REAL SCHOOL INMATE GIVES STUDENTS THE FACTS OF DRUGS AND CRIME

NEW BEDFORD -- Out of jail for a few hours, Kevin M. Pina returned to the
high school where his life bottomed out.

"I done made enough mistakes for everybody here," the 26-year-old inmate
told a theater filled with about 120 New Bedford High School students.

Mr. Pina never graduated from high school -- he dropped out and was
arrested. He's currently serving a 10-year sentence for multiple armed
robberies.

This was his first return to New Bedford High School.

"This is where I grew up, so y'all are important to me," Mr. Pina said. "If
you grow up like me, what's New Bedford going to be like?"

The Sheriff's Department released him from the minimum security Nelson
Center -- where he is scheduled for release this summer -- so he could
address students as part of an anti-drug presentation.

Sheriff Thomas Hodgson and Brad Bailey, the former executive director of
the Governor's Alliance Against Drugs, spoke first, then screened a stark
anti-drug video, in which Mr. Pina plays a major role.

After the video, he walked unannounced into the theater.

"I come here, I get more scared than I was in prison," Mr. Pina confided.

But he won the audience easily.

Four sections of health class students sprawled on the orange-carpeted
tiers of the school's small theater, captivated by Mr. Pina's streetwise
speech and hip hop hand gestures.

Early in high school, Mr. Pina said, he gave up sports and took up drugs:
first marijuana, then cocaine.

He quit school and became a street hustler, funding his drug addiction with
a string of armed robberies.

He robbed children, old ladies, even stole from his mother.

"I had no morals or values," Mr. Pina said. Through it all, he sought status.

"I'm the man now -- in jail 10 years with no high school diploma," he said
wistfully.

As he paced in front of the students, Mr. Pina appealed to the at-risk kids
(he calls them "hard-rocks").

"How many of you smoke weed?" Mr. Pina asked. A half-dozen hands shot up.

He said marijuana was a "primer" drug that led him to cocaine.

"Anyone been arrested?" he continued.

Three hands up. A few students had been busted for selling drugs, stealing
cars, fighting.

Mr. Pina urged them to "keep it real."

A young man clad in a North Carolina Tarheels jersey argued that only big
drug lords get caught, and that a careful dealer could escape unscathed.

Mr. Pina replied with a torching rebuttal.

"You get high, you get careless, you get caught," he said.

"You cannot be in the game and get away -- it always gets you."

He told students what he thought when he was their age, growing up in the
West End and attending New Bedford High.

"I thought respect was having the 'phattest' sneakers, the 'phattest' gold
chain, the finest girl -- but that was ignorance," he said.

A student told him he had been stabbed three times in a fight that started
over a disrespectful look.

"You can't do nothing to me with looks," Mr. Pina said.

"Never worry about what someone says."

Real respect is about education, good jobs and self-sufficiency, he said.

Because he wore baggy jeans, sneakers, and a white T-shirt, it was easy to
forget Mr. Pina is still incarcerated.

But he sketched a vivid, unsavory portrait of jail, with three men living
together in a rank cell.

"You've got guys in there who don't even take showers," Mr. Pina said.
Fearing the "rapists, murderers, and molesters," they prefer being dirty.

The hardships of being locked up grow worse when Mr. Pina considers what he
is missing.

His girlfriend bore him a daughter shortly before he was sent to prison 5‡
years ago.

"She barely knows me," Mr. Pina said.

Flanked by Mr. Bailey and Sheriff Hodgson, Mr. Pina ended his talk with a
jail house rap, accompanying himself by drumming on a table.

"Five years went by on my b-i-d (sentence), I hope I never ever see you in
the D-O-C (Department of Corrections)," he rapped.

After the talk ended, a dozen students -- including many who said they'd
been arrested or used drugs -- clustered around Mr. Pina.

One student, with a gold medallion around his neck, delivered his own
rhymes to Mr. Pina, who gave him an encouraging high-five.

Girls Came Up And Hugged Him.

Bill Heydt, a health teacher at the high school, marveled as students
continued talking to Mr. Pina even after they had been dismissed to lunch.

In his class, he teaches the dangers of drugs, but is never sure of the
impact of his lessons.

"The kids listen more to him because he has had that life experience," Mr.
Heydt observed.

Later, Mr. Pina said he had been worried the hard-to-reach, "hard-rock"
kids would ignore him.

But several had told him privately that, inspired by his talk, they were
going to work on their problems.

Mr. Pina has addressed similar high school groups in Fall River and Attleboro.

"I don't work for the sheriff," said Mr. Pina, explaining he receives no
sentence reduction for his work. "I do this because I want to."