SAYING NO TO DRUGS

About 600 people, including members of a drum corps from L.A., join an
anti-drug march in Fresno.

Jonathon Marroquin has a message for any of his peers who might be thinking
of doing drugs.

"Don't! It's not good for you," said Jonathon, a 12-year-old Woodlake
resident and one of about 600 men, women and children who gathered in
southwest Fresno Saturday for the fourth annual Community March Against
Drugs and all Substance Abuse.

The event included live music and about a dozen health and anti-drug
informational booths on the campus of Edison High School at Walnut and
California avenues before the marchers took to the street shortly before 3
p.m., winding their way over a three-mile route to the Fresno Westside
Seventh-day Adventist Church at 2750 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. for an
evening program.

The march was sponsored primarily by the Pathfinders, the youth
organization of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, founded more than 51
years ago by the church in Central California.

Today Pathfinders boasts a membership of about 2,000 in the Central Valley
and more than 3 million all over the world, organizers said.

Jonathon, a son of Walter and Iliana Marroquin, belongs to the Pathfinders
club from the Bilingual Seventh-day Adventist Church in Visalia.

A sister, 14-year-old Ashley, also is a Pathfinder, and their parents serve
as counselors with the program.

Iliana Marroquin, 31, a case manager with the Tulare County Mental Health
Department, sees what substance abuse can do to a person.

"All of us can help others through events like this," she said. "Drugs are
not the way to deal with life."

Most of the marchers came from the Central Valley, but one of the largest
groups was a Pathfinders drum corps from Los Angeles. The group numbered
about 200, including adults and other supporters, and arrived in two
charter buses and about a dozen family cars.

One of the informational booths at the event was staffed by Ken Klein,
program coordinator for Support Systems Homes, which operates a "sober
living home" -- substance-abuse recovery program -- at 225 N. Fulton St. in
Fresno.

The home opened in July and is part of a program started 11 years ago in
San Jose.

Klein, 46, a recovering addict himself, said he has been clean since 1995,
the year he entered the program in San Jose as an alternative sentence
imposed by the court.

With a long drug-related criminal history, Klein said, he was facing 25
years to life in state prison for possession of drugs for sale and other
charges when the court allowed him to enter the recovery program.

"My sentence was suspended, and I was placed on probation for five years,"
he said.

Given another of many chances to change his lifestyle, Klein said he has
proved that "it's never too late to change."

And while his program deals with recovery efforts, Klein said he also tries
to focus on prevention programs, especially those aimed at young people.

A son of a police officer, Klein said he doesn't blame his parents, but his
peers for leading him to booze when he was 13 years old.

"I wanted to be accepted," Klein said.

Before he knew it, he was doing "pot, LSD, meth; you name it, I did it," he
said.

Klein says he has no doubt about the importance of events like Saturday's
anti-drugs march.

"We have to plant the seed," he said.

"Sometimes that is all it takes."