If we did, we'd miss out on the James N. Lees of the world.

        Just eight years ago, James was a 12-year-old plunging down a steep slide.

        An A/B-student at a Roselawn school, James felt overwhelmed and abandoned by life's battles. His mother worked full time and went to school at night. His father, in and out of jail, was uninvolved. Even three visits a week to church and his teachers' efforts couldn't keep him in school.

        “My family couldn't understand me. I didn't have anyone I could talk to about who I was,” he says.

        He began running away, experimenting with drugs and booze. By age 13, he says, “I wouldn't come home for days.”

        The Crips “beat him in,” blindfolded him and forced him to fight 12 members to join. While wearing Crips blue, he “did dirt” for the gang — robbery, assaults, car thefts, he says. He used his nearly 6-foot, 250-pound frame to intimidate his way up from entry-level “foot soldier” status.

        “Even for my young age I was very much respected and feared, which was something I fed off of,” he says. “I loved that people feared me.”

        He tried selling crack cocaine but feared getting caught. He tried selling marijuana but smoked the merchandise. He couldn't start his day without smoking weed.
       

The turnaround

        He landed in juvenile detention several times.

        Once, after he was caught in a robbery and assault, a fellow gang member informed on the gang and said James was the snitch.

        “I fought with people in the gang. At one point I had a hit — my mom was told there was a hit — out on my life,” he says.

        He beat one of the high-ranking gang officers before he was able to walk away, he says. “I started to see the gang wasn't the family I thought it was.”

        At 16, in juvenile detention again, he was diverted to the Talbert House for 180 days of intensive drug and alcohol treatment.

        “All that time in solitude I had a chance to think about things,” he says. “God began to speak to me concerning who I was. I was at my breaking point. All I had known to be true, I wasn't living.”

        Staff at Talbert House, his grandfather and his mother — even strangers at church — prayed for him and with him.

        He began studying for his general-equivalency diploma. In two months he passed it and, with more help from the Citizens Committee on Youth, he entered the University of Cincinnati.

        Two years ago, diabetes sidetracked him. He worked but didn't stay long with any job. Until he found Public Allies, a program that trains college students and young professionals in community service.
       

"I saw myself'

        After 10 months, he almost single-handedly ran an after-school program in Mount Auburn when its director quit, says Dayle Deardurff, who heads Public Allies. He recruited volunteers, developed curricula and coordinated field trips for about 20 kids.

        “I saw myself in a couple of them,” he says. “I grabbed hold of them, tried to connect more with them personally.”

        James, now 20, is back at UC. He recently spoke at his grade school's graduation. He urges adults to keep trying to rescue kids like him.

        “Listen to the voice of youth,” he says. “Don't assume anything by the way they dress. See the potential in all the youth.

        “I hear a lot of older people say they have just given up on us. I really want them to understand that if they don't like what they see, it's because they didn't do something about it.”

        Call Denise Smith Amos at 768-8395, or e-mail damos @enquirer.com.

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