Just Doing It

At first glance, the images tattooed on Tim Rhambo’s arms look like works of art.

Instead, they are reminders of a dangerous past he now regrets.

On one arm the words “Do or Die Denver Lanes” are etched into his skin, and on his other arm is a picture of a hand holding a gun.

“I’d have them removed,” said Rhambo, 40, “but right now I just don’t have the money. I know there are places that do it for free, but they don’t do a good job and in the end your skin looks like you’ve been burned.”

Another reason to let them stay is that they’re now doing more good than harm: evidence of a street credibility that allows him to reach today’s youth as a volunteer with the boxing program at Villa Parke and keep them from making the same sorrowful choices.

Growing up in the King’s Villages apartments in Northwest Pasadena, Rhambo became attracted to gangbanging and drug dealing — the only two lifestyles that seemed to be bringing anyone living there much success.

“When I went outside that’s what I saw. It’s what I always saw,” he said.

Since leaving gang life, Rhambo has been committed to helping today’s generation avoid drugs and violence by both mentoring young boxers who come into the ring and reaching out to other youth on the streets.

As it goes about the well-intended business of trying to steer youth away from violent lifestyles, local government in most cases lacks the person-to-person relationships that an individual like Rhambo can provide.

Recently the City Council’s Youth and Violence Prevention Ad Hoc Committee was criticized by community leaders, including NAACP Pasadena Branch President Joe Brown, as being too bogged down in procedural details to generate any real, immediate change.

Formed in September after nine gang-related homicides shook the city, the committee was the brainchild of freshman Councilwoman Jacque Robinson, in whose district much of the violence involving youth was spiking.

The body, headed by Mayor Bill Bogaard, is an 11-person board with members from the City Council, the Altadena Town Council, the Pasadena Board of Education and the Pasadena City College Board of Directors.

The committee faced a small setback last week when Supervisor Mike Antonovich denied a request for $20,000 to help pay for consultants to assist the committee, telling the Weekly through a spokesman that the money should instead be spent on programs and services that address the problem directly.

As concerned as he is about youth violence, Rhambo looks at the situation in a similar way. “We need to get in the street where [the youth are] to solve the problem,” he said. “I just come at them real and straight.”

Rhambo isn’t the only one out there making social problems personal. There are a number of people in Pasadena who, without taking a paycheck from any sort of consulting firm or government agency, are setting out on their own to make a difference.

Following are a few others we know.

James Maddox

When he got home in 1972 after serving for 21 months in the Vietnam War, James Maddox went back to school and tried to forget about the horrors there.

Unfortunately, the rest of the country also tried to forget — not only about the war, but about the young American men and women who came home damaged by the violence they encountered or, in some cases, inflicted.

A decade after his service, Maddox, who built a successful career in marketing, joined the Vietnam Veterans of America. He now serves as president of its Pasadena chapter.

As leader of the group, Maddox is a one-man lobbying machine on behalf of veterans, both as a group and as individuals. The morning may find him in a congressman’s office discussing the need for pro-vet legislation, and that afternoon he might be on the phone with a branch of the Department of Veterans Affairs solving the particular problems of an individual vet.

His latest project is to take the second part of his mission — connecting struggling veterans with the services they’re due and helping them navigate complex government systems to get assistance — on the road, literally.

Since November, Maddox has been visiting churches, community centers and homeless shelters to make himself available to veterans who need help, and has applied for a grant from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to expand his efforts out from Pasadena to the ocean and the desert.

Maddox fears his services will be needed more than ever as more and more young people return from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in poor physical and mental health, especially after those conflicts fade from the headlines.

“When you have less than one percent of the population involved in these conflicts, it is not going to take long for the other 99 percent to forget them,” said Maddox.

Stella Murga

After the tragic Halloween murders left three dead in 1993 and three others later facing death row for their involvement in those killings where they sit to this day, Stella Murga decided to start the Pasadena Youth Center.

Once housed in the old YMCA building, today the center is located at Eliot Middle School, has an office in East Pasadena and offers myriad after-school programs including Volume magazine, a color glossy magazine designed, written and edited by youth.

Prior to starting the PYC, Murga ran a successful vocational counseling business and employs many of those skills to reach the youth at her doorstep.

“At first there were a lot of setbacks,” said Murga. “We were doing job training, and then we realized the kids didn’t know how to fill out a job application. You experience setbacks, but you keep going because you realize the need is so much bigger than you thought. It is wonderful when I see kids who were with us in the beginning and years later they have graduated from college. It gives you a lot of hope and encouragement that you are on the right track. You can only touch so many, but those who you do touch you want to have a positive impact on.”

Billy Mitchell

After all the success he’s had as a jazz musician and composer, South Pasadena’s Billy Mitchell could have done just about anything in his retirement — traveling the world was one idea.

Instead, he stayed right here at home and didn’t retire at all.

Describing today’s Southern California minority communities as lacking the kind of support he experienced growing up on the East Coast, Mitchell felt called to make change happen, to be there for kids who might otherwise have very few positive adult influences in their lives.

And the best way to reach kids, he found, was by sticking to what he knew best: music.

Seeing public school music programs struggling or disappearing altogether, Mitchell also learned from colleagues that high-caliber music training programs were reaching out to fill the gap, but having trouble locating qualified applicants.

In 2001, he started the Scholarship Audition Performance Preparatory Academy, which teaches music to kids at all skill levels but specializes in connecting talented youth with free professional training and mentors working in the music business.

“I am a professional musician concerned with the future of American contemporary music — and I don’t mean hip-hop — and the lack of African-Americans involved in formal music, orchestras and marching bands,” he explained.

What started as a way to reach out to African-American youth evolved into a broader neighborhood-oriented project, with many of Mitchell’s classes in Pasadena bringing black and Latino youth together to make music rather than fighting each other out on the street.

Which brings us to the part where everyone benefits: Even if Mitchell’s students don’t grow up to perform at the Hollywood Bowl or Playboy Jazz Festival, they have a better shot at staying in school and out of trouble. And a big part of the formula, said Mitchell, has been getting their parents to encourage that success.

“The community and parents have to start taking responsibility for children’s involvement in tutorial programs. Now there is a real disconnect. Until the community starts raising its voice, the children suffer,” he said.

Celestine McFearn Walker

When Celestine McFearn Walker first moved into Northwest Pasadena almost two decades ago, she was shocked by the fighting and drug-dealing going on in her new neighborhood. Things were so bad that her then 12-year-old son asked one day, “Mommy, where did you move us to?”

Her response: “Don’t worry, baby. We’ll change it.”

And so Neighbors Acting Together Helping All (NATHA) was born.

The 20-member group, made up mostly of parents, formed Neighborhood Watch groups to keep an eye on criminal activity in the area, despite threats against them and their families.

The organization also grew to include a youth leadership group. All of those involved have graduated from high school, and 85 percent have continued on to college.

“There wasn’t really an inspiration,” said Walker, 50. “It was a need to take control of our neighborhood, because there were some negative elements coming together. Every day there was constantly something — gunshots, shootings. Children had to walk past drug dealers to get to school. We felt a sense of responsibility.”

Walker continues to keep an eye on the neighborhood. Last year she complained multiple times to police and city officials about an illegal teen-oriented nightclub in Pasadena, which police shut down several times, but only temporarily, until after 16-year-old Ebony Huel was killed by a stray bullet during an altercation there.

Tecumseh Shackelford

When Tecumseh Shackelford retired from the Department of Water and Power in 1999 after working there for 31 years, he had no idea that some of his most important work was still in front of him.

On the advice of Pasadena Board of Education member Scott Phelps, then working as a science teacher at John Muir High School, Shackelford met with Principal Eddie Newman to discuss how he could help the school.

Shortly after that meeting, Shackelford teamed with Gene Campbell and former Pasadena NAACP head Del Yarbrough, who used their own money to fund Muir's Mentoring and Partnership for Youth Development organization (MPYD).

The MPYD program partners successful members of the community with students to build a relationship that lasts throughout high school and beyond.

“We really haven’t had to do any recruiting,” said Shackelford, who explained that word of mouth and recommendations from teachers and counselors are growing the program.

The result: Last year, 16 of 19 seniors in the program graduated. The year before, all 21 seniors wore a cap and gown.

Robin Salzer

During his run for City Council last year, Robin Salzer, owner of Robin’s Woodfire BBQ & Grill, found himself talking almost as much about kids and public schools as he was other city issues.

One idea Salzer pushed was for the Pasadena Unified School District to bring vocational training courses back into the classroom, so those who may not be going on to college receive some training on which to build a successful career.

Salzer may have lost the election, but he held onto that idea.

After the votes were counted, Salzer started the Lemonade Brigade, a business owned and operated by students. The Lemonade Brigade started as a traditional lemonade stand, but is quickly growing into a full concession service. Salzer, who has a contract for concessions at the Rose Bowl, sticks around to help.

“Everything written about the Northwest is negative. All the shootings and the problems — the ‘N’ in Northwest stands for negative, but this is something positive,” he said.

The Lemonade Brigade involves 45 teenagers, and sold 220 cups of lemonade at last month’s State of the City Address at the Rose Bowl.

Profits from the business are used to fund educational trips. Recently, participants traveled to Washington DC, where they visited Pasadena’s Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff.

“If I had my way, I would want every kid to go to college,” Salzer said. “But we have to prepare the kids that don’t.”

Brother Jaysee

When it comes to being real and telling it like it is, not many compare to Brother Jaysee.

For five months, rain or shine, the 49-year-old Jaysee spent his Fridays and Saturdays on Lincoln Avenue in Northwest Pasadena holding a sign about the ongoing violence in that community that read “We must stop killing us.”

It’s hard to measure the impact of making such a statement, but it couldn’t have hurt.

“We haven’t had no murders since I been out there,” he said. “I am trying to give people an opportunity to stop and think before they do some crazy shit. As far as the results go, my job is just to deliver the message.”

One of the few people ever to join Jaysee was Councilwoman Jacque Robinson, who stood with him in the rain one Saturday night.

Jaysee moved to Pasadena from Pacoima in 1981 and befriended barber Michael Bryant, who inspired him to begin cutting hair and to hone his skills by giving free haircuts to kids in Robinson Park.

After Bryant died in 1991 in custody after leading police on a chase, Jaysee began giving free haircuts to kids in his honor each year before school starts, as well as collecting donations for school supplies.