THE BIGGEST REBOUND

Ty-rell Brown no longer runs the streets of San Francisco, hangs out until midnight or commits the petty crimes that added up to several stints in juvenile hall.

Now, he is proud of his 3.5 grade-point average at Santa Ana High and a demanding schedule that includes two honors courses and a key role on the Saints’ varsity basketball team.

This was the turnaround that Brown, 17, was looking for when he volunteered to move into a Santa Ana home for troubled juveniles. He wanted the structured environment to help him satisfy a final wish from his mother, Nancy Brown, who died in July of heart failure.

“I made a promise to her before she passed away that I was going to get my high school diploma,” said Brown, whose father died years ago. “I’m doing it as a tribute to her.”

Brown lives at Boys Republic, a Santa Ana home he shares with 20 other teenage boys. All except one attends Santa Ana High, but only Brown chooses to play sports.

When Brown tried out for the basketball team last fall, his size and leaping ability immediately caught the eye of Coach Adrian Gomez.

But when Brown, who is 6 feet 3, was still coming to practice a few weeks later, Gomez was really impressed.

“The early season conditioning is tough,” Gomez said. “Those kids that aren’t serious enough about it, we can usually weed out, but Ty-rell has stuck with it.”

Others from the home have also left their mark in recent years. One basketball player went on to average 18.6 points and earn first-team all-league honors. At least two boys from the home had standout football careers at Santa Ana.

Brown was looking forward to a big season, but suffered a broken foot in the second game. The injury kept him out until Wednesday, when he scored four points in a Golden West League loss to Tustin. He scored one point in the Saints’ loss to fifth-ranked Ocean View Friday.

Although Brown’s aggressiveness can lead to quick fouls, Gomez predicts that he will be a key contributor the rest of the season.

“He gets in foul trouble a lot because he thinks when the ball goes in the air, it’s his no matter what,” Gomez said. “He’s still real rough around the edges, but he has incredible athletic ability.”

That ability, and Brown’s determination, has especially impressed the counselors at Boys Republic, where Brown is held up as a role model for the younger boys. Most are eager to complete their stay and return to their schools and old friends, while Brown is looking far beyond.

“Ty-rell is in a different space than the rest of the boys here,” said Garry Hodge, resident director at the Santa Ana home. “He’s already thinking where he wants to be when he’s 25 . . . He has been such a blessing to have here.”

The average stay at Boys Republic is about 10 months, whether it’s at the main campus in Chino Hills or its lone Orange County facility. But after his release from Chino Hills in August, Brown chose to extend his stay.

“I knew if I would have went home, with me not being as focused as I am now, I would have messed up, ended up with an [arrest] warrant or something,” Brown said recently as he sat in his supervisor’s office at Boys Republic.

Brown’s senior year at Santa Ana offers a stark contrast to his freshman year at Galileo Academy of Science and Technology High in San Francisco. Brown regularly cut classes. Other days, he’d leave campus all together, play basketball at a recreation center and hang out until night.

“It was just me against the world,” he said. “I felt like a one-man team against everybody else.”

Even Brown’s mother couldn’t get through.

“I wasn’t really thinking about my mom,” Brown said. “I loved her, but I was never at the house to show her that.”

Brown began to miss school more often, come home less. He also began committing more serious crimes, such as selling cocaine and joy-riding in stolen cars, activities he now regrets.

“I was just into getting my own way,” he said. “That wasn’t right. I wasn’t showing any kind of responsibility.”

Brown’s probation officer recommended him to Boys Republic, which educates and counsels boys who have the potential to be rehabilitated.

Boys Republic, which does not accept violent offenders, welcomed Brown about 15 months ago, assigning him to its 220-acre facility in Chino Hills, where the strict atmosphere means every hour of the day must be accounted for.

The late actor Steve McQueen, perhaps the school’s most famous graduate, visited the campus often during the latter part of his life.

Hodge remembers Brown arriving in fall 1999 with the usual attitude: He didn’t want to be there, he didn’t need help, he didn’t do anything wrong.

“When Ty-rell first got into the program, his head wasn’t in the right place at all,” Hodge said. “He was, and you hear this phrase a lot, ‘Just out here to do my time.’ ”

Then one day, he showed up with a completely new attitude. He began participating in daily group discussions--the main tool of rehabilitation--where teens talk about everything from their day to their goals to their past. And then Brown joined the basketball team

“It was just common sense,” Brown said of the change. “If I continued doing what I did to get here, and make no kind of changes to get out and be successful, then I’ll just end up back in. I really wanted to do something with my life. I didn’t want to just sit here.”

Brown enjoyed a successful basketball season. Playing mostly against small parochial schools, Brown led the Metro League with an average of 13.5 rebounds a game and was selected most valuable player.

In July, he was allowed to go home for his first family visit.

He vividly remembers his mother warming the house with old-fashioned spirit and affection. She spoiled him that week, bringing home small gifts and cooking his favorite meals.

Nancy Brown’s health had been poor for months, but when her son left for Southern California, she appeared to be recovering.

A phone call she made to him the same day he returned to Boys Republic suggested differently.

“She was saying stuff, like she loved me, to never forget her,” Brown said. “She told me to do something with my life.”

Her heart failed a week later, leaving her only son parentless, heartbroken and vulnerable.

“When Ty-rell’s mom passed away, I expected him to drop off,” said Hodge, who has a doctorate in psychology. “But . . . he promised her he would continue trying to improve himself, and he has.”

Brown remembers walking into a group meeting after his mother’s funeral and feeling the stares from his peers looking for signs of change.

“Everybody was waiting to see what kind of attitude I had and how I would react,” he said. “They were wondering if I was going to fall.”

When his stay was up at Chino Hills in August, Brown had a choice. He could return to the Bay Area and live with his sister or another relative and make regular trips to a nearby juvenile facility. Or he could move into the Santa Ana home and finish his senior year.

He chose Santa Ana and had an immediate impact on the home’s other boys, who quickly began to seek his advice. And he’s found that he enjoys a leadership role. He can be stern when others fall behind with grades or household chores, and easily spots a lie.

On more than one occasion, he has used his authority to cancel an outing, such as a trip to the bowling alley. In the days before Christmas, Brown stood up in a meeting and said most of the boys didn’t deserve to go home for the holidays because they hadn’t kept up their grades.

“He won’t beat around the bush,” said Paul Booth, who lives at the Santa Ana home with Brown. “Every time he tells you something, he’ll look you dead in the eye. I think that’s important.”

The boys start their school day with breakfast, then meet at 5:20 a.m. for the assignment of chores, such as sweeping the hallway, cleaning the recreation room and preparing meals.

Later, Brown gets ready for school in the tidy room he shares with one of the group leaders. They are trusted with the only first-floor bedroom. Each room has a matching dresser and bed, with a bulletin board nailed to the wall above. Some offer peeks at a family left behind.

Brown’s has several Polaroid shots neatly tacked in a vertical column. One shows his mother proudly standing behind him, her chin resting on his shoulder, her arms wrapped tightly around his chest as both stare into the camera.

Brown is the only house member on the verge of completing Boys Republic’s emancipation program, which means he’ll be able to get a part-time job, do his own cooking, shopping and banking.

If he maintains his grades and continues to show strong leadership abilities, he’ll be eligible for the program’s financial aid package for college or trade school. His ultimate goal is to earn enough money to support his 19-year-old sister, Ty-shell, and her young daughter.

Ty-shell is looking forward to reuniting with her brother and leaving the dilapidated Filmore District neighborhood, where they grew up.

“There’s a lot of shooting and killings around here,” she said. “He could easily be mistaken [for a gang member]. . . . I don’t want him to be in a place where that might happen.”

Brown saw the same streets while visiting his sister in San Francisco over the holidays. He passed by the same hangouts and even ran into a couple old friends at the movies. A quick conversation reinforced Brown’s belief that he was doing the right thing.

“I asked them, ‘So, y’all going to school, what y’all doin’?’ ” Brown said. “And they’d just shrug and say, ‘Nothin’ ’. It was weird because I used to say the same thing.”