Meet Mr. Destiny : Corky Parks has walked away from school, jobs and family. His life was on the street. Then he came upon a movie set and found home.

When Corky Parks moved into this alley, it seemed he finally had broken the pawl governing his fall to skid row. Having not been schooled in the ways of the streets, he relied largely on instinct; and compared to the last alley he lived in, this one felt safe--the way a home should feel.

At night he would lie beneath sheets of cardboard and rest his head next to a manhole. The sounds of water swirling in storm sewers beneath him lulled him to gossamer sleep.

His dreams, like his life, were unfocused, oftentimes set on a narrow, ambiguous freeway that he would envision himself walking upon, never with a sense of purpose or destiny.

There were three rats living in the alley: one fat, one mean and one with a yellow-orange stripe on its side, making it easy to spot even in shadows. Parks called this one Fast Track for its speed.

For three years, Parks lived on the streets of downtown Los Angeles. It was a lonely place and time for a young man--an unlikely springboard to show biz that just goes to show how many paths lead to Hollywood.

*

There are just as many paths leading to skid row, not all of them paved by booze or drugs. The path for Parks, 45, began in Los Angeles and Winnetka, Calif., where as a child he began walking away from places where he didn’t fit in--from schoolmates who knocked books out of his hands and smacked him on the back of the head to amuse themselves.

He walked away from job after job.

One night he heard his father telling his mother how they must cut off financial support for their only child. Parks was failing in the one thing his father had stressed to him since childhood: to be responsible. So just as he had walked away from school in 10th grade and walked away from numerous jobs, at 19 he walked away from home and family and eventually came upon this alley in downtown Los Angeles.

It was cleaner than the last one, with fewer strangers lurking about. And so he stayed.

Dull morning light would filter in over brick horizons, and Parks would begin walking in search of warmth, which he found reflected off heat-absorbing walls of light-colored buildings. After shaking the night chill, he would walk in search of food, which he found in dumpsters.

The less food he found, the weaker he became and the farther he would be forced to walk in search. It was one of the binding circles of his tenuous life that always delivered him back to the alley at day’s end.

It became difficult to think. Sometimes, to give definition to his thoughts and feelings, he would take a piece of broken glass, whittle a point onto a salvaged pencil and scribble notes on scraps of paper. Sometimes he would talk to himself.

“I wasn’t a part of anybody’s life,” he says. “So I was talking a lot to myself. People say that’s crazy. Everybody has their view of what crazy is. I don’t feel like I was doing anything odd.”

At night, he would pull his sheets of cardboard out from under the dumpster where he kept them hidden. On good nights, his back would be warmed by the heat retained in the surface of the alley.

He would close his eyes and sometimes hear Fast Track skittering across the cardboard above him.

And in his dreams, he walked some more.

Garbage trucks would roar through the alley before sunrise--rattling, lifting and swallowing the contents of dumpsters. The sounds of the trucks were familiar to the alley’s residents, blending into the night like the unobtrusive sound of a furnace or the hum of a refrigerator.

The drivers were careful not to run over sleeping occupants hidden beneath cardboard.

One morning, Parks heard a truck turn into the alley. The moan of its engine carried a different pitch, and the pattern of shifting gears had a different rhythm. Parks did not stir until he felt the pressure of cardboard against his leg.

He bolted to his feet and slammed his body flush against a brick wall immediately before the 18-wheeler would have crushed him. It was the closest he had come to death.

Three trucks squirmed their way into the narrow alley, and Parks did not move until they had stopped. Workers began unloading lights and cords and big trunks. Voices from two-way radios echoed off the tall downtown buildings.

He saw people being costumed and made up to look homeless--to look like him. As the icy shock thawed from within, he began to feel a charge of excitement. The smell of food, the workers’ sense of purpose, the circus-like commotion stirred something inside Parks.

“Have you ever had a feeling, something deep inside of you?” he asks. “It’s not just that you want something, it’s deeper than that.”

He had felt it before while watching movie crews at downtown locations. Even now, more than 20 years later, he can’t limn the force that gripped him. He can only say that “the feeling” gave him direction and made him wish, not the way that a person might wish for wealth or fame or even happiness. It was more like the way a dying man sees the one miracle that will save him. And wishes for life.

That day he lurked about the area eavesdropping and heard the extras talking about casting agencies. For the first time in many years, he felt a sense of direction. He had never so thoroughly been absorbed.

The next day he spent the morning walking to Hollywood, already feeling changed. He was not walking away from something this time, he was walking toward it, and that seemed to make all the difference.

He came upon an extra agency, whose address he had gotten from a telephone book. Steeped in the feculence of years on the streets, Parks hurriedly filled out registration forms and was on his way out of the office when a man entered the lobby and asked if he might be available the following day.

He was, of course, and that’s how he became an extra in 1972--a career that remains fulfilling.

“As I look back, it didn’t seem like a coincidence. I feel there’s something more involved. People make wishes every day, but I think if you have a real gut-wrenching desire to do something and you stay focused on it, it all seems to come together.”

He does not consider it an answered prayer in the same way that he does not consider himself a religious person. Whatever it is, he says, it brings strength to the weak and direction to the despondent.

It is reason for hope.

*

Parks sits on a folding chair in a long hallway on the set of the television series “Babylon 5.” He studies a small black book, its pages worn thin by use. He keeps it with him, not so much for what it contains, but for the provenance it represents.

He found it in a dumpster not long after he started working as an extra. It was damp from the rain, but he dried it out and used it for keeping telephone numbers and notes.

“It’s a reminder of how important this work is to me,” he says, “to take each job as though it were as important as the first one.”

He still has some of the clothes he wore while he was homeless. Repeated laundering has not removed the grime embedded into the fabric. He wears the clothes when work requires him to play the part of a homeless person.

If you have watched film or television at all, there is a good chance you have seen Parks but perhaps haven’t paid particular attention to him. He usually is in the background, walking around and pretending to hold conversation as he is doing today on “Babylon 5,” or fishing off a pier in the background of a “Baywatch” scene, playing a shoplifter in “The Wayans Bros.”

He has never aspired to be a star. Working as an extra provides him with food on the set and prevents him from being homeless. That is quite enough, he says.

He doesn’t remember the names of most of the shows he has been on. “I don’t relate to big deal shows, I relate to I got a job and without it I’d be back on the streets.”

The actors he remembers most are those who have impressed him with their kindness and lack of hubris: Martin Sheen, Lou Gossett Jr., Jan-Michael Vincent.

“They talk to you as a human being, that’s something to respect,” he says.

His outlook on life is upbeat and friendly, his lifestyle is modest. Finding a penny in the gutter still triggers a sense of good fortune. He eats a lot of oatmeal, $2.39 for a big box, drives a Toyota Corona he bought for $75.

For a day’s work, Parks earns about $70, and oftentimes there is overtime. He rarely knows from one day to the next whether he will be working.

The competition is fierce, and he works the phones most of the time when he isn’t actually working a job. He rents a room near downtown, but to save on toll calls Parks drives to the North Hollywood home of a friend to make his calls to casting agencies, most of them in the 818 calling area.

He says there isn’t a day that he doesn’t consider himself lucky to have food, shelter and work that he enjoys. He remains for the most part a loner, spending much of his free time watching a small black-and-white television.

Memories of homelessness never are far away.

“Unless you’ve been there, you can’t relate. You have to smell the smell, you have to feel the feeling of it, the dirtiness, the insecurities. I guess the main word is ‘trauma.’ As we live today, we’re spoiled. We wake up, we clean up with fresh water. We eat fresh food, we put on a shirt that smells fresh. We’re all spoiled “

He could get more work if he would cut his hair, he says, but he associates long hair with warmth. The only times he remembers crying while being homeless were times when the pain of cold overcame him. There are contextual elements of homelessness that never leave you.

“I’ll be walking with a cane on these shows,” Parks says. “It will take a crowbar to keep me away. When I’m in front of the camera, it’s like home. I feel comfortable there, safe, secure.”

Just the way a home should feel.