DOING SOMETHING

After Overcoming Own Addiction, Crawford High Grad Works To Keep Kids Clean

SAN DIEGO -- The sad tale of drugs ravaging another life played across the
television screen as Rudy Johnson watched the late-night news with his
wife, Sheryl. It was a lot like other stories Johnson had seen.

But this was a story Johnson couldn't ignore.

"I'm tired of this," he said, turning to his wife.

Sheryl Johnson didn't let the comment slip away.

"Why don't you stop talking and do something about it?" she said.

That was a decade ago when Johnson, now 34 and the San Diego Convention
Center's director of operations, decided to launch a program for inner-city
schools called Pros and Coaches Anti-Drug Campaign. Johnson was two years
out of Texas Southern University, where he graduated with a degree in civil
engineering and was a starting running back on the football team. He had
been the quarterback at Crawford High.

Johnson was also a recovering crack cocaine addict.

"Don't ever go there"

When Johnson, clean and sober since Jan. 12, 1987, speaks at a school
assembly, he tells students of his drug use and says, "Don't ever go there."

If it happened to him, it can happen to anyone.

He had two high-achieving parents who taught him right from wrong. His
father, Rudolph Johnson II, was the San Diego Urban League executive
director from 1981 to 1986. His mother, Lorraine Johnson, is a San Diego
Unified School District counselor with a doctorate in counseling.

But when friends smoked marijuana, he tried it. He'd smoke it in an alley
on the way to school. By his sophomore year in college, he was offered
crack for the first time. It was as simple as that.

Crack is so addictive that Johnson said he was hooked "after the third or
fourth time." He began to spend his days at Texas Southern in class and his
nights on the streets of Houston chasing down crack.

"I was in some bizarre situations in crack houses," Johnson said. "There
was insane behavior."

The drug abyss might have derailed his life and football career, but he was
lucky. He had a friend and teammate named Johnnie Cole.

"I noticed mood swings in my friend," Cole told students when he joined
Johnson to speak at a Crawford High assembly. "People told me he was on
drugs, and I said, 'No, not Rudy. Not intelligent Rudy.' "

If every drug abuser had a friend like Johnnie Cole, they'd be confronted
and forced to face their addiction, Johnson said.

Cole and then-Texas Southern assistant coach Albert Qualls waited all night
for Johnson at his dorm room. When he finally came home at dawn, they
blocked his doorway until he agreed to enter a 30-day treatment program.

"They confronted me and I confessed," Johnson said. "I am blessed to survive."

At school assemblies, Johnson uses his campaign, which just completed its
10th year, to confront kids about the scourge of drugs.

Pros and Coaches started as a small project with a nucleus of Texas
Southern teammates. Cole is now an offensive coordinator at Alabama State;
Brett Maxey is a 13-year NFL veteran player and an assistant with the San
Francisco 49ers; and Donald Narcisse and Leonard Moon both played in the
Canadian Football League.

A high school teammate, LaMar Hasbrouck, who played at Cal and is now a
doctor with the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, also joined the
campaign.

"I told them I didn't have any money and I didn't have a sponsor, but I
wanted to start an anti-drug program," Johnson said. "They flew in on their
own. All I could offer them was a place to stay at my parents' house and my
mom's home cooking."

Each year they renewed their commitment to the program and strengthened
their bond.

Johnson included four scholarships in his campaign. Students write a
500-word essay on the destructive effects of drugs in athletics and life.
The winners are selected by a panel of judges.

The first year, four $100 scholarships were awarded. Martin Bayless, the
former Chargers player who still lives in San Diego and sponsors a free
football camp for San Diego youths, was so touched by the grass-roots
effort he pulled out his checkbook and wrote a check for a fifth scholarship.

The last seven years, Johnson awarded four $500 scholarships. The total for
10 years is 41 scholarships worth $16,500. The recipients have attended
Pac-10 schools, UC schools, state schools and community colleges.

Morse senior Ramedy Flores, one of this year's recipients, wrote his essay
on the disappointment he felt when he learned older Morse athletes he once
admired had ruined their college opportunities with drugs.

Archie Robinson, a past scholarship recipient and Lincoln graduate, said
Johnson's program inspired him to contribute to his community. He's spent
the past year working for AmeriCorps at inner-city elementary schools. He
wants to finish his degree and become a teacher at Lincoln, where he
already is a girls basketball assistant coach.

"It's more than the $500," Robinson said. "That scholarship gave me
confidence academically. I'm trying to give of myself to the community the
way these guys have."

Pros and Coaches has staged assemblies at Lincoln, Crawford, Morse and San
Diego high schools and visited inner-city elementary schools. Khalada
Salaam-Alaji, the principal at Community Preparatory School in San Diego,
has had Pros and Coaches visit the elementary school for the past six years.

"It's never too early to give kids the message," Salaam-Alaji said. "I
didn't know about drugs until college, but it's different now. Rudy and the
people he brings are wonderful with the kids."

New commitment

Johnson's 10-year commitment to Pros and Coaches ended with the recent
banquet at the Convention Center. He wants to concentrate his effort on the
anti-drug message rather than seeking sponsors for the scholarships.

"Our focus was to touch the lives of school-age children," Johnson said.
"If we've saved one life, if we've made one family's life happier, then our
mission was successful. These 10 years have allowed me to pay back my
higher power for a second lease on life."

But it doesn't mean Johnson, who served as chairman of the San Diego Urban
League's board of directors in 1996 and '97, is done with his work. Outside
of his Pros and Coaches commitment, he visits 10 to 15 inner-city schools
each year to speak at assemblies or smaller classes.

"I told him to stop saying this is the final year," said his wife, Sheryl.
"This is just a transition."

Johnson's plans are still on the drawing board, but he envisions an
anti-drug campaign that incorporates day camps to expose inner-city kids to
life outside their neighborhoods.

What you can do

To find out more about Rudy Johnson's efforts to fight drugs, contact him
at (619) 528-0994.