Ex-Gangbanger Survived Suicide Try, Then Found Life’s WORK : Activism: Leonard Duran became a Christian and committed himself to aiding young people. One of his programs is based at his old junior high in Simi Valley.

Too many gang fights, shootings, robberies, debts. Three kids, one failed marriage, a second falling apart.

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It was all too much for Leonard Duran, a former boxer and Simi Valley Royal High School dropout.

Desperate and alone, he pressed a .45 to his chest, squeezed his eyes shut and asked for a sign. A vision, an angel, a rainbow, anything to show him that someone cared.

Nothing. So he pulled the trigger. The bullet pierced his skin, shooting through lungs, kidneys, arteries, splattering blood all over his ’63 Chevy Impala.

Three days and hours of surgery later, as he lay in a hospital bed, the vision finally came. It was a blurry sign, more a general inspiration than a divine edict.

Leonard Duran had courted death and survived. He was ready to do something with his life.

“I believe God saved my life because he had work for me to do,” Duran said. “I am trying not to let him down.”

Change has not been easy since that day, five years ago. But for Duran, now 31, the signs of progress are everywhere.

With a steady job, a 6-year-old son and his marriage back on track, Duran manages to find time for his first love: helping children on the verge of giving up.

He leads a Bible study group at the Youth Authority in Ventura and runs a boxing workshop for teen-agers at a Simi Valley gym.

But his proudest achievement is an after-school program for struggling students at Sinaloa Junior High School, in a classroom where Duran himself sat, full of fight and attitude, nearly two decades ago.

Last spring, with the help of a counselor he knew as a student, Duran launched the program, called Working on Real Kids or WORK.

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It is a modest effort. From 3 to 4 on Wednesday afternoons, about 25 students gather in a science lab. With a dozen Einstein posters looking on, they seek extra help with algebra, history, geometry.

Often a speaker will come to tell them about summer job opportunities, the perils of crime, life as a former gang member. There are sodas, popcorn and Marvin Gaye tapes for the boombox.

Several teachers are on hand to help with the homework, and Duran chats easily with the students. It is clear that they treat Duran differently than they do the teachers.

Most noticeably, they do not call him “Mr. Duran.” There is Mr. Muenzer and Mrs. Richardson. And there is Leonard.

“Leonard is really cool,” said Irma Barajas, 12, barely taking time to look up from her geometry. “Anything you want to talk about, like if you have any problems, he’ll help you.”

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“Leonard is different,” said David Flores, 15, as he slouched in his seat in the back of the classroom. “He tells us things about his life. He knows what we are going through. He’s more like a friend.”

The difference the WORK program makes can be as dramatic as an improvement in grades or as subtle as a change in attitude, said Tom Muenzer, the counselor who has known Duran since he was a student and now helps him with the program.

“For some of them, WORK has meant an improvement from Ds and Fs to Bs and Cs,” he said. “Sometimes the changes are less tangible. Leonard helps these kids connect with the school in a positive way. Some of these kids never used to smile, and now, sometimes they smile.”

If Duran has developed an easy rapport with the students, he has had a much harder time gaining the support and trust of adults--in large part because of the way he looks.

He dresses in baggy jeans and sneakers topped off with T-shirts that seem to emphasize his barrel chest. Gang tattoos swirl over his hands and arms--and most of the rest of the skin between his waist and neck.

A deep dent in his right cheek bears testimony to his rough-and-tumble boxing days. His hair is buzzed close to the scalp, flat on top. A tiny patch of black fuzz nestles below his lower lip and his mustache extends down to his chin and stops, just short of a goatee.

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When Duran was launching WORK, he went to Jacquie Richardson, a Simi Valley grant writer, and asked for her help with fund raising.

“He walked into my office and asked for help,” she said. “But I kept him at arm’s length. I’m just this middle-aged white lady. He was very scary and intimidating to me.”

Some months later, Richardson ran into Duran at a deli and was delighted to learn that the program was up and running. She visited his classroom and was impressed enough to offer her help: She wrote a grant proposal that recently won the WORK program $7,500 from the city.

Duran’s encounter with Richardson was just one in a long history of hurdles he has faced because of his appearance.

But he is not interested in softening his looks.

“All of these things are a part of my history,” he said. “They are a part of who I am, of how I got to where I am now.”

As evidenced by his gang tattoos, Duran is fond of outward expressions of his allegiance. When his loyalty shifted from gangs to God, there were few unmarked places left on his body. So Duran turned to his truck.

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Where his arms and back are devoted to the signs and symbols of the Venice 13 gang he ran with for years, the dominant theme of a mural on the hood of his turquoise Chevy is Rapture--referring to the time when, according to Duran’s belief, saved Christians will go to heaven.

Jesus, with roses at his feet, looks down on the faces and names of five people important in Duran’s life, now dead. His grandfather, an aunt, a pastor who turned him on to religion, his father and an uncle, both shot to death in an alley when he was 6.

“Leonard is someone who has been through a lot,” said Rod Ritchie, the pastor at New Beginnings Christian Fellowship, where Duran attends services on Sundays. “He is constantly looking for ways to reach out, to express himself, to show his faith. Because of all the rejection he has faced in his life, he is not afraid to do that.”

Duran is used to feeling like an outsider. When he was a student at Sinaloa and Royal, he was one of just a few Latinos going to school in Simi Valley.

He had spent some of his youth as a tough, street-savvy kid in Venice and the San Fernando Valley and had adopted the flashy, gangster style of dress favored by many of his friends.

His hair was long and slick, covered with a hair net. He wore baggy, tapered pants and carried a cane. “I didn’t have a limp or anything,” he said. “It was just a style thing.”

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Duran quickly learned that some of his Simi Valley peers had little tolerance for his showy clothes and his combative attitude.

He got in several fights at Sinaloa, and then at Royal. At 16 he dropped out of school and got a job washing dishes at a bowling alley.

Soon after, his girlfriend became pregnant. They got married and moved to the San Fernando Valley, where he worked fixing cars.

Eventually that marriage fell apart.

He remarried and got a job as a security guard.

But life was hard for Duran. Money was tight, his marriage was troubled and his boxing was going poorly. He and his gang friends would dare one another to steal clothes, jewelry, electronics and split the take. He was prone to intense anxiety attacks, which he says threw him into a seizure-like state.

Then came the suicide attempt, and a chance at a new life. Duran moved back to Simi Valley, found a job as a salesman and began searching for a way to fulfill his goal.

Now Duran hopes to expand the WORK program to include as many as 100 students. He wants to branch out and offer a similar service at other Simi Valley schools, and he is working on a book about his life.

On a recent Wednesday, as the clock struck 4 and his students slipped out into the afternoon, Duran sat at one of the kid-sized desks and reflected.

“I know I’m going in the right direction,” he said. “But I think I still have a long way to go.”