From Hard Time to Honors Time

For Valley College student Larry Wooldridge, his last assignment before graduation Thursday may be the toughest of all: how to whittle down 30 years of experience with drug use, alcoholism and prison stints into a 4 1/2-minute commencement speech.

“There’s no road map from where I’ve come from,” the 48-year-old ex-con turned honors student said. “I’ve had one hell of a journey.”

Wooldridge has been sober for two years now--about the same length of time it’s taken him to receive his associate of arts degree at the Valley Glen community college. On Thursday he will don a cap and gown and tell his story before about 500 expected graduates and an estimated 5,000 in the audience. He not only dropped out of school after the ninth grade at Luther Burbank Middle School in Burbank in 1967, he dropped out of life as well.

“That was [around] the year that ‘Easy Rider’ came out,” he said. “I dropped out and didn’t come back until 1998.”

Wooldridge’s life in between has been a haze of county jails, prison cells and rehab centers. He’s tried 49 times before to get sober.

A hit-and-run accident when he was 19 got him strung out on pain pills along with the street drugs he was already doing, he said. He moved on to heroin about the time his daughter Jennifer--who will graduate from high school next month--was born.

Even though he received a high school equivalency diploma while in prison, he did nothing with it. His life bounced around from one arrest to the next; finally, he ended up living on the streets in Sun Valley.

“People were dropping dead around me,” he said of the 2 1/2 years he was homeless.

He nearly overdosed twice. He said a doctor told him that his body was so ravaged by drug use, he wouldn’t live long if he didn’t clean up his life.

Wooldridge went on one final binge of vodka, heroin, cocaine and speed. The next morning he called a recovering friend from a pay phone for help. A few months later, that friend challenged him to go back to school.

“Ninety-four days after that doctor told me I would die,” he recalled, “I started classes. My world, as I knew it, changed forever.”

That first day of school he barricaded himself in the back of the class with other chairs so that no students would come near him. “I was scared to death. I had walked [prison] yards with some very, very bad people. But I was never as scared as I was on that day.”

He tested out of remedial English and math and started moving his seat from the back of the class to the front.

He made friends. “The students started showing me what a small world I had lived in,” he said.

At first, they tutored him. He would tie up the pay phone at a recovery house in Burbank for two or three hours a night while they taught him how to factor algebraic equations.

And when he discovered history, he started tutoring them.

“My teachers tell me I’m going to make a great teacher,” he said. “I’ve got a sixth sense from living on the street of the students that are flaky and the ones that [aren’t].”

Wooldridge had originally sought a computer degree but will instead transfer to the University of New Mexico this summer to pursue a degree in history with a teaching credential.

“I want to continue his vision,” Wooldridge said of history instructor Jack Arnot, whose teaching style encouraged him to switch majors. He took all five of Arnot’s classes in history and humanities.

“He especially enjoyed ‘Hamlet,’ ” Arnot said. “We got into dimensions of life that made him look back on the mess he’d been through.” Since enrolling in college, “he’s had the time of his life.”

Wooldridge was selected by college faculty and staff from 15 applicants to deliver Thursday night’s commencement address.

“The road is smooth for some,” said Yasmin Delahoussaye, vice president of student services, “but for him it has been paved with stones. He is a credit to all of us.”

Wooldridge’s 3.75 GPA and love of history have landed him a scholarship from the history department.

“I hope to teach kids that have had a rough life like me,” he said. “I want to show these kids that they can make it too.”

Valley College’s graduation ceremonies will start at 5 p.m. in Monarch Stadium, off Ethel Avenue at Burbank Boulevard.

Pierce College in Woodland Hills and Mission College in Sylmar will also hold commencement ceremonies Thursday. Mission’s begins at 5 p.m. in the quad area behind the campus center. Pierce’s starts at 6 p.m. at Swisher Park, Mason Avenue and Victory Boulevard.

KUDOS

USC Bound: Eight Valley College students have won scholarships to USC. Recipients of $23,600 presidential scholarships are Haroutoun Aharonian, Robert Jeters, Svetlana Kats, Aiditya Sharma, Miron Ilincev and LinLin Zhang. Lilit Tovmasian and Sera Robine were awarded dean’s scholarships of $12,000 each.

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