Games Serve Thousands in First 10 Years

Danny Hernandez climbs up and down the steps of Dodger Stadium’s Pavilion, high-fiving, shaking hands and starting the wave amid the 3,000 young people and parents who are with him at the game.

For the boys and girls, watching the Dodgers play the Florida Marlins is one highlight of this year’s Los Angeles Inner-City Games.

For Hernandez, the upbeat, 56-year-old founder of the games, “Family Night” at Dodger Stadium on a gorgeous summer night is a chance to reflect on the games’ success.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the games--a massive, year-round, after-school sports, academic and family activities program that originated at the Hollenbeck Youth Center in Boyle Heights.

The games, which Hernandez conceived to give young people an alternative to the streets after the 1992 riots, have served thousands of youths.

Helped by the celebrity power of actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the games have spread to 15 other cities nationwide. Recently, Hernandez shipped off an organizational manual to leaders who are putting together a program in South Korea.

“The number of volunteers and individuals that are a part of it [are] from the educational world, from the sporting world, to the very highest levels of professionals,” Hernandez said. “How can it not make you proud?”

To some, the Inner-City Games are a ray of light that still shines long after many other community-rebuilding efforts in the wake of the riots have faded away.

“It’s one of the living examples of something positive that came out of the riots that we can show, now that it’s 10 years old ... kids being given some positive influences,” said Bernard C. Parks, former Los Angeles police chief.

The games became a proud export of the Hollenbeck Youth Center to the rest of the nation when Schwarzenegger, who serves as the local games’ executive commissioner, pushed for formation of the Inner-City Games Foundation.

Each summer, hundreds of thousands of young people--from San Jose and San Diego to New York and Miami--lace up their basketball high-tops or track-and-field spikes and hit the courts and fields.

The national success is largely credited to Schwarzenegger, who has traveled the country, spent his own money and inspired kids. “We love you,” he tells them. “We care for you. You are great. You can make it.”

Schwarzenegger embraced Hernandez’s vision because it resonated with him personally.

“For me, it’s giving something back to the community and something back to my country,” the actor said. “I would not have gone as far as I did in my career without the United States. It balances out what I have been given.”

At the Hollenbeck Youth Center, crowded with children and young men and women playing hoops, boxing and pumping iron, Hernandez can be found on the third floor. This year also marks the 30th anniversary of the center.

Hernandez has led the youth center since 1981, and his wife, Beatrice, and daughter, Priscilla, 24, are strong supporters of his work.

The games have grown to involve about 25,000 young people in the Los Angeles region and the volunteer services of an array of individuals and organizations--from police officers to the city’s Recreation and Parks Department. Hernandez’s enthusiasm has attracted leaders in other cities to his vision.

“He came up with [the phrase] ‘All kids are a lifetime investment,’ ” said Raul Diaz, who heads the South Florida Inner-City Games. “It speaks a lot about Danny.”

Others see the games’ value as a way to set young people on the right path.

“Emily Dickinson wrote about lighting the long, slow fuse of possibility,” said Rob Hardwicke, a businessman and member of the L.A. games board of directors. “And that’s what Danny and the games and Arnold were doing.”

Hernandez was raised on the Eastside, and his mission of providing opportunities for kids is partly rooted in his experiences as a U.S. Marine in Vietnam.

“There was a lot more violence going on there than [anything] we ever grew up in,” he said. “This is a pretty good place. And if we can get young people to develop themselves and get them to another level of life, we are going to have good human beings.”

As the city burned in 1992 and community leaders struggled with ideas about what to do, Hernandez thought of expanding to the rest of the city the games that had been held on the Eastside the year before.

To gain support, and knowing the power of celebrity, he met with Schwarzenegger.

“I became very interested and fell in love with the whole concept,” the actor said. “I told him, ‘I have a bigger vision, a vision of creating a national Inner-City Games foundation.’ ”

Schwarzenegger also heads the group that put Proposition 49 on the November ballot. That initiative would increase state funding for after-school and early-morning youth programs.

“We have an obligation as a society to provide for those kids,” he said. “When I was a child, I had great schools, great sports fields. My mother was waiting for me ... my father would practice soccer with me.”

Hernandez has tried to provide such opportunities. He measures the positive effects of the games by reciting the names of some of the participants who are now police officers or graduates of top universities.

Hernandez doesn’t have to look far to find examples.

His daughter, Priscilla, was 13 when the games were born. She played softball and grew up volunteering. She gained confidence from befriending people like Schwarzenegger and then-Mayor Tom Bradley. She now has a degree from UC Berkeley.

“I didn’t have any limitations,” said Priscilla Hernandez, who is a board member of the Inner-City Games Foundation. “As a result of meeting all these people, I felt like I could do anything.”