Lesson Found in Fall From Star to Bars

Six years ago, Leodes Van Buren was a rising star, chasing football dreams like so many spiraling passes.

A senior at Newbury Park High, he was the state’s all-time leading pass receiver, a kid who escaped South-Central Los Angeles’ gritty streets to earn a football scholarship at the University of Colorado.

But two months shy of graduation, he threatened his girlfriend with a gun, ending his promising athletic career. Other crimes followed and Van Buren eventually landed in state prison for robbing a pizza parlor two miles from the stadium where he once dazzled hometown crowds.

Now, two men who tried to help Van Buren turn his life around have produced a short film about his rise and fall in hopes of preventing other young athletes from stumbling down the same destructive path.

Starting this month, co-producers John Jenks and the Rev. Paul Bergmann plan to send copies of the 18-minute video they crafted with filmmaker Bob Howell to high school coaches around Ventura County.

Their project comes at a time when an alarming number of professional athletes have gained notoriety for violent, off-the-field incidents.

By highlighting Van Buren’s story, the men hope to show student athletes what can happen if they lose control of their tempers or succumb to the allure of drugs and alcohol.

“Our message is it doesn’t matter how much talent you’ve got, if you can’t hold it together off the field, you can’t make it on the field,” said Jenks, a private investigator who befriended Van Buren three years ago.

“He was on track to be that all-American success story,” Jenks said. “What a shame.”

Van Buren’s story began in a gang-plagued South-Central neighborhood, where he was raised by his mother. At age 12, he formed a bond with sixth-grade teacher Ken McGee and later moved into his home in suburban Newbury Park. There, he joined a flag football team and became a star.

At Newbury Park High, the 6-foot-1, 190-pound receiver became a favorite target for quarterback Keith Smith. They developed the best passing attack in the state, appeared in Sports Illustrated and were pursued by college recruiters.

In their senior year, Smith and Van Buren led Newbury Park High to a 14-0 record and the Southern Section Division III championship. In January 1994, Van Buren accepted an offer from the University of Colorado.

Three months later, his world fell apart.

During an argument with his then-girlfriend, Marcie James, Van Buren pulled a .38-caliber semiautomatic handgun from his waistband and fired a single shot through her backdoor. James, who was standing just 3 feet away, later told police he had threatened to kill her.

Ventura County prosecutors filed felony weapons charges against Van Buren, who denied having fired the gun. The scholarship was withdrawn. Van Buren was convicted and served four months in Ventura County Jail.

After his release, Van Buren enrolled at various community colleges and worked sporadically. Court records show that before last year’s pizza parlor robbery he was arrested at least five times for his alleged involvement in incidents ranging from battering a shoe salesman to sexually assaulting two former girlfriends.

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It was after the 1997 shoe store incident that Van Buren met Jenks, 46, a former Port Hueneme police officer.

“He really wanted to change his life,” Jenks recalled. He found Van Buren a job working at a homeless shelter in Camarillo and recruited him to help coach youth softball in Ojai. He also introduced Van Buren to Bergmann.

A former All-American receiver at UCLA, Bergmann played three seasons for the Kansas City Chiefs before an injury ended his NFL career. He spent the next 10 years counseling high school students through a sports ministry program before settling in Ojai.

For a while, Van Buren flourished under their mentoring. He enrolled at Ventura College and worked for the Salvation Army. Jenks said it seemed Van Buren had finally gotten his life together.

“Then he started playing football again, started partying again,” Jenks recalled. “He just backslid.”

Last April, six years after his first felony offense, Van Buren entered a Newbury Park Domino’s where he was used to getting free pizza, court records show. When two employees refused to give him a “deal,” Van Buren pushed one against a wall, knocking a money box to the floor. Police say Van Buren grabbed $45 and fled. He was convicted of robbery and sentenced to 11 years in prison.

After this incident, Jenks and Bergmann came up with the video idea. They approached Van Buren and he agreed to participate.

With permission from Judge Rebecca Riley, Van Buren sat in her courtroom after his September sentencing hearing and in a low, soft voice talked about the dangers of drugs, alcohol and running with a bad crowd.

“It can kind of sneak up on you,” Van Buren said. “It did me.”

The video begins with a fast-paced mix of old game footage--Smith back to pass, Van Buren making the catch. Then it cuts to interviews with Smith, Jenks, Bergmann and finally Van Buren, dressed in a blue jail uniform.

Most of the video is set to pop music, and Howell has used computer graphics and snappy editing to jazz it up for a teen audience.

In one part, Bergmann talks about his friend Don Rogers, a fellow UCLA player and star defensive back for the Cleveland Browns who died of a cocaine overdose in 1986. Then he talks about the mistakes that derailed Van Buren’s career.

“The message of this video,” he said, “is ‘I don’t want you to be the next Leodes Van Buren.’ ”

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That message, Nordhoff High School Athletic Director Cliff Farrar believes, will resonate with students at his Ojai school.

Farrar, who is also Nordhoff’s head football coach, recently viewed the film and intends to show it to his team in the spring. He believes other coaches will use it as well.

“It is a very good video,” Farrar said, “No. 1 because kids know Leodes. They know he was a very good high school athlete who had a chance to play at a Division 1 school and is now in jail.”

Farrar said the video doesn’t hammer kids with preachy messages. Instead, it illustrates how Van Buren and Smith--who went on to play football at Arizona--ended up in different places based on the choices they made.

“One choice gets you in jail,” Farrar said. “One choice gets you a different lifestyle.”

For Bergmann and Jenks, watching the video churns up memories of better days before Van Buren was facing prison time. That he ended up behind bars despite their guidance still haunts both men.

“That’s the nightmare for me,” Bergmann said. “How did we blow it? What responsibility do we share?”

Van Buren answered those questions the day he was sentenced for the robbery. “It wasn’t you, it was me,” he told Bergmann. “It was my choices that took me away.”