A Success Story Who Could Not Escape His Past

“There are a lot of success stories in there. You should check it out,” Gregory Hightower told a reporter last week about Youth Fair Chance Plus, a nonprofit job training center in South-Central Los Angeles.

The next day, Hightower, 33, was dead, gunned down at a party in his beloved Jordan Downs housing project in Watts.

For a while, Hightower was his own success story: a troubled inner-city kid who had straightened his life out, but who never got away from the old neighborhood that became his demise.

And so on Thursday, there was not only a congresswoman but scores of gang members at “High T’s” funeral, another sign of how blurred the line between good and bad can be.

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The solemn mortuary on Broadway was packed with more than 200 tearful members of Hightower’s family, his friends and many of his co-workers at Youth Fair Chance Plus. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), who had met Hightower during attempts to forge a Watts gang truce, was there too.

Outside, the color purple reigned.

In addition to another 150 acquaintances who couldn’t fit inside, nearly 100 members of Grape Street, the powerful street gang that rules Jordan Downs, mingled, many sporting their purple colors.

It was at 16, as a member of Grape Street, that Hightower was convicted of murder. He spent the next 10 years of his life in the custody of the California Youth Authority.

Many who gathered Thursday said they were impressed by Hightower’s concern for young people when he returned to the neighborhood in 1989. He worked for a while on the Century Freeway construction project. Sure, he got into scrapes with the law after he came back to Jordan Downs, his friends said, but he never went to prison.

“He used to tell us there’s a whole lot more to life then gangbanging,” said a soft-spoken 16-year-old gang member called Chubby. “He would tell us, ‘Man, you don’t wanna be like some of these guys. They can’t even leave the projects without worrying they gonna get shot.’ ”

Ronald “Ray Ray” Arnold, 28, was Hightower’s best friend or, as Arnold put it, “his dog.” Arnold said he and Hightower became close because they shared the same feelings.

“We both wanted to do something positive in the community,” Arnold said. “But a lot of people talk about doing something; we did something.”

What Arnold and Hightower did, with several other ex-gang members and some financial backing, was open The Playground, a combination athletic shoe store and community center on Florence Avenue.

They did it in 1992, after the Los Angeles riots, when a series of gang truces and economic promises opened what looked like a small window of opportunity for ex-gangsters.

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The Playground was a place where youths could play basketball and hang out without the specter of violence. Even President Clinton came by in ’93 and shot some hoops. The Playground was popular, but like many post-riot business ventures, it was not successful enough to last. It closed within two years. Hightower got a job with Youth Fair Chance Plus.

“He was a good listener and really seemed to care about other people’s problems,” said Kim Willis, an administrative assistant at the job agency.

Marva Smith, Hightower’s boss at Youth Fair Chance Plus, was among many charmed by him.

“He had the biggest dimples and the widest smile,” Smith said. Even the day last May when she fired him for insubordination brings back a fond laugh.

“He yelled at me in front of everyone, and I said, ‘You’re outta here,’ ” she said. Within a month Hightower was back on the job after writing a letter of appeal to Smith’s boss.

“The truth is, I helped him write the appeal letter,” said Smith, still smiling. “I just couldn’t stay mad at him.”

By 33, he was the father of three children and the grandfather of an infant. Though he worked steadily in recent years and had the opportunity to leave the Watts housing project, he never considered it, according to friends.

It may have been the lost decade in custody that eventually killed him, Arnold speculated outside the mortuary as the funeral proceeded.

“He didn’t want to lose those years, those 10 long years. I think maybe he was at that party because, that night, he was acting 23. If he would have been acting 33, maybe he wouldn’t have been there,” Arnold said.

Detectives say they have yet to determine who shot Hightower at last week’s party in a housing project apartment, or why. Though the apartment was full of people, no witnesses have come forth.