A Nurturing Presence for Wayward Boys in Need

They are the kind of boys I would cross the street to avoid if I saw them congregating in my neighborhood . . . budding juvenile delinquents, their court records might say, with bad tempers, foul mouths, rap sheets.

But on this day, on their turf, that is not what I see. They greet me with smiles, handshakes, shy introductions, delivered at the prompting of the man they call “Sporty,” the man I have come to Chatsworth’s Rancho San Antonio to see.

He’s an institution on this campus for wayward boys, dean of San Juan Cottage, where Rancho’s youngest wards are housed. His real name is Ruben Aguirre, but everyone knows him as Sporty because that’s the moniker he uses for his charges, whenever he forgets a kid’s name.

His 35-year tenure has spawned dozens of stories of lives transformed by his kindness and dedication. I was drawn here by this one, recounted to me by 18-year-old Jaime Mungia:

“Every night, Sporty would sit me next to him and have me read stories from a book in English,” said Mungia, who came to Rancho six years ago, when he was 12 and arrested for burglary.

Jaime had spent most of his young life on the streets. “I never went to school, couldn’t read, hardly spoke English,” he said. “But Sporty never gave up. He would sit with me for hours. He started me with real simple stories . . . anything, just to get me to read.”

Those hours paid off: Jaime graduated from high school in June. He is headed for community college this fall, and still lives and works at Rancho. “If Sporty hadn’t put in the time, I probably would have given up, headed back to my [gang].”

But Sporty shakes his head at the notion that there’s something heroic in the simple act of helping a kid learn to read.

“A lot of these kids have never had the type of nurturing and support and security that we take for granted. They’re hurting and they’re angry. . . . But you approach them with love and they’ll surprise you again and again.”

In Sporty’s eyes, his charges are not just truants and pot smokers and car thieves, but boys in need of guidance and direction . . . boys like he was, when he landed at Rancho as a teenager almost 40 years ago.

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It is considered “the Cadillac of boys’ homes,” the social workers tell me. Run by the Brothers of Holy Cross, Rancho San Antonio relies on private donations and government funding. It is home to 100 teenage boys, some sent by the Probation Department as an alternative to juvenile hall, and others referred by the Department of Public Social Services from dangerous or disintegrating homes.

The average stay is about a year, though some, like Jaime, spend much of their youth as Rancho boys, moving from dorm to cottage to quasi-independent group homes.

And while it is a place of rules and schedules, of limits and demands, its cottages and dorms are neat and cozy, and the grounds include a gym, game room, computer lab and pool.

And everywhere--running the kitchen, the computer center, the cottages--are former Rancho boys like Sporty.

That may be part of the reason for its success, says Brother John Crowe, the home’s director for the past 30 years. “They’re role models and they understand what’s going on in these kids’ heads. They’re living proof that life can change.”

And then there are role models from the other side, like the former Rancho resident who is now in San Quentin prison for murder. “He sends a donation every year,” Crowe says, “and a note we read to the kids, warning them not to follow his path.”

Sporty did his stint at the ranch when it was still mostly farmland, with horses, cows “and lots of hard work, lots of regimentation.”

He won’t go into what landed him there--”I was a troublemaker, same as a lot of these boys”--but he will tell you what turned his life around:

“I learned how to forgive. I had so much bitterness about a lot of things, and I learned that I had to let that go to move forward.”

He left Rancho and went on to college, Pierce Community College and Cal State Northridge. Then he returned to help impart the same message he’d learned to today’s Rancho boys: You might not be able to change your circumstances, but you can change your attitude toward them. And you can make something of your life.

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Sometimes the smallest things can make the biggest difference.

I hear it again and again in the stories of Rancho boys . . . and former boys, now turned men.

Like Squeaky, a pudgy, sweet-faced boy of 14 who was born addicted to drugs and then abandoned by his mom.

“Sporty’s like a dad to me,” he says. “If I need school supplies or something, he’ll get me a folder or whatever I need.”

And Victor, who now works as a cook in the Rancho kitchen, but spent two years there as a teen. “Both my parents were drug addicts, my family life was pretty abusive. If it wasn’t for this place, I don’t know where I’d be.”

His salvation?: “They put me to work in the kitchen . . . and they sent me to school to learn to cook. That meant a lot, that someone took an interest in me, believed in me. I’d never had that feeling before.”

Simple things, but signs that someone cares. Make him read, let him learn a skill, provide him with the school supplies he needs.

“They’re not bad kids,” Sporty says. “They just need someone to care enough to give them a shot at a future, and the luxury of dreams.”

Sandy Banks can be reached by e-mail at sandy.banks@latimes.com