Diving for New Lives

Alonso Ramirez was about to take the big plunge and wondered if his friend Angel Holguin was coming with him.

“Vienes, flaco?” the 14-year-old said to his skinny friend.

Angel was busy suiting up for his very first ocean dive, awkwardly cinching a weight belt, nervously strapping his air tank around his wetsuit as the 80-foot dive boat, the Encore, bobbed off the coast of Santa Catalina Island.

The two were among 18 teenagers who rose at 4:30 a.m. recently to participate in the culmination of a monthlong program run by sheriff’s deputies who are trying to offer young people an alternative to the gang life that scars many of Southern California’s lower-income neighborhoods. Aboard the Encore were three deputies from the city of Industry sheriff’s station and five volunteer diving instructors from Sport Chalet.

Alonso and Angel maneuvered their flippered feet to the edge of the boat and leaped, one after another, into the turquoise abyss, making their very first dives into a watery world they might never have known. Twenty minutes later, the two emerged from the 68-degree waters.

“It was bad,” said Alonso, meaning it was really good. “I didn’t want to come back up.”

“I was scared at the beginning. Then it was cool,” said an enthusiastic Angel, also 14, who recounted the names of the fish he and his friend saw.

That is exactly the reaction the sheriff’s deputies wanted to see. Through the Sheriff’s Youth Foundation, founded in 1985, deputies from throughout Los Angeles County volunteer their time to provide a range of activities to keep young people who they deem at-risk off the streets. The activities, funded by public and private sources, range from tennis, boxing, baseball and football to soap box derbies, computer labs and folk dancing.

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So far, 10 of the county Sheriff’s Department’s 17 full-service stations have established Youth Activities Leagues, which complement the foundation’s drug prevention classes in schools. Each of the participating stations decides what kind of activities to provide.

Since 1994, the Industry station has been organizing free classes in scuba diving. The next session begins Tuesday and serves the cities and unincorporated areas in and around the station’s patrol area. The station also has programs in tennis, baseball, flag football, basketball, softball and camping.

For some participants, such as Armando Islas, 38, the program has changed lives. Islas was gravitating toward joining an East L.A. gang when he enrolled in the baseball and football program organized at a local park by the Sheriff’s Department. He went on to graduate from Harvard University and is now an oral surgeon. He knows that the coaching, counseling and mentoring he received from sheriff’s deputies kept him away from a life of crime.

“Friends of mine who didn’t participate and thumbed their noses at the program are somewhere in prison. A good percentage are dead through drug overdoses, stabbings and shooting,” said Islas, one of eight children whose parents emigrated from Mexico in the early 1950s. “I really credit a lot of my self-assurance and pride . . . [to] the Sheriff’s Department’s program. That’s what sparked it all.”

Deputy Dennis Worden, who has been teaching young people to dive since he started with the Industry sheriff’s station program three years ago, has seen many young adults start out like Islas.

“I think [the diving instruction] is a confidence builder for these kids,” Worden said. “We take them from knowing nothing about scuba diving to being confident they can do it and having a blast at the same time.”

“It’s a great opportunity for the kids as well as for us,” said Deputy John Harvey, explaining that he and his colleagues are seen as human beings instead of tough law enforcement officials toting guns. In turn, deputies see the softer side of kids who may act tough but are confused about growing up.

Gangs are more than happy to recruit young people. And Alonso, experiencing his first ocean dive, could have been one of them. Without thinking twice, he can quickly rattle off the names of several gangs that terrorize his La Puente neighborhood, and he knows they could alter his life if he let them.

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“I’m asked practically every day if I want to be in a gang,” he said, noting that his older brother hung around gang members before joining the Army.

For fellow diver Pedro Serrano, 14, drive-by shootings are a way of life around his home. He said he stays away from gangs by keeping busy. Earlier this summer, he was enrolled in the sheriff’s baseball program; then he signed up for the diving instruction.

For three weeks, the diving students gather for lectures and underwater training in a hotel swimming pool. While the classes are not long enough to make them certified divers, they are sufficient to give the group a glimpse into a new world and sport.

All that training culminates in a boat trip, which started at 7 a.m. in San Pedro one recent day. As they boarded the Encore, the 15 boys and three girls were quiet and reserved, shaking off the early morning cobwebs.

But by the time they reached their diving destination off Catalina near Two Harbors, there was a hum of excitement and movement.

Gordon Boivin, director of training and dive operations for Sport Chalet, used his booming voice to give a series of warnings, instructions and encouragement to the young divers, who were struggling to pull on wetsuits or leaning over the boat’s edge to survey the ocean’s depth.

There were brief moments of panic after each one jumped in. Boivin’s arms were grabbed by Solymar Sanchez and Diane Banda when the kelp wrapped around their ankles.

But everyone was flabbergasted by the beauty they found in the underwater world.

“It is something I will remember all my life,” said David Galindo, 14.

“I’m speechless,” said Johnny Morales, 16, succinctly describing the experience.