In street parlance, Mario Corona - or "Spider" as he was known - was a genuine shot-caller for the Pacoima Criminals, a gang he joined at 13. He was in and out of juvenile hall and probation camps until a couple of caring teachers, along with a near-death experience after being shot, gradually set the bright young adult along a different path.

He went back to high school, then on to Pierce College, California State University at Northridge and the University of Southern California, where he earned a master's degree in social work. While in graduate school at USC, he got permission to do his internship at an agency that works with gang wannabees and gangbangers in the San Fernando Valley.

When Corona graduated, Communities In Schools of the San Fernando Valley/Greater Los Angeles, the valley's largest gang prevention and intervention program, snapped him up to run its job development program. He flourished, training and finding jobs for more gang-prone and gang-initiated kids than the agency's U.S. Department of Labor contract actually called for.

He was asked to be on community and academic panels, and to speak to students at schools. Only last month, he traveled to North Carolina, where he was the keynote speaker at a major anti-gang conference.

"He was our poster child," said Bobby Arias, president of CIS.

All this hard work and achievement came crashing down Feb. 28 in Panorama City, when narcotics detectives investigating a drug house pulled over Corona's car and found a pound of methamphetamine hidden under his clothes. The Mexican native, who has a legal visa, could be deported or imprisoned if convicted.

'Devastated'
"We're just devastated," Arias said. "One of the hardest things I've had to do was call in Mario's colleagues - close to 40 fulltime people - and tell them. To a person, they're just shocked. I'm talking about college-educated people who work with him on a daily basis to some of our most hardcore gang intervention workers who hail from his same community and have known him almost all his life.

"If you were to say to me that this young man with all that he had to lose and all that he had endured - getting his AA, BA and MSW degrees, taking out $100,000 in student loans and recently planning on going to law school - would be involved in something like this, I would have said absolutely no way."

Corona's ties to Communities In Schools goes back to the very beginnings of the anti-gang agency in 1990. After his son was killed in a drive-by shooting, champion kick-boxer William "Blinky" Rodriguez met with gang members to negotiate a truce. Signed by 75 gangs, the agreement supposedly resulted in gang-related deaths dropping over the next year from 52 to 2 in the valley. One of the gang leaders, or shot-callers, instrumental in arranging that truce was Mario Corona.

Rodriguez mentored the young gangbanger through junior college and college. Then Arias, a USC alum, helped him get accepted to and guided him through graduate school. The president of CIS says he saw "no indication" of drug use or gang activity while working with the job developer at their North Hills headquarters.

"But how do you deal with that allure of gangs?" he asked. "It's almost like a cloud that's always there. And that's what's so difficult about Mario, because I can't say he's a kid. He's a 30-year-old man. You're not a kid per se at 30, and you would hope at some point in time you grow into making really earnest decisions. So I just can't explain that part."

In the 17-year history of Communities In Schools, there have only been two other individuals he's had to fire for maintaining gang ties or possessing drugs, according to Arias - and both were outreach workers in the hardcore intervention program. But he admits that in this line of work, "if you're not working with people with a high possibility of risk, you're not working with the right people."

Taking a chance
Malcolm Klein, who has studied gang issues for four decades, agrees with that statement for the most part. The USC professor emeritus of sociology says Mario Corona is the latest example of how some "ex" gangbangers play both sides of the fence.

"When you hire old gangsters like that, you take your chances," Klein pointed out. "Most gang members become non-gang members, but they spend a few formative years getting away with a lot of stuff. And the pressure is pretty high.

"So you take your chances. You say, 'Well, this guy can be very helpful and he can establish rapport with these kids. So we have to balance the one against the other.' Sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose."

The social scientist also stressed that researchers, as well as journalists, can never trust purely anecdotal material - no matter how compelling the story.

Last month, Corona told The Tidings, in specific detail, how his life had dramatically changed over the last ten years (see March 2, page 4: "From gangbanger to gang worker: Can others do it, too?").

(Reporter's note: Not only was he vouched for by CIS officials and others who knew his story, but he appeared to be intelligent, straightforward and sincere, with an impressive academic and recent work history.)

When asked the pivotal question what brought about his transformation, the articulate young man answered:

"As cliché as it sounds, it was a couple of people who invested some time in me. That's all it was. You know, it's like we're looking for some magical solution to gangs. But it's not complex at all. It's very simple. It's just a matter of implementing it."

If only implementation were that simple.