Parolee Sets Sights on Turning Around Lives : Social services: Former inmate heads up Valley mentoring office, matching attorney volunteers with those starting over.

Armando Lopez came to this country from Mexico with his mother when he was a baby. When he was 7, she gave him up for adoption.

At 16, he was skipping school and hanging out with boys who had joined a gang. That year, he was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and second-degree murder.

He spent the next seven years in jail with the California Youth Authority.

Now 25, he is out on his own. He has left behind his former gang friends, his adoptive and biological mothers and what family remained, to try to rebuild his life.

In July, Lopez completed his two-year parole with an honorable discharge, and on Aug. 1 became director of the first San Fernando Valley office of Volunteers in Parole, a statewide mentorship program that matches newly released parolees with attorneys who volunteer to help them reenter society.

Lopez was honored last week in Sacramento by the California Probation Parole and Correction Assn. with an Outstanding Achievement Award for his successful transition from detention.

Although no one person can take credit for Lopez’s success, one factor has been the steady, stabilizing influence of his mentor, Pasadena civil litigator Stephen Ball.

Ball met with Lopez over the last two years, sometimes for coffee, sometimes for lunch and once to watch the Rose Parade from his downtown Pasadena office. They talked on the phone frequently.

“I wish I could claim credit for a tenth of his success,” Ball said last week. “I think he’s a man who kind of is who he is, who knows where he wants to go, who just needs a shoulder to lean on and someone to bounce some ideas off.”

Volunteers in Parole was founded in 1972 after U.S. Supreme Court Justice Warren Burger challenged attorneys to take action against the high rate of recidivism among criminals.

Today, 348 attorneys statewide work with youth and adult parolees to help them get back on their feet when they leave prison.

Of the program’s $750,000 budget, 80% comes from the California Youth Authority and the state Department of Corrections. Two-thirds of the volunteer attorneys work with youth, one-third with adults.

“What we do is provide a new friend, a window to a part of the world that most have never experienced,” said John Hix, the program’s deputy director of volunteers.

No statewide statistics are available showing the program’s impact on recidivism. But in the Fresno area where Hix works, 75% of parolees who complete the program do not return to prison, a flip-flop of the usual rate, he said.

Lopez said he will always remember the day he ditched school and was hanging out on the street with his gang friends, when a car carrying rival gang members pulled up.

“Those guys threw some stuff at our car,” Lopez said. “Then they came back and we got into a fight. As a result, someone was killed with a baseball bat.”

He said he did not injure anyone, but rival gang members identified him as the bat-wielder. They wanted Lopez’s friend, who was with him during the incident, to go free so they could kill him, he said. The friend was later released, and he was killed.

“I didn’t do anything,” Lopez said. “But I didn’t do anything to stop it. Two people lost their lives, and that’s very important.”

While serving his sentence, he applied for Volunteers in Parole.

Although he had longed for freedom, in some ways it was harder than being locked up.

He briefly returned home to his adoptive mother, but she did not want him. He had no money, no job and no family.

Still, he tried to help his younger half-brother, who is living at a halfway house. And he let his younger sister--a 17-year-old with a child--move in with him. After six months, he realized he could not take care of her, and he reluctantly turned her over to the state.

In the meantime, he earned an associate arts degree in 1995 from Ventura College. He is currently enrolled at Cal State Los Angeles, where he is seven courses short of earning a bachelor’s degree in social work.

He now works with clients in six parole offices, juvenile hall and continuation schools. He is also a certified counselor for domestic violence, anger management and parenting.

As Lopez tried to find a job, a home and rebuild his life, Ball was in the background, dispensing advice.

“He came from such a dysfunctional place, one is amazed that he is where he is,” Ball said. “I guess I realized my difficulties aren’t that hard. That’s a big gift.”

This fall, Ball and Lopez will speak at the annual Los Angeles chapter of Consumer Attorneys meeting in Las Vegas, to recruit more attorneys to the program. The number of parolees who need mentors is far greater than the number available.

Lopez acknowledged that he is not out of the woods yet, but he knows he is on his way.

“Just because I match someone up with an attorney doesn’t mean their lives will turn around,” Lopez said. “It’s that wanting to do it. That determines everything.”