Unlikely Source Offers Words of Hope to Kids in Trouble

When I saw a photo of Jerry Caminiti of Irvine working with some of the county’s juvenile offenders, I wanted to meet him to ask: Why, after all he’d been through, would he care that much? This wasn’t the career Caminiti had expected.

Caminiti, now 36, had a passion to be a forest ranger. He longed for a career outdoors. When we finally met, I discovered we shared a love for the Red River Gorge in Kentucky, where he’d often gone spelunking and I’d once been best man at an outdoor wedding.

Caminiti had all these great plans.

After his 1979 high school graduation in Cincinnati, he had visited his sister in Orange County. He liked it so much he made arrangements to move here and take courses at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo. After that, he expected to transfer to a college in Northern California to pursue additional requirements to become a forest ranger.

But back home on Oct. 24, 1980, just shortly before the big move west, some drugged-out teen wacko shot Caminiti without provocation with a .22-caliber derringer at a ball field. To make matters worse--tragically worse--the shooter then lifted up Caminiti (over his protests) to give him a swig from a Jack Daniels bottle he’d hidden along with his gun. He thought it would ease Caminiti’s pain.

Instead, it likely led to permanent damage to Caminiti’s spinal cord. He was left a paraplegic.

No forest rangers in wheelchairs, Caminiti was politely told. He turned down offers for limited roles along nature paths for the disabled.

But Caminiti was determined not to let his circumstances interrupt his plans to move to Southern California. He now lives in an apartment complex near UC Irvine designed for the disabled. He takes courses at Orange Coast College and UCI, and refinishes furniture to supplement his disability income.

Caminiti’s pain as a crime victim did not end with the shooting that left him paralyzed. The shooter was sentenced to 15 years in prison but was out in less than three because of overcrowding. A few years ago, on a return visit to Cincinnati, Caminiti actually ran into him at a street festival.

“The anger came rushing back, but I told myself that I would never get down to his level,” Caminiti said, “that I would never let what he did control me.”

Further trouble: In 1990, while he was wheeling toward a friend’s apartment in Memphis, Tenn., a young would-be robber put a gun to Caminiti’s forehead--again a .22 derringer--and demanded cash. Caminiti assumed you don’t face a .22 derringer twice and survive.

“I just thought my life was over, and you know, I was ready,” Caminiti told me. But the gunman left on a bicycle without shooting him when he realized Caminiti was broke. The young man was caught, but served only a short sentence.

Caminiti has faced more hospitals since that incident. And it was laying in an Orange County hospital bed one day that he got the idea about what to do with his life: He’d try to help people like those who had victimized him.

He recently formed his own nonprofit organization, which he calls the Disability Awareness Coalition. He speaks at local schools or to special groups. Each Thursday night, he works with young people incarcerated at the county’s Joplin Youth Center in Trabuco Canyon. He also speaks regularly at Juvenile Hall in Orange. Sometimes he helps these people with their homework. Often they discuss the offenders’ lives.

His Australian shepherd Bear rested on the floor between us at his apartment when we talked. Caminiti told me calmly and frankly about the shooting, the months and months in hospitals, the operations spread out over years, the frustration of being limited in his goals.

But when I asked the one question that had prompted my calling him--after what he’s been through, why does he care so much about helping these young men--he started to cry.

“Because I have to,” he finally said. “These kids are out there killing each other and for no reason. If they can meet someone who’s a victim of senseless crime, learn a little about what we victims have to go through, then just maybe I can reach some of them. At least I have to try.”

Crowley & Nixon & Carter: Don’t expect to see Monica Crowley as an invited guest at the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda. She’s the former post-presidential Nixon assistant who turned her notes on meetings with the boss into a bestseller, “Nixon Off the Record.”

A lot of Nixon supporters believe she exaggerated her role on his staff to help sell books. I read her book while I was off a few days this week. She makes an effort to be fair to him, but there’s a certain sadness about it: Nixon struggling so hard to impress upon a young aide that he deserves to be known as one of our great presidents.

Crowley does mention the Nixon library in the book. She describes Nixon’s anger that former president Jimmy Carter had not shown up for the opening in 1990. Carter, who cited a scheduling conflict, was the only living former president not there. “Isn’t that the pettiest damned thing you’ve ever heard of?” Crowley quotes Nixon as saying.

More Nixon on Carter, when he learned they both would be traveling abroad at the same time: “He’s probably going over to build outhouses in Central Asia.”

Nixon II: The Nixon library has always had a steady stream of visitors. But its private rooms, where many of the Nixon archives are now open to scholars and journalists, are busy too. The library reports that 17 research visits were made to the archives in the latest reporting quarter (some by repeat visitors.) The staff opened up more than 4,000 manuscripts for review in that time.

Besides most of Nixon’s papers, the library also houses the papers of H.R. Haldeman, Nixon’s chief of staff until he was forced out during the Watergate scandal. And of special interest to Nixon researchers must be the donated correspondence between Nixon and Herman L. Perry, the Whittier banker who helped initiate Nixon’s move into politics.

Wrap-Up: I first learned about Jerry Caminiti’s work with juveniles through a Tustin-based publication called the Community Crime Fighter, now in its second year. It’s put out by a nonprofit group of the same name. Its board list includes some impressive names: Deputy Dist. Atty. Bryan Brown; Jeremy Miller, Chapman University law school dean; Irvine Police Chief Charles Brobeck; and Fountain Valley Police Chief Elvin G. Miali.

Says its editor, Terry Thompson: “We all must work together to slow down the flow of teens headed toward life in and out of prison.”

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by call-ing the Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823 or by fax to (714) 966-7711, or e-mail to jerry.hicks@latimes.com