DROPPING BACK IN

22-year-old ex-drug dealer who quit school at 15 returns to classroom,
earns diploma from Woodrow Wilson

A gold hoop dangled from each ear. A bird and panther tattoo covered
six inches of his right arm. His bluejeans sagged off his waist.

At 19, the high school dropout was just an inch shy of 6 feet
tall.

Roy Russell, Woodrow Wilson High's assistant principal, took one look
and wanted to send Manuel Reyes Jr. back out the front door.

"He looked to me like a hardened criminal," Mr. Russell
said.

Mr. Reyes, who had not attended school in almost four years, asked to
enroll at the East Dallas school as a freshman. The assistant
principal said no.

Mr. Russell, who said he knew the teen had been a gang member,
suggested alternative schools or equivalency diploma classes. Mr.
Reyes appealed to the principal and won entrance on the condition that
he follow the rules.

On May 16, about a week after his 22nd birthday, Manuel Richard Reyes
Jr., former drug dealer-turned-devout Christian, graduated from
Woodrow Wilson High School.

"I wanted it to last forever. I just wanted that moment," he
said.

He had barely met the state's age requirement for enrollment. Students
must be no older than 21 at the start of their senior year.

It wasn't that Mr. Russell didn't sympathize with Mr. Reyes'
situation.

"He's your typical kid," Mr. Russell said. "If no one was there to
help or support him, he'd fall through the cracks."

The Dallas Independent School District's goal is to rescue more
students like Mr. Reyes. Thousands of students fail to make it to
senior year annually. About 13,800 students began as freshmen in 1994,
but almost 60 percent didn't show up for 12th grade, according to the
district's most recent statistics.

Kimball, North Dallas and Samuell high schools this year plan to begin
programs like the one Mr. Reyes attended his senior year.

Under Woodrow teacher Debbie Nicholas' supervision, students work at
their own pace doing online courses to make up credits they're missing
in math, English and other subjects. The students must spend at least
four hours a week in the lab, which stays open until 6 p.m. on school
days and noon on Saturdays. They work on one or two courses at a time.

Tyler Wolfe, 15, entered Mrs. Nicholas' program this month. He failed
ninth grade last year at another school because he skipped too many
classes. He hopes to be a junior by next school year. LaToya Garrett,
18, lacks an English credit and wants to graduate in May.

Mrs. Nicholas and Mr. Russell debate whether students with discipline
problems, and in some cases criminal records, should be able to enter
the "credit recovery" program.

"We go round and round," he said. "I'd rather kick them
out."

Mrs. Nicholas countered, "If you put them out of the building, you
don't know what's going to happen to them."

Mr. Reyes knows what can happen.

Tumultuous childhood

He spent most of his time dealing drugs a few blocks away from Woodrow
before showing up at the high school at age 19.

Both parents said they were ill-equipped to show their children how to
avoid missteps in life.

Mr. Reyes' mother was 15 and his father was 16 when they married. His
mother, Julie Zavala, was a high school dropout. His father, Manuel
Reyes Sr., said he quit elementary school to care for younger siblings.

They divorced when the younger Reyes was 5. Living with his mother and
two sisters, he switched schools eight times before high school.

"We moved all the time," said Mrs. Zavala, now 43 and married the last

11 years to Rudy Zavala. "We never had any money. We got kicked out of
apartments. We were irresponsible."

The first time Mr. Reyes attended high school, he was 15. After
beginning his freshman year at Bryan Adams, he moved to Seattle to
live with his father. The elder Mr. Reyes said he couldn't afford to
raise his son because an eye injury prevented him from working. He
sent his son back to his mother after a month.

The younger Mr. Reyes left bitter, angry that he didn't get to know
his father.

"Before that, I was real playful," he said. "When I came back, I was
more rebellious. I wanted to be cool."

He again quit school.

His mother, who had been kicked out of her house as a teen, said she
didn't know how to raise a teenager.

"I told him if he wasn't going to church and school, he couldn't live
with me. He said, fine.' "

Life on the street

Mr. Reyes moved in with his oldest sister, Laura, now
25.

He said he joined a gang. He said he stole cars and spent most
evenings selling $20 to $40 bags of cocaine on East Dallas street
corners. He said he was with gang members during some drive-by
shootings but that he never shot anyone.

His father, back in the Dallas area, reached out to his
son.

"He was out of control the majority of the time," said Manuel Reyes
Sr., 44, of Grand Prairie. "I thought he would probably be in jail or
6 feet under. I was scared for him about every night."

His son said he was almost caught selling drugs three times. Dallas
County records show that he once was arrested on a charge of handgun
possession and that he received 15 traffic tickets between ages 17 and
19.

"To me, I was like crazy," he said, thinking back to his days in the
gang. "When you're crazy, you're cool."

In October 1995, he said he underwent surgery after he was hit on the
head with a chair leg during a bar fight. He has a dime-sized red bump
on his forehead, a permanent scar of his rocky past.

"I was crying, 'Manuel, get out. Enough,' " his sister, Laura Reyes,
told him while he recuperated.

Mr. Reyes considered his sister's plea, but he still wanted the $200
tennis shoes that drug sales would buy.

"I was so depressed," he said. "It's like my mind was in a box. I
couldn't get out. . . .

"One day I woke up, and I woke up crazy. I wanted to be the biggest
drug dealer," he said, recalling that he sold drugs that morning.

That afternoon, he went to his mother's apartment to retrieve money he
stashed there. His mother tried to keep him from leaving.

"I said, 'You know, son, the Lord has given me peace,' " Mrs. Zavala
said. "Whether you go to hell or die, I cannot do no more."

Mr. Reyes slammed the door. But he didn't leave. Instead, he spoke
with his mother for hours on the family's red couch.

"We cried and we cried. I knew I was saved," Mr. Reyes
said.

School beckons

A few months later, in early 1996, he stood before Mr. Russell, asking
to come back to high school.

"I wanted to finish what I had started," he said.

His family, including his two sisters who had graduated from high
school, tried to dissuade him, saying it would be too hard for him to
be four years older than the average freshman.

Mr. Reyes said the age difference never bothered him. After skipping a
few classes his first months at Woodrow, he gradually changed,
removing his earrings, tightening his jeans, wearing long sleeves to
cover his tattoos.

He invited his mother to parent night. He raved about
school.

"He was so excited, it was like: 'Man, I'm learning. I'm learning
geometry,' " said his sister, Sonya Reyes, 24. "He was like a little
kid learning the colors."

But during his last semester, Mr. Reyes dropped algebra because he
didn't understand it. He was sent to Mrs. Nicholas' new credit
recovery program to earn the last math credit he needed to graduate.

Mr. Reyes was her first success story, Mrs. Nicholas said. She knew
nothing about his past. All she saw was a soft-spoken young man who

was so smart that he could beat her at chess.

"He has this easygoing personality," she said.

She had to push him to do homework but not classwork.

While Mr. Reyes shed his former self in school, he did the same at
Harvest Tabernacle Assembly of God Church on Beacon Street near a
corner where he used to deal. His family already belonged to the same
church.

In Woodrow's 1998 yearbook, Mr. Reyes bought two pages for an essay
and a photo of him at church. He wrote in part: Jesus can set you
free. I was once depressed, sick and really confused. Until I gave up
my fight, I realized that nothing out there is like the joy of the
Lord.

Mr. Reyes first entered the 80-member church with "a very closed
heart, cold," said the Rev. Forest Johnson. Now, he attends services
five times a week, plays in the church band and talks easily with members.

On a recent Wednesday night, he stood in his usual spot behind the
trumpet player and tapped red congos as the congregation sang hymns.
Later he sat with his sister Sonya as the pastor preached: "Lay the
past in the past. Don't beat yourself up. Get up and start living
right now. Do what you know is right."

After the service, Gabriel Marquez, Mr. Reyes' 7-year-old stepbrother,
moped, saying he had no friends at school. Mr. Reyes sat next to
Gabriel in a pew and put his arm around the boy's shoulders.

"Things will go your way," he said softly.

Three years ago, her son would have ignored Gabriel, said Mrs. Zavala,
because he cared more about gang members than family members.

Mr. Reyes now rents a house with Sonya and her children, ages 1 and 3.
He's a full-time maintenance worker at Signature Pointe Apartments in
northeast Dallas. His mother and stepfather, the complex maintenance
supervisor, live there.

The $200 tennis shoes long gone, he wore $10 sneakers, a gray work
shirt, shorts and Signature Pointe cap on a recent work day as he
emptied trash, shampooed carpets and watered plants.

Mr. Reyes said his goal is to become an evangelist.

If the former gang member showed up at the school today, Woodrow's Mr.
Russell said he still would have urged him to go elsewhere. Taking him
was a risk, he said, because Mr. Reyes easily could have ruled the
halls.

But the assistant principal said Mr. Reyes was a model student. And in
May, he congratulated the first 22-year-old graduate he'd ever met.

"I was smiling from ear to ear. He just had to prove to me, 'I could
do this.' "

Checked-by: Rich O'Grady