looking steadily at James, says: “I’ll bet you’re proud of your son.”

Henry grins. Although no relation to James, he is also a well-built, commanding figure. “I’m proud,” he says, “of all my sons.”

His proteges, he means, women as well as men. Two are Olympic champions: sprinter Florence Griffith-Joyner and hurdler Kevin Young.

But Washington the coach didn’t have much hope for Washington the player the first time they met. That day in the Jordan High locker room, James had gotten into a fight and was punching away on a bigger boy.

“Stop that,” Henry roared, and they did. But when the other kid ran off, James sneaked down the street after him. The fight was on again when Henry caught up.

“At Jordan High,” he yelled, “every boy in my class does exactly what I say. The next time you don’t, you’re through.”

James recalls that he was “considering a smart-ass” rejoinder when something in the coach’s eyes made him pause. Although a high school junior, he had never played a day of football. He knew he was drifting. He yielded.

“Yes, sir,” he remembers saying.

Washington believes his life turned that day.

“I’ve listened to Coach Washington ever since,” he says. “He is my friend. He’s the father I always wanted.”

Later at UCLA, he would find the brothers he always wanted. Three of his Phi Beta Sigma fraternity pals became his Westside business partners: Anthony George, Kelvin Tolbert and Vinson Boyce.

Each had excelled at UCLA and had shown an aptitude for business, as well as a sense of personal responsibility for the community. Their frat set a UCLA record for most service projects: They painted rooms for the elderly, and collected food and clothing for the needy.

That affinity for good deeds still figures in what they do today as equal partners in the Summation Financial Co., where Washington oversees community service projects.

In a typical scenario, a man arrived at Summation headquarters, at La Brea and Stocker Street, not long ago and said: “I’ve had a job I like for three years. I don’t have a lot of money, but we’d love to have a house of our own.”

Tolbert, who handles such clients, said: “If you could put 3% down, maybe we could help.”

Four months later, he could and they did.

“Homeowners take better care of their homes and their neighborhood,” Tolbert says. “We spend a lot of time pushing ownership.”

They also spend money pushing other community improvements.

“Last year, we put $100,000 into Shelter 37,” George says. “We had it about ready to open just before the great (Northridge) earthquake came along and ruined it. They’ve red-tagged the building--and now things are back to square one. The $100,000 is gone.”

The structure would have been the centerpiece for expanded Parents of Watts programs, housing job-training classrooms and the accredited adult school that Sweet Alice Harris maintains.

“The earthquake was a downer,” Washington says. “We needed that building because we’re not just out to help the homeless. We want to help those who want to help themselves.

“The guy who just comes in to sit and be fed and clothed isn’t growing. They should graduate to different levels. First read and write, next a training program, then a job.”

Or as Sweet Alice puts it: “We don’t believe in just giving you a fish. We’ll teach you how to fish. Then take you to the river.”

She remains optimistic about acquiring the money to open Shelter 37. “I was raised by compassionate people in a Jewish family (who) gave me faith,” she says. “I have faith that somehow we’ll get that building yet.”

*

I grew up mad at the world, but since then I’ve always thought of myself as a feisty, short-tempered person with a kind heart.

--James Washington

*

Contemplating his boyhood, Washington, now 29, is convinced that his mother was changed by whatever led her husband, also named James, to run away.

“I think she would have been a great mom if my father had been there,” he says. “The guy left her holding the bag. And left me hanging out in the streets.”

No one has ever told Washington what happened, and he hasn’t wasted any time trying to find out. Instead, he set about making sure things would be different for his own son.

For starters, “a man should have a name of his own,” Washington says. “And Richard Washington has it.”

Richard, 3, lives with James and Dana in a cheerful two-story, four-bedroom Colonial built in 1938 on one of Whittier’s big corner lots. A lattice-covered patio leads to a detached game room that doubles as James’ office.

Other inhabitants include two dogs, a rabbit, countless fish of various descriptions, a peacock, a pet pig and it’s hard to tell what else. “I started out to be a veterinarian,” Dana explains.

Instead, with a communications degree from UCLA, she went to work for CBS as a writer-producer in the promotions department. Now, she free-lances.

Dana brought James to Whittier when they were still UCLA students. They chose a condo first. Her parents live nearby. Her father, Charles, is an aeronautical engineer at Rockwell. Her mother, Beverly, is a midwife at Martin Luther King Jr.-Drew Medical Center.

Dana recalls the night in 1990 when, sitting around a fire, she and James plotted the arrival of their son.

“I only care about three things,” James told his wife. “Your health and his health--and I want to be here when he’s born.”

“Well, friend,” she replied, “that will take some careful planning.”

Because James is off playing football more than half the year, the couple had a target window of barely five months. “Just to be safe,” she says, “we closed it to three months--February, March and April.”

On March 15, 1991, her husband the football player was dressed for the occasion, like an operating-room surgeon or nurse.

“James cut the umbilical cord,” Dana says.

Later in the game room, thinking back, he says: “I make my living hitting people, but she’s tougher.”

*

In Super Bowl XXVIII, James accounted for 17 of the Dallas Cowboys’ first 27 points. In Super Bowl XXVII, he made the first big play, the interception. He got them going both times.

--Henry Washington, coach

*

One sports truism is that NFL players, to play well, must be willing to play in pain. They hurt all season long, from the first scrimmage in July to the final play in the dead of winter.

But the pain that shot through Washington’s left side after a three-man collision during a game in New Orleans was a little different, a little wilder. A teammate had hit him in the back just as he hit an opponent in front, and the blow dislocated a shoulder.

“It just popped out, and stuck,” Washington says. “I tugged at it, but I couldn’t push it in, and I couldn’t pull it in, either. It wouldn’t move.”

Back on the sideline, he dropped to one knee and purposefully smashed the shoulder into a bench. That fixed it, and he was back on the field for the next play.

“One of the bravest things I’ve seen,” a Dallas sportswriter who observed the incident said later.

In his four years in Texas, “Drive By” Washington has given Cowboy fans a lot to see. He’s generally up there with club interception leaders, usually leads the defensive backfield in tackles and forced fumbles, and always delivers big hits.

His specialty, though, has to be big-game excellence. Playing for the Super Bowl championship in January, he scored on a fumble return, set up another touchdown with an interception, and forced a fumble that put his team in field-goal range. The Cowboys won the game that the Buffalo Bills led well into the second half.

He is, nonetheless, one among many good NFL players--unless you count what he does after a big game.

This year, two days after the Super Bowl, Washington rented a truck, drove to Rams Park in Orange County and picked up a load of surplus football shoes, football pants, sweat shirts and the like. Then he distributed them to South-Central schools and playgrounds.

Says Rams equipment man Todd Hewitt: “James phoned to remind us that he’d be here with a big truck as usual. He comes every year. Most players would be thinking about the Super Bowl. He was thinking about the Super Bowl and South-Central.”

But he won’t help just anyone, Washington says. He tries to help only those who try to help themselves.

“I’m here because I took advantage of the advantages I had,” he says. “The guys I feel sorriest for are the ones who get a break and don’t take advantage.”

James Washington

Age: 29.

Native?: Yes; raised in Watts, lives in Whittier.

Family: Married to Dana Washington, with whom he has a son, Richard. He also has a daughter, Shanel.

Passions: Earning his NFL nickname “Drive By,” helping people in his old neighborhood.

On creating opportunities for the homeless: “The guy who just comes in to sit and be fed and clothed isn’t growing. They should graduate to different levels. First read and write, next a training program, then a job.”

On watching wife Dana deliver their son: “I make my living hitting people, but she’s tougher.”

On making the most of every opportunity: “The guys I feel sorriest for are the ones who get a break and don’t take advantage.”