L.A.’s Pied Piper

It isn’t easy to nab media mogul Rupert Murdoch for a charity chicken dinner. Or Seagram’s chief Edgar Bronfman Jr. to boost a local Los Angeles cause. But Gary Gitnick’s Fulfillment Fund bagged both for its annual galas--Murdoch last year and Bronfman for this year’s Nov. 18 event. And this despite the fact that most Angelenos have never heard of Gitnick or his nonprofit venture. They haven’t the foggiest idea that it’s one of the most unique and successful youth-mentoring operations in the country--and certifiably the best in the state. (It won that award from the California Mentor Initiative last year.)

But Gitnick, the founder and driving force behind the fund, likes it that way. His little brainchild should be considered “a civic group that belongs to all who participate,” he says.

He will endure an interview just so he can give his favorite philanthropy a plug. That is how it comes to light that his 45-page resume is a catalog of achievements during his 30 years at UCLA, where he is a physician, professor and chief of staff of the largest gastroenterology department in the world. Sixty-two of the medical books on Gitnick’s shelves were authored by him.

He and his wife of 35 years, Cherna, have raised four children--all now successfully launched from the family’s Encino nest. But there is what might be described as a fifth child--the 22-year-old Fulfillment Fund--which the doctor continues to nurture on a daily basis.

The fund’s accomplishments are beyond doubt: Its main program asks public schoolteachers and counselors to identify seventh-graders who are likely to drop out of school because of poverty, gang pressures, addicted parents, and the like. The fund then pairs each child with a trained volunteer mentor for a minimum of five years, from eighth grade through high school. The mentor offers opportunities and encouragement and helps the student set goals, get good grades, finish high school and attend college with help from a Fulfillment Fund scholarship.

“About 93% of the children in this program will complete high school; 90% of those will go on to college. No other organization in the United States can equal that record. I think we save more lives than most hospitals,” says Gitnick, 60, who is ready to nudge the fund up to its next plateau.

At present, he says, the fund is “the largest donor of college scholarships in the L.A. Unified School District. We are also the largest local donor of financial recognition awards to teachers and counselors in the LAUSD.”

But still, only 2,000 children in L.A. benefit from the fund’s programs every year. He wants it to touch every disadvantaged child in the city and state. He would like to see a model program implemented nationwide. Fund programs, he says, tend to erase the barriers that keep potentially good citizens, and good students, from going bad.

Fulfillment Fund students have a track record unparalleled by other mentoring groups. They gain entrance to local universities as well as Harvard, Princeton, Brown, Yale, Wellesley, Stanford and other far-flung schools. Some go on to graduate school.

Tahira Hoke, 24, grew up with four brothers in a low-income household headed by her mother.

“It was a neighborhood of gangs, drugs and death,” she says. Hoke entered the fund program and, she says, discovered a different world. “Encouragement is really important . . . having people believe in you.”

Hoke refers to Gitnick by his first name. “Gary is interested in each of us. He knew us all by name, had us to barbecue parties at his home. The whole staff is that way--they care about us as individuals, really want us to succeed.”

Hoke has. She graduated from UCLA in 1997 and now attends Claremont Graduate University, working toward a master’s degree in psychology.

Gitnick stresses that turned-around kids become good citizens and taxpayers.

“It costs $34,500 per year to keep a youngster incarcerated in the California penal system,” he says. “It costs $1,050 per year to keep a student in the Fulfillment Fund. Draw your own conclusions.”

Gitnick is a compact, sturdy man who radiates vigor--as if delight and accomplishment have prevailed against time.

“It’s fun doing this work. I get so much more out of it than I put in. Most of the mentors, schoolteachers and counselors who work with the kids say exactly the same thing. They have a sense of doing something so, well . . . fulfilling.”

Prudy Zorotovich, a former counselor at San Pedro High School, says she knows “without question” she has helped change many students’ lives for the better. The children Zorotovich worked with were “almost without exception” from families with no history or background of higher education. But Zorotovich says, “So many had great potential, and all they needed was a little nudge--an outside agency to say they believed in them and that they could do it.”

From Rough Beginnings to Scholarly Success

Gitnick tells the story of a child who moved to Los Angeles at 9 and quickly learned English as a second language.

“His father was alcoholic and abusive; his mother was addicted to drugs. The boy joined a gang, which became his family, his support, his reason to exist. By the time he was 12, he was a very successful thief. His school counselor felt the boy was bright and had potential.” The fund matched him with a mentor, and a supportive relationship developed. “By the time the boy graduated, he was captain of the high school football team and president of his senior class. He went on to USC undergraduate school, UCLA graduate school and then started his own business. We turned a hoodlum into a taxpayer.”

Another story is about a girl who was thrown out of her house after she got pregnant and she was not seen in high school again. “But the school counselor knew this girl had potential, worried about her, and walked the streets of L.A. looking for her after school and on weekends. Six weeks later, she found the girl living in a cardboard box on Skid Row.”

The girl was paired with a mentor, had her baby while living with a distant relative, managed to finish high school and attend college on a fund scholarship--”never getting a grade below A-minus in her entire four years of college.”

In 1977, the Fulfillment Fund was formed to develop programs that would provide role models and opportunities--first for disabled children and eventually for disadvantaged youngsters of all kinds. By 1983, Gitnick says, the program for disabled children was “on automatic pilot.” He still wasn’t satisfied. “I looked around our city and saw kids whose daily lives exposed them to violence, drugs and gangs. I saw too many young lives being wasted. I wondered what would make a difference for them.”

The mentoring idea slowly evolved and expanded. It now includes a variety of services to students: college and career counseling, drug education, paid internships, tutoring and the Princeton Review preparatory program, which prepares them for college entrance exams.

Gitnick credits Andrea Cockrum, the fund’s chief executive for 11 years, as the one who “makes it all happen so successfully.” She credits him as being “tremendously charismatic, energetic . . . the man who just takes care of everyone.”

A Fateful Lunch Set Him Straight

Gitnick was once one of those kids who needed a role model. And he remembers how little encouragement it took for him to change course--from a kid who “knew nothing and was going nowhere” to someone who graduated from college and medical school.

His father suffered from chronic lung disease and was “always sick.” His mother ran a grocery store, assisted by her two sons. When Gitnick reached eighth grade, he recalls, he was a lackluster student with no plans to change his ways. Then came “The Lunch”--a single afternoon adventure that Gitnick says changed his life.

A teacher selected him as a delegate to the annual Rotary event, at which one child from each public school was allowed to dine and mingle with successful businessmen of the city. “It was held at a lavish club. My first opportunity to see chandeliers, overstuffed chairs and more silver on the table than I knew what to do with. I grew up using one fork and one knife.”

The afternoon made a “lasting, lifetime impression” on Gitnick, who still seems to remember every moment of it. “The men pounded home a message I never forgot: ‘If you work hard enough toward a goal, you can achieve it. You can be like us.’ ”

He began working harder to get good grades. He applied to 17 colleges and remembers being rejected by all of them, except one. The University of Chicago accepted Gitnick with a scholarship. To pay for rent, books and food, he held multiple jobs--at one point working in the morgue, the library and a lab.

He proved that he knows how to get what he wants and isn’t afraid to work hard for it. He also, apparently, can’t resist gently twisting an arm to get there.

How come the reclusive Rupert Murdoch was willing to headline last year’s fund-raiser? “He’s my patient,” Gitnick simply says.

Bettijane Levine can be reached at bettijane.levine@latimes.com.