‘He Respects Us, and We Respect Him’

James Person is on his hands and knees in the middle of a crowded hallway in Hollenbeck Middle School. Students stream by him in a din of chatter as Person crouches over a banner announcing a parent meeting and carefully colors in a letter with an orange marker.

The Eastside counselor usually can be found just about anywhere on the 2,000-student campus: soothing an upset adolescent, rallying a class with a pep talk about college, tutoring students after school or hamming it up with a large circle of young admirers during lunch.

But it is here, on the floor next to his students, where his philosophy is spelled out.

“I would never ask the kids to do anything I wouldn’t do myself,” said Person, 57, who holds a doctorate in education. “If I want them to paint, I’ll get down on my knees and paint.”

In his 15 years at Hollenbeck, Person--known as Doc, Doctor or just plain Person--has become a well-known fixture in Boyle Heights, a counselor who helps his students get into prestigious prep schools and top-notch colleges and slips them money when they’re in need.

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He gets students up at dawn to clean graffiti off the school, inspires them to take extra classes on Saturdays, befriends their families, goes to their quinceaneras and pushes them to go further than they thought they ever could.

Ruben Zacarias, superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, calls Person “my hero.”

“He represents what our profession stands for, and that is dedication and love for students,” said Zacarias, who was regional superintendent for Eastside schools when he first observed the counselor’s work. “He is a superb educator.”

Many students think of Person--one of the few African Americans in a predominantly Latino community--like a father. Local parents credit him for putting countless Eastside students on track for college and professional lives.

“I owe that man so much,” said Julieta Salcedo, who says Person inspired her daughter to go to UC Santa Cruz and become a teacher. “He lit up our lives and gave the love, support and caring that a child needs. He gives without expecting anything. If more people were like him, our young people wouldn’t be in so much trouble.”

Person, a poker-playing, antique-collecting college professor-turned-counselor, squirmed at the effusive praise.

“I’m not a hero,” he said uncomfortably. “These kids have been good to me. They picked me up and gave me a purpose.”

Person’s purpose often keeps him working seven days a week.

He is at school by 7 a.m. and doesn’t go home until 10 p.m., after teaching adult classes at Roosevelt High School across the street. In between, he counsels students about college requirements, sets up field trips to local universities, plays strict disciplinarian to wayward kids, runs the after-school program and coordinates parent outreach.

Most Saturdays, he can be found at Cal State L.A. with a group of Hollenbeck students who are learning about professional health careers in a program originally geared for high schools. Many Sundays, he takes students on outings to basketball games, concerts and cultural events.

And he only sleeps four hours a night.

“It gives me more time to get things done,” he said with a chuckle.

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Person does whatever he can to reach students, from spending his weekends visiting their parents to playing classical music and reading Shakespeare in detention hall.

Most often, he uses humor.

One recent morning, the group of students who had been helping Person make signs for a parent meeting lined up to go back to their classroom.

Person took the lead and began tiptoeing down the corridor. Giggling, they copied his careful steps. He quickened his pace and scurried toward the door. They scurried. He changed his walk, suddenly marching with exaggerated leaps. They followed suit, dancing down the hall.

“He’s like my second daddy,” said Marta Gonzalez, 12, as she skipped in line. “Everyone likes him because he respects us, and we respect him.”

In the mornings, Person makes his rounds at the school, stopping in classes long enough to say hello to the teachers, check in with a few students and crack some jokes.

As he poked his head in each door, the students jumped to their feet and greeted him in unison with large smiles: “Morning, Dr. Person!”

He returned their greeting, laughing heartily.

“This gives me a connection to what’s happening with the kids,” he said. “I get a feeling for the pulse of the school and build my day around that.”

In one room, he scolded a boy for talking back to a teacher. Down the hall, he praised a blushing straight-A student in front of her class.

And in the hallway, he comforted a distraught girl trying to come to grips with a tragedy. Her friend had been found in a closet over the weekend, stabbed to death.

More often, Person attends to children who flock to him with less serious concerns. Some duck under his arm for a quick hug before heading to class. Others slap him a high five as they walk by.

“See this kid?” Person said, placing his arm around the shoulders of one boy who dashed up with some friends. “He’s come a long, long way.”

The student beamed at Person’s praise. “Y’all need to be more like me,” he announced proudly to the other boys.

Person still remembers how the sharp slights and stings of injustice cut so deeply at 12 years old.

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Growing up Buffalo, N.Y., he was “the weird kid” who hung out with a diverse group of friends, the only African American boy in the neighborhood who learned Polish and the polka from the neighbors. He befriended the lonely students at his school, the outcasts others ignored.

His father, a Pullman porter on the New York Railroad, said only one thing about his son’s eclectic group of companions: “You must always stick by your friends.”

Person got his first taste of teaching as an eighth-grader, when an administrator tried to punish him by putting him in charge of the kindergarten classroom. He loved it.

He went on to teach math in Buffalo schools and get his doctorate in counseling from the University of Pittsburgh.

After a stint as an education professor at Cal State San Bernardino, he came to Hollenbeck Middle School as a substitute teacher in 1983, ignoring warnings about the school some called “Hell ‘n Back.”

A few years later, when he was applying for a full-time teaching job, the district wanted to place him at another school. He refused.

“There’s a passion at Hollenbeck you can’t find anywhere else,” he said. “I can be down and walk through the hallway and it perks me right up.”

During his first year, Person rounded up a group of 15 students who rose at 5 a.m. every day to paint over the graffiti on campus. They called themselves the Junkman Crew, after the nickname “Junkman James” Person had picked up in Pittsburgh as he trawled the city for antiques.

Every morning, the students painted the school clean. Every night, the graffiti came back. Finally, the taggers gave up, leaving one last message for the persistent students: “We Quit.”

“He has been one of the most influential individuals in my life,” said Hollenbeck alumnus Gerardo Lopez, 26, who worked on the Junkman Crew. “There was something magical about how he could see [promise] and recognize it in certain students. Growing up in the inner city, you’re faced with a lot of negativity. I think I was really subscribing to a lot of it. He saw a lot more in me than I saw in myself.”

Lopez was misbehaving in class, so Person gave him two years of detention tutoring other students after school. Lopez enjoyed it so much that he kept the job through high school.

“It was an experience that really turned my life around,” he said.

Now, Lopez is getting his doctorate in education at the University of Texas with a focus on dropout prevention.

“My first PhD student,” Person boasted proudly. For Person, every student is college-bound. Every student has options.

“I try to get across that you need to do the best you can,” he said. “If you give students opportunities, you never know what’s going to open up for them.”

Since 1990, he has sent about eight promising Hollenbeck scholars to Phillips Academy, a distinguished prep school in Andover, Mass., with such notable alumni as former President Bush.

If Phillips’ financial aid doesn’t cover the $23,000 tuition, Person chips in with his own money. When a student doesn’t have spending money for the semester, he drops some in the mail.

Paulina Flores, now a sophomore at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., remembers that Person would call her once a month when she attended Phillips and give the homesick East Los Angeles native a pep talk.

“The first year was really hard because it was such a culture shock,” said Flores, 19. “But I knew it was good for me. It opened my eyes to another world I never knew existed. I was able to push myself further than I thought my potential would go.”

Flores, who is now studying government and economics, wants to go into international law. Her family invites Person over for dinner every time she comes home on vacation.

“He really has been a second father figure in my life,” she said. “He is a sincere person who doesn’t have any interest except helping people. There’s few like him in the world.”

Person’s passion to push his students toward higher education is evident in his classroom, where one wall is lined with T-shirts and sweatshirts from colleges around the country.

He offers a few college scholarships a year to Roosevelt High School graduates who went to Hollenbeck. He drives former students up and down the state visiting schools, and helps them move into their dorms in the fall. He flies to visit homesick students and faithfully attends their graduations.

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Person, who drives a 1983 Mazda with mileage pushing 200,000, spends thousands of dollars a year on his students. He lobbies his colleagues and family members for donations. Instead of birthday presents, he asks for checks written out to the scholarship fund.

“These kids are my mission,” he said. “That’s what it’s all about. They’re my employers. You can’t ever lose sight of that.”

Sometimes others are amazed by his zeal.

“One administrator said to me, ‘Person, you’d do anything for these kids,’ ” he recalled. “I told him, ‘You don’t know what they’d do for me.’ ”

Three years ago, Person was diagnosed with diabetes. He tried to keep it a secret, but his students knew something was wrong. Now, they nag him to drink water regularly and eat well.

“Don’t forget your doctor’s appointment,” called out one girl as Person stopped in her classroom.

“Don’t forget to refill your medicine,” shouted another.

The community has also rallied to show their support. Parents send him homemade dinners. The corner doughnut shop refuses to sell him jelly doughnuts, much to his dismay.

He doesn’t have children of his own, Person said, but his life is full.

“I’ve got thousands of kids,” he said. “Who can say that?”