(From left, Walter Fajardo, Donald Bernard, and Raul Vasquez, all 10, doing
sit-ups under the watchful eye of trainer William Caraballo.)
 

Kids trading street life for a gym they call a home.




 

By Justo Bautisa
Herald & News

Gussie Turner thinks she knows why youngsters turn to the mean streets. "No role models," says the 53-year-old city resident. "I want to see men that are role models, instead of men who have a brown paper bag over their hand all the time. I prayed and asked God to send some role models, He sent me."

Accordingly, each day, this grandmother visits the city´s bleakest housing projects in her station wagon, picks up her "boys," as she refers to the needy youngsters from single-parent families, and drives them straight to a gym in an old factory building on River Street along the banks of the muddy Passaic River.

It is there that the Paterson Police Athletic League recently opened a gym and boxing club where Turner hopes to save a generation of youngsters. In that hope, she is not alone. She is one of an eclectic but dedicated team of PAL volunteers.

"After school, these kids are not hanging out on the street," said Steve Olimpio, PAL´s executive director and a former narcotics detective. " They´re hanging out with cops and judges."

Physical conditioning is taught. But the real byproducts, PAL volunteers say, have been the lesson in discipline, respect, and self-esteem – priceless commodities in a city struggling to find safe havens for it´s youth. The PAL program has already transformed some lives. Samuel Jacobs, 18, a junior at Eastside High School, says "he used to steal cars and go come here are told by their parents that cops are the bad guys."

The center also issues every kid a PAL identification card. "If a kid gets pulled in for something and they show this to the officer, the officer calls me and I go down and try to talk to the kid, to head off whatever trouble he´s getting himself into before it get out of hand," Olimpio said.

One of the criticisms Olimpio has heard concerns the training of potential criminals to be stronger, better fighters.

That's not what we´re about here, he replied. "We´re not teaching kids how to go out and bust heads". "We´re teaching them about discipline, respecting their bodies and about loyalty.
And if you have those three traits, you can´t fail, no matter what you try to do."