Hope Can’t Be Terminated Here

Paul Gonzales ended up with a gold medal around his neck at the 1984 Olympics, but there’s no telling where he would have ended up if he hadn’t discovered boxing.

Gonzales, who won the flyweight division at the Los Angeles Olympics, grew up in a tough area in the Boyle Heights region of East L.A. and found himself headed toward a life of crime and gangs before sports changed everything.

Today, Gonzales, 37, shows other inner-city youth how sports can make a positive influence. He works with the Hollenbeck Youth Center near his old neighborhood, and with Inner City Games, a national charitable foundation with local roots.

Started in 1991 by Hollenbeck director Danny Hernandez and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger as a way to keep kids off the streets, Inner City Games has expanded to 15 cities and includes educational, cultural and community enrichment programs.

But sports is still the foundation of the program.

“Sports is something all these kids can relate to,” said Gonzales, who did all of his Olympic training at the Hollenbeck Youth Center and has become an icon in his neighborhood as the first Mexican-American to win Olympic gold. “It’s an activity for them to do, a way for them to harness all the energy inside them and give them something to do other than run with gangs and doing dope.”

Schwarzenegger, who came from a poor family in Austria, came up with the idea for the Inner City Games after visiting poor children at Hollenbeck. He says he saw that underprivileged kids today had more needs than ever.

“I visited the inner cities to deliver the message of the American dream to the children, telling them that if I could make it, anyone could,” Schwarzenegger said. “But I found I was wrong. I had two parents, recreational facilities, coaches and academic support--things that many kids don’t have today.”

Inner City Games offers clinics and competitions in team sports such as basketball, baseball and soccer as well as Olympic sports such as boxing, track, swimming and gymnastics.

The Hollenbeck Center is equipped with a full-length indoor basketball court, boxing ring, gymnastics studio and fully equipped weight room. Once participants get involved with sports, they are encouraged to use other outlets such as the Internet-ready computer lab and performing arts. The program serves more than 25,000 kids in the Los Angeles area and more than 1 million nationwide.

“I viewed sports as the hook to get kids interested in after-school programs,” said Schwarzenegger. “I did not want them to think it was merely an extension of the school day.”

Executive Director Harley Frankel said that building a strong family foundation is the key to keeping kids off the streets.

“We offer computer training to the parents too,” Frankel said. “That way the parents and kids have something in common to talk about at night.”

Hernandez, who grew up in East L.A., said getting through to youth was the best way he knew to change a neighborhood on the decline.

“This place is run down,” Hernandez said. “Everyone is on welfare, it’s gang infested, you have to share bowls of beans if you want to eat and if you see some homeboys walking toward you, you have to run the other way.

“I thought that giving kids something to look forward to might make a difference. I wanted to provide some positive influences for kids. As long as kids have someone to believe in them, they can turn all of their negative energy into positives. We let them know there is hope.”