Trouble Fitting In : Youth: Phoenix Academy drug-rehabilitation program hopes to expand, but some neighbors say added security would be a better idea.

Mark Reed, 15, is soft-spoken and polite, his eyes reflective of the intelligence that has earned him respect as one of the better chess players among his peers.

Three months ago, Reed played a different kind of game, with members of his Hawthorne-based gang, Kings Takin’ Respect. The pieces: a TEC-9 semiautomatic handgun and drugs--speed, coke and pot. That was when Reed’s life was a little less structured, before his mother, unable to force him to go to school or separate him from his gang, sent him to the Phoenix Academy in Lake View Terrace, a rigid, live-in rehabilitation center and high school for teen-age drug offenders.

Reed is one of 50 youths at the Phoenix Academy taking a respite from years of damaging drug abuse, which often has been combined with physical, emotional or sexual trauma. The academy quietly opened in the vacant Lake View Terrace Medical Center six months ago, despite the protests of community members who had defeated an attempt to open an academy there in 1989.

Some of those community members now say their fears that academy residents would leave the grounds without permission and enter surrounding neighborhoods have been realized. They are calling for extra security measures, using as their forum a hearing related to a proposed academy expansion, scheduled for Wednesday morning before the Los Angeles City Council.

In 1989, Nancy Reagan supported the facility and planned to have an office there. But after opponents threatened to picket her Bel-Air home, the former First Lady withdrew her backing, and much of the financing for the project disappeared.

Three years later, Phoenix House Foundation--the national drug-treatment group that had proposed the Nancy Reagan Center--revived its plans without her backing and ultimately gained approval from the City Council.

Now, at a time when the academy is seeking tax-exempt financing for a 100-bed expansion, complaints have resurfaced from some of the academy’s old foes.

Homeowners wrote a letter to City Councilman Richard Alarcon in August citing incidents involving Phoenix Academy residents who left the grounds without permission. The letter led Alarcon to postpone a September council vote on a $10-million bond issue, part of which is intended to finance the academy’s expansion. Instead he set Wednesday’s public hearing and vote on the bond issue.

One incident took place in July, when a distraught boy, upset over the death of his grandmother, ran off the grounds with a counselor in hot pursuit. The youth ran to a nearby house and startled a woman when he asked if he could hide in her house. The counselor was able to coax him back to the academy.

That same month, an academy van was stolen by several Phoenix residents who went for a joy ride. They returned with the van a short time later.

Academy officials acknowledge that the incidents occurred but dismiss them as minor cases in which no harm was done.

Some community residents are not so sure.

“If the facility’s going to fly within a residential neighborhood, they need to seek further security measures,” said Sandy Hubbard, president of the Lake View Terrace Improvement Assn. “We want to see a taller fence and a guard at the front entrance. They need more control.”

But Phoenix administrators say their facility is not a detention center or a jail. Rather, it’s a “therapeutic community” where troubled youths, ages 13 through 17, go to talk out their fears, anger and frustration, help each other heal and go to school. Unlocked doors and fences of normal height are key components of that program, they say.

And though a close eye is kept on residents--including midnight bed checks--if a resident is determined to leave, he or she can do so, officials say.

“This is not some kind of penal system,” said William Smith, director of clinical services for Phoenix House programs in California. “It’s an open environment. We don’t want somebody here who’s prone to violent behavior, or diagnosed with schizophrenia, or an arsonist.”

Smith said that the level of security at the academy conforms to the conditions imposed by the city when the facility obtained its operating permit.

But some neighbors who ended up supporting the facility after years of fighting it say criticizing it now is unwarranted and unfair.

“The Phoenix Academy took an abandoned, overgrown eyesore and turned it into a well-landscaped facility that is a benefit to society and the community,” said Sandy McGregor, a real estate broker who reversed his original opposition to the academy, welcoming it the second time it was proposed--as a scaled-down facility without the involvement of Nancy Reagan.

“There’s a handful of people that are keeping pressure on them. How can they oppose a facility that takes 150 beds and gives them to kids for treatment? It’s the only safe home some of those kids have ever known.”

Probation officials are sold on the approach. They say they refer teen-agers to Phoenix House because they are confident the youths will actually have a chance there to break the pattern of drug abuse, crime and neglect.

“I’m not aware of too many drug programs for kids that are terribly successful,” said Norm Shattuck, assistant division director of the Orange County Probation Department. “But of those I do know, the way Phoenix House does it is the most effective. They get people voluntarily. They don’t rope them into it. It’s intense, it deals with behavior and attitude. It works.”

About 60% of the youths come through referrals from the county probation departments or through the Los Angeles County Department of Children’s Services. The rest are referred by their families.

The academy has a waiting list of about 15 children despite its cost: $24,000 a year for each youth, with a minimum 12-month stay. The fee is paid mostly with public funds, although parents who can afford to do pay part of the cost.

In many ways, the academy and its young residents are the facility’s best advertisement.

Inside what was formerly a bankrupt and rapidly deteriorating hospital, the academy’s white-tiled corridors are quiet, shining with an antiseptic glow. Walking past open, neatly kept, dormitory-style rooms, Betzy Mendez, 15, explains how she laughed at everybody when she first arrived there.

Her first action at the academy was to spray shaving cream all over the room of a boy who looked at her the wrong way. She wasn’t prepared for the reaction.

“We had an ‘encounter session,’ and all these residents started talking about what I did. They said, ‘Why’d you shaving-cream his room?’ They said, ‘Yeah, that makes us mad!’ They went on and on about it, and I said to myself, ‘These people are crazy!’ ”

Since then, Mendez said, she’s come a long way. She’s now a hall “motivator,” a kind of leader/activity organizer. And she has earned the privileges of wearing makeup, jewelry and owning a radio.

For the first two weeks at the academy, residents aren’t allowed to wear makeup or jewelry. Responsibility is taken seriously in daily life at the academy, where each youth is assigned a daily job of kitchen work, housework, landscaping or office work.

An activity or duty is prescribed for nearly every minute of every day, down to 15-minute “hygiene” periods. Anyone who breaks the rules gets a “contract” chore--a punishment--which might include scrubbing pans in the kitchen.

It took three months for Mendez to change. Now, she isn’t sure what the future holds, but she knows it will be different from the past. She knows she can’t go back to Compton, where she once cruised the streets drinking, vandalizing and hiding from an abusive relative.

After they leave Phoenix Academy, most kids return to their homes, re-enter their old schools and try to begin new relationships with their families. Part of the program includes weekly therapy sessions with family members.

Mark Reed’s mother says those group sessions have helped as nothing else has.

“We tried a lot of things with Mark,” said Shawn Campbell. “He dropped out of school, stole things from us, did drugs and drank with his friends all day. What we learned is that Mark wanted to be recognized. They’re showing him how to be responsible and how to be a leader. They’re giving him the attention he needs. We weren’t giving him that.”

Faith Schenstrom, whose son was addicted to heroin when he entered the academy, said it took six months of his living and learning there before she noticed a change in him.

“When he saw we weren’t giving in, he realized it was going to have to be him, his decision to do something,” Schenstrom said. “It was like a light bulb went on. He’s a teen-ager now; they taught him how to deal with growing up. I feel guilty we weren’t able to teach him, but he was so bad on drugs--he would shoot heroin underneath his tongue so we couldn’t see it.”

Now, Schenstrom, who lives in the Antelope Valley, said her son is living with her sister on the East Coast and doing well in school.