Bodybuilder Helps Shape Troubled Youths
“Hey, man, how did you get like that?”
Jose, a lanky young man dressed in standard-issue orange juvenile delinquent garb, approached bodybuilder Michael Bowler, whose sculpted frame, clad in jeans and a T-shirt, caught the attention of more than a few residents at Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hallin Sylmar on Monday evening.
“What do I have to do to look like you?”
Bowler, a well-liked, frequent visitor at the detention facility, smiled as he tossed an arm around the juvenile offender, and talked for several minutes with him about nutrition and fitness. Soon the conversation shifted to weightier issues, including the boy’s upcoming trial.
“The kids can tell I lift weights, and that’s a conversation starter,” the soft-spoken, 40-year-old mentor said. “They need someone to talk to without being judged, and that’s what I do. Once we talk for a while, they can tell that I’m genuinely interested.”
The teen advocate, who also is a high school teacher, was making his Monday-evening rounds at the juvenile hall, where three times a week he offers bear hugs and solace, as well as instruction for the Roman Catholic sacraments of baptism and First Communion, to the young men temporarily housed in the northeast Valley facility.
“Michael’s a person the kids look up to,” said Marciano Avilla, a juvenile hall chaplain. “He follows them to court or Youth Authority and he writes to them after they leave here. He’s a leader.”
Bowler’s deep compassion for and commitment to kids stems from a childhood he describes as lonely. When he was 7, his doctors discovered that he had suffered a permanent hearing loss, the result of an earlier illness. Labeled as “different” by his peers, the quiet boy was also shut out by the adults in his life, who weren’t tuned in to his special needs.
“When I was growing up, it felt like adults didn’t pay much attention to what I had to say,” Bowler recalled of his youth in the San Francisco Bay area. “Because they had ignored me, I’ve chosen a life in which I’m available to listen to teens. Kids need the validation from older people, and that’s what I enjoy doing.”
Bowler, who holds two master’s degrees, is a longtime special education teacher at Hawthorne High School in the South Bay, and he helps train teens in weightlifting at the Westchester YMCA, where he works out six times a week.
Bowler said his greatest satisfaction comes from his volunteer work with the Catholic Big Brothers’ hearing-impaired program, for which he has served as a mentor since 1983.
“I know what [hearing impaired] kids are going through,” Bowler said, referring particularly to his current Little Brother, 15-year-old David Leone, whom he recently accompanied to an art store to buy materials for a school project. “With Big Brothers, I can see the growth, I can see what decent young men they become.”
The admiration is mutual. “Mike is a great friend and mentor, and I love him very much,” David said of his Big Brother. “I just hope that we’ll be able to maintain the strong bond that we share, now and forever.”
Not to worry. Bowler, who is still in touch with his first Little Brother--now 28--said he’s there for his charges as long as they need him.
“I have no kids of my own, but it feels like I’ve raised a couple of generations’ worth,” Bowler said. “I get so much back from the kids in my life; the work is so worthwhile.”
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