With the delicate intensity
of a watchmaker, Mario Robinson glued a
miniature basketball hoop to a tiny backboard.
It's recreation time at Camp Wilmont Sweeney
in San Leandro, where teens serve out their
court sentences for nonviolent crimes involving
drugs, domestic disputes and thefts.
Robinson skipped the pickup basketball
game on the yard so he could finish building
an architectural model of a day-care center,
complete with backyard courts for the kids.
"This is gonna be the toy room,"
said his campmate, Paul Williams, Jr., pointing
to one of the eight rooms inside their model,
which they dubbed Daddy's Day Care. "And
here, here is the supply room for extra
diapers or toilet paper or whatever."
Robinson and Williams are among a group
of six teens in custody who are learning
the basics of architecture -- from scouting
a location to rendering a design on paper
and then painstakingly erecting a scale
model out of wood.
They are working at a fast clip to finish
on schedule for their model unveiling tonight
at the Alameda County Office of Education,
where they will graduate from the architecture
class in front of their teachers and families.
The teens toured a neighborhood with an
empty lot in West Oakland, then were asked
to come up with a building for the space
in an exercise about how planners benefit
communities.
In addition to Daddy's Day Care, the boys
came up with a recording studio with a bar
on top, which they called Casanova Studios,
a drug- and alcohol- recovery center and
condominiums.
The man who is giving the boys a second
chance is Wayne Perry, CEO of the San Francisco
construction management firm Cornerstone
Concilium Inc. While a student at Kennedy
High in Richmond, Perry struggled to find
a mentor with the same passion for buildings
that he had. After graduating from UC Davis,
Perry opened Cornerstone in 1986.
That year, he started mentoring students
who came to his office. Nearly 100 students
have since taken his 12-week-long introduction
to architecture, and Perry has hired about
15 of them.
"I'm that person I couldn't find when
I was a kid," he said.
Last year, he worked out a deal with the
Alameda County Office of Education and the
Probation Department to bring his program
to Camp Sweeney - named for the late, longtime
presiding juvenile court judge Wilmont Sweeney
- where students serve out sentences for
misdemeanors or nonviolent felonies.
The boys had to interview with Perry first
to get into the Cornerstone program.
"We're working with kids, some of whom
have never been interested in anything,"
he said.
One of Perry's new hires is Quan Baker,
17, who finished the course last fall and
now tutors the other students for $9 an
hour, work he will continue until his release
in February. He says he wants to be an architect.
"This is the first time I've had a
legitimate job," said Baker, beaming.
"I've learned that you can make money
in a positive way."
LaRon Aikens was drawing trees in green
pencil on his scale drawing of Casanova
Studios.
"It's located near a school, so kids
could come over and record songs and have
fun," he said. "And on the second
floor is a boardroom, where record executives
will decide if they are going to sign you
to a label."
Learning to measure was the hardest part
of the class, Aikens said, but now that
he's learned to use a triangle square to
create architectural drawings, he loves
it.
"I know all about floor plans and
things now," he said, "so I'm
going to help my dad get his construction
company off the ground."
The Cornerstone graduation ceremony
will be held at 5:30 p.m. today at the Alameda
County Office of Education, 313 W. Winton
Ave., Hayward.E-mail Meredith May at mmay@sfchronicle.com. |
