Valley / Ventura County Sports : Trouble No More : Michael Porter, Scared Straight by His Arrest for Carjacking, Has Become a Model citizen and Defensive Leader for Verdugo Hills Football Team

There was a knock at the front door.

“LAPD, open up.”

Michael Porter, a football and basketball player at Verdugo Hills High, listened from his upstairs bedroom. He jumped up, walked to the banister and saw two uniformed officers speaking with his father.

“My heart was beating so fast,” he recalled.

At 15, Porter was scared for the first time in his life. None of the punishments for ditching school, smoking pot or getting into trouble with friends had struck fear in him.

Until now.

He was going to jail.

The officers told him he was being charged with carjacking. He confessed to everything. He handed over the stolen keys, dressed and was escorted outside, where he was identified by the victim. Porter was handcuffed and led away.

He would not return home to Lake View Terrace for close to a year. Every freedom he took for granted--getting something from the refrigerator, going to the bathroom or watching television when he wanted--was gone.

His father, Michael Sr., tried to get through to him. Counseling, punishment, prayer--nothing worked.

“When I heard about [the carjacking], I couldn’t believe it, then I could,” the elder Porter said. “He was staying out late and I didn’t know where he was.”

Porter’s arrest and incarceration on Jan. 19, 1998, was the worst day of his life. It was a new beginning, too. He never intended for his criminal act to be a cry for help, but it was answered.

“It was the start of something good,” he said. “I think back, if I didn’t go through this or I didn’t know how things were, I could have done something worse.”

He spent three months each at Sylmar Juvenile Hall and at a juvenile camp in Palmdale before being transferred to Kilpatrick, a juvenile detention facility in Malibu that is run like a boot camp and offers its own sports program.

He was an All-Southern Section linebacker last fall for Kilpatrick. But he learned more than football. The daily discipline and loss of freedom made him think long and hard about his life.

“You think about what you did wrong,” he said. “You regret it a lot. You take every day the same. You have to grow up. You’re by yourself.”

Last December, just before Christmas, he was released from Kilpatrick and reenrolled at Verdugo Hills. He was drug tested for six months. The tests were negative. He went to class and earned Cs, Bs and As. He scored 1080 on the SAT. He returned to the football team this summer as a 6-foot-3, 175-pound senior linebacker with speed and physical skills that make him a potential All-City player.

“If everything goes well, we think he’ll get a scholarship,” Coach Don Scott of Verdugo Hills said. “We’re centering our defense around him. The kid has an innate ability to be where the ball is.”

Porter doesn’t stay out late anymore. He does his homework and listens to his father and coaches.

“He’s been in absolutely zero trouble,” Scott said. “He’s doing all the right things. I do trust him.”

Said Michael Sr.: “He’s changed his life around. He came out a whole different kid. Something had to get through. He’s a good kid at heart. He wasn’t disrespectful to me. Everything that happened was when he was away from home. He must have been a different person.”

Problems began when Porter entered high school as a 13-year-old freshman. He went to Kennedy and was kicked out. He went to San Fernando and was kicked out. No one questioned his athletic talent or academic potential. But he couldn’t stay out of trouble.

“I was never really just a horrible kid because I had a family,” said Porter, who turns 17 in November. “I wanted to be with the bad kids and do what they were doing. I actually thought it was fun.”

Everything changed on that fateful day in 1998. Porter and a friend were waiting for a ride home. They were drinking and smoking. They asked a guy for a cigarette, then took his car.

“It was totally wrong,” Porter said.

Porter was visited every weekend by his father, a single parent who works two jobs and also has a 13-year-old son. He suffered his own crisis, wondering whether he had failed as a parent.

“Sometimes there’s nothing you can do and it’s difficult,” Porter’s father said. “I never gave up hope. I always kept loving him. I would hope no other parent would have to go through anything like this. It’s terrible. You blame yourself so much.”

There are better ways to learn lessons than spending 11 months behind bars. But Porter accepts what happened and has moved on.

“Hey, I have nothing to hide because I’ve changed,” he said. “The past is the past. That’s no place I ever want to be again in my life.”

Too many times second chances are wasted. This time, Porter intends to succeed, both in football and in life.

*

Eric Sondheimer’s local column appears Wednesday and Sunday. He can be reached at (818) 772-3422 or eric.sondheimer@latimes.com