Anchorage Daily News

Editor's note: This story was originally published March 23, 2007

Spring break, and it's chaos at the Spenard Rec Center. Controlled chaos.

The gymnasium is filled with kids that society calls "at risk," but the only thing at risk here is that gym time will end before the kids are ready to go home.

Six basketball hoops hang from the ceiling, and four-on-four games are being played at three of them. Clusters of kids shoot baskets and collect rebounds at the others. Dozens more sit on small sets of bleachers, watching the action or waiting their turn. Astonishingly, only one person is wearing earbuds, and no one is talking on a cell phone.

In the middle of it all sits Mao Tosi, the giant-sized man responsible for all this activity. He's the West High security guard who responded to the city's spike in youth violence last fall by starting after-school clubs at West and East high schools.

Tosi is cutting up four bags of oranges with a paring knife, and the kids are eating them as fast as he can slice them.

"We're trying to keep them all occupied," Tosi says as he jokingly admonishes a teenage boy trying to sneak up from behind and snatch a whole orange. "Keep 'em playing. Keep 'em busy."

Tosi, 30, didn't learn until late last week that he could use the Spenard Rec Center and the Cellular One Sports Center for this week's three-day camp. There was little time to spread the word. But spread it did.

"The gym doesn't open till 9," Tosi said, "and at 8:30 there were 20 kids sitting outside waiting. Some of them didn't even have coats."

Ola Vaivai, a 17-year-old from West High, was among those who showed up. His spring break alternative?

"Nothing," he said. "I got parents that's working, and some of us don't have cars, don't have transportation. Mao got us our ride.

"Everybody here's for the same reason. He got everybody interested because it's free. Some of us can't afford five dollars, or even one dollar. It's a good thing."

It is a good thing.

And it's getting even better. People in town -- important people, people who can make things happen -- have seen Tosi at work, and they're ready to help him help kids.

Tosi will soon leave his job as a security guard for a job running youth programs for Communities in Schools of Alaska. The position will let him work full-time with kids in the city's middle and high schools.

Tom Morgan, state director of CIS-Alaska, made the change possible by raising money from a variety of sources impressed with Tosi's work. The state's Department of Juvenile Justice says it will help. CIRI and Taco Bell each donated $10,000, and the city added a one-time contribution of $60,000, half from the police, half from the mayor's office.

"You pay it one way or another," city manager Denis LeBlanc said. "If we can keep the kids out of trouble, then the police aren't making police calls. We're convinced this will pay dividends to the city."

The show of support for Tosi's work is one of the best, most tangible results of the city's increased focus on youth and gang violence since a number of shootings and killings in the last year.

Tosi, a former NFL player who graduated from East High, isn't taking guns or drugs away from kids. But he's diverting kids from those kinds of things by giving them somewhere to go and something to do.

It might seem like bribery when he tells kids that if they participate in a poetry workshop, they can win digital cameras or T-shirts. But Tosi knows such offerings are a valuable currency. They buy him a kid's time and attention.

The scene this week at the Spenard Rec Center was amazing. Kids of all sizes, ages and colors shot baskets, ate snacks, showed off their beat boxing skills and even tried a little poetry. There wasn't a hint of friction, a hint of bullying, a hint of trouble.

"Look at the different race groups and ages,'' said 16-year-old Nicole Suapaia of East High as she watched a group of older boys play an intense yet friendly game of basketball. "This is good."

It is good.

Beth Bragg's opinion column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Her e-mail address is bbragg@adn.com.

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