Yes He Can

The problem with Robert Wilkins is that there is only one of him.

And that the work he does cannot easily be described or duplicated.

At a loss to understand exactly who Wilkins is, and what he does as executive director of the Stuart M. Ketchum-Downtown YMCA, even his colleagues tend to sputter: “a visionary,” “an actualizer,” “the most ethical” or “most spiritual” or “most profoundly moral” leader this city has ever seen.

Inevitably, a part of the Wilkins myth follows. As in: “Did you hear how he built a field of dreams?”

Or how he “beat the gang by playing basketball?”

Or how he “saved the police stations in the L.A. riots?”

In each tale, Wilkins overcomes insurmountable odds not just to foil evil, but to transform it into something good.

But Wilkins, it turns out, has not heard that he is epic. He is not even convinced he is worth writing about. He does not show up for the first scheduled interview. At the second, he allots just enough time to give a brief verbal resume and a tour of the shimmering, glass-faced YMCA over which he presides.

Perched like a jewel atop a four-story parking structure at 4th and Hope, and surrounded by Bunker Hill’s astounding skyscrapers, it looks essentially like a fancy health club: Squash, racket ball, basketball, six tennis courts, a huge lap pool, an indoor running track, 120 ultra-modern exercise machines, a health-food cafe--all look out on a sculpture-dotted plaza and the city beyond.

At the start of lunch hour, dozens of buff types stream in for their midday workouts. This is one part of Wilkins’ constituency--those who motor in from the suburbs each day to jobs that provide some of the city’s highest salaries. Bankers, lawyers, stock brokers and all their support personnel. These people (or their employers) pay to use the swank facility from 5:30 in the morning to 11 at night.

“But I am not in the gym business,” Wilkins protests in his basso profundo, a huffy response to praise for the upscale facility and its svelte clientele. Then he dashes to lunch with a corporate titan, whom he hopes to entice into offering subsidized Y memberships for employees.

The Ketchum raises more money than any other YMCA in the country. Since Wilkins took over as executive director two years ago, he spends about 35% of his time rustling up funds with the zeal of an ordained Baptist minister, which he is.

But his fund-raising success is even more the result of a unique vision, which he communicates with actions rather than words. He does not have to tell potential contributors what is possible in downtown Los Angeles; he can show them what has already been achieved.

Then, perhaps, they will share his dream of a city where rich and poor interact peacefully; where people have the tools to reach their potential; where even the most disadvantaged want to give to the community more than they want to take from it. A city in which love has as much currency as money, he says.

If you think this is too corny--and too costly--a project to contemplate, think again. Corn is good, Wilkins says. And money is not the issue. Despite his $4.3-million annual budget, Wilkins works on a relative shoestring, considering the size and number of programs he has managed to create.

“Everyone says our society can’t do good things because we need more money, more staff, more buildings. They’re wrong. We have plenty of that right now.” All we need to do is use it properly, he says.

Wilkins, 45, has worked intermittently for the Ketchum Y for seven years, during which he has built a spider web of interconnecting activities linking old and young, rich and poor, Latinos, whites, African Americans and Asians in a network of opportunity “to build a healthy mind, body and spirit,” the YMCA’s stated mission.

*

It is the third attempt at interviewing Wilkins, who has finally cleared his schedule and shown his guest the five-mile radius in which his YMCA is mandated to operate.

It is a shock, even to one familiar with downtown, to see the extent of the human hardship within the shadows of the glitzy towers. Two minutes out of the well-lit Bunker Hill garage, we are in an area of what looks like bombed-out rubble--a vast cardboard tent city built on what seems like miles of uneven ground, all covered with demolition debris. Atop these hills, hordes of homeless people are encamped, their children playing in what is surely toxic waste and all the other unimaginable refuse that is illegally disposed of in this city.

A few blocks in another direction we are in the heart of skid row, at a single-room-occupancy hotel. While it is no Ritz-Carlton, the fact that residents have a roof over their heads makes it look incredibly comfortable.

Turning slightly west, and only two minutes later, we arrive in the land of Mara Salvatrucha, the notorious Salvadoran gang that has staked out its turf so clearly in graffiti that you almost expect to be asked for a passport.

After a few more stops on Wilkins’ tour, it becomes clear that this is no drive-by sideshow. At each of these places, he has established a satellite center of his YMCA. He has managed to beg, borrow or lease (sometimes for $1 a year) underutilized land and buildings owned by others, now occupied by the Ketchum Y.

His understanding with each of the owners is this, he says: “Whenever you want this property back, for any reason, we will immediately move elsewhere. There is plenty of space in this city.”

So far, it has worked.

Instead of residents going to the Y, as is usual in most neighborhoods, Wilkins’ concept brings the Y to them.

His plan is so complex that it would take a book (or a college course, which he hopes someday to teach) to explain. But the children and adults who benefit couldn’t care less about the mechanics. All they know is that Wilkins and his associates are bringing education, fun, hope and possibility where none existed before.

The Westlake Youth and Family Center, at 8th and Westmoreland, for example, is in the heart of Mara Salvatrucha country. It is a neighborhood filled with children whose parents were born in El Salvador, the Philippines or other far-flung places. An area where the schools are so overcrowded that one-third of all elementary-school kids are always out on an eight-week hiatus.

Five years ago, while working as a part-time outreach consultant for the Ketchum Y, Wilkins had the idea of taking these children off the gang-infested streets--of giving them a chance at a successful future.

He learned that the huge, once-affluent First Baptist Church had fallen on hard times as the neighborhood became predominantly Catholic. Its vast youth facilities--classrooms, a stage, a full-sized basketball court had been overrun by the gang, which managed to break open doors and get to the hoops no matter how many chains, locks and alarms were applied.

Wilkins wanted that space. The church said he could have it. But neither law enforcement nor the emissaries of God had been able to evict the gang.

Wilkins--who’d played “rough” basketball as a kid in the housing projects of Louisville, Ky., and then a more genteel form of the game while at USC--decided to try. He gathered some beefy friends, showed up at the court, and challenged the gang to a game. They were not amused--especially when they lost.

“Who sent you?” the leader asked.

“God,” Wilkins replied.

They did not ask again. After two weeks of rousing contests, the leader, nicknamed “Boxer,” began choosing Wilkins to be on his team. After two months of almost daily games, the gang leader and the Y-man had developed great rapport.

Boxer confided that he was too old and had done too many crimes to change his life, but he wanted something better for his little brothers and sisters. He liked Wilkins’ idea of a program that offers one good meal a day, a safe place to play and to get help with homework, to learn music, art, drama and computers. At Boxer’s command, the gang retreated from the church, with orders never again to deface it with graffiti. The Ketchum Y opened its Westlake Family Center, and hundreds of neighborhood children take advantage of it each week.

*

Wilkins is standing on the street, telling his Boxer story, when Selena, 13, spots him. She sprints toward him, yelling “Robert, Robert,” wraps her skinny arms around his waist, looks up at him, beaming, and says, “I love you.”

She is one of hundreds, maybe thousands of Y members who feel they know Wilkins well enough to call him a friend. That’s because he does not just create these satellite programs. Whenever he starts one, he sticks around to manage it for the first few months, to “meet the community, get a feel of what’s needed and figure out exactly how it should be run.”

Selena and her brother Luis, 14, have been coming to the Westlake center since it opened. They have met Wilkins’ three children, confided their problems to him, and feel he is not just a friend, but family.

This time, Selena confides that she and her brother have not eaten at home in days; that the refrigerator is empty. This is not so bad for her and Luis, she says, because at night they beg food from the vendors who stand in front of their apartment house. But she worries that there is no milk for her baby sister, 3, who seems to be getting sick. “My mother has no work, no money for food.” Wilkins tells the center’s director to investigate--and to use money from the emergency fund to help the family out.

“We obviously cannot feed all the hungry in the neighborhood. But we help in emergencies that arise among long-standing members and contributors to our YMCA.”

Contributors?

“Of course,” Wilkins says. Selena’s mom, “as poor and as troubled as she is, volunteers whenever she’s needed to assist at special events, festivals or on trips.” In fact, he says, at all the satellite centers people seem to want to give much more than they get.

He mentions that Selena wants to become a doctor--and he thinks she just might make it.

At a nearby satellite center, housed in a building recently vacated by the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, Wilkins designed and set up a computerized program called Scholarshop, a kind of guided path to help youngsters understand their options in life and how to proceed to succeed.

“The kids in this area don’t know people who’ve gone to college. They are not around people who know how to do it. So they generally don’t consider it as an option.”

But with a bit of Y assistance, he says, youths can start in early adolescence to develop capabilities, character and personal habits that will help them achieve their goals.

Henry Morales, 17, is “a former gangbanger who watched his closest friend get shot in the head. It changed his life. He got involved in the Y, and he is a marvelous, marvelous person.

“Henry was flipping through the computer program, just for fun, and looked up Harvard. ‘Hey, man, I like that place,’ said Henry. ‘That’s where I’m gonna go.’ ”

Will he get in?

“He is very intelligent and has more charisma than the 10 most charismatic people I’ve known. Once he talks to an admissions officer, I think he will be admitted to Harvard. Yes, I do,” Wilkins says with a grin.

But that is not really the point, he persists.

“The point is that Henry Morales has communicated directly with Harvard University, requested a catalog and information. Once he did that, he snapped his fingers and said, ‘I’m on my way. I’m figuring out what it’s all about. The people at Harvard have heard from me.’ Henry Morales has entered the loop.”

Right now, Morales is a counselor at the Ketchum Y summer camp in Big Bear. The camp program is yet another one that caused people to tell Wilkins “you’re crazy; it will never work.”

But it does. In fact, it has been praised in national publications, and other camps are starting to copy it.

Wilkins decided that it’s “stupid” to segregate kids by age and sex. He “mixes the kids up; children of varying ages share cabins; girls’ cabins are not separated geographically from the boys’.”

And about three days into their eight-day stay, all the little kids start preparing to welcome their “grandparents,” who spend the last few days with the kids. “They are not the kids’ real grandparents, of course. In fact, they’ve never seen each other before. We have a very active senior citizen program at the Ketchum Y; it is some of those same seniors who come to camp each year.

“The kids absolutely love it. Another energy kicks in. ‘We’ve got Grandma and Grandpa here. Let’s go show them what we can do. Let’s go to archery today, let’s do arts and crafts, Do you know what this is, Grandma? It’s an iguana!’ ”

Wilkins is so animated describing this while driving that he misses a turn he meant to take.

*

We have reached Wilkins’ Field of Dreams, another of his “crazy ideas.”

This huge chunk of land, hard by the Harbor Freeway, was part of the homeless encampment described above. Wilkins understands the joy of sports, the value of youthful energy well spent. But the schools in this neighborhood have no funds for sports equipment, personnel or safe playing fields.

Wilkins decided to fill the gap. He looked for unused property, found it and learned it was owned by a company based in Hong Kong. Negotiations were often hilarious, always protracted, he recalls. But eventually he was offered use of the land. The Los Angeles Times then contributed a major part of the funds to clear it, prepare it and surround it with a 12-foot-high wrought iron fence.

The Ketchum Y provides equipment, scheduling, personnel and uniforms for the children, who are signed up at elementary schools. The field receives so much use that “we can’t keep grass on it. We are constantly having to re-sod.”

Driving back to the Y, Wilkins points out little parcels of unused land where he would like to build mini-parks, with jungle gyms and shade trees, or “peace gardens,” where mothers could come to read books with their children. Or little putting greens, where children who have never seen a golf club could try their hand.

In fact, he says, almost every piece of unused land could inexpensively be made into some sort of haven, offering programs to help the neighborhood improve itself. With training by experts from the Y, the residents could take charge of these programs themselves. Wilkins knows that would work, because he has already done it.

“We tend to underestimate people who happen to be poor.”

*

Once you manage to get Wilkins talking about his work, it is difficult for him to stop. He is a minister at heart, he says. But for his first 30 years he was on quite another path.

Born in Louisville to a devoutly Christian mother, he grew up attending church and getting in a bit of trouble. He says he had no contact with his father.

At 17, his mother shipped him off to live with an aunt in Los Angeles, where he graduated from Fairfax High and won a scholarship to USC. After four years as a communications major (he did not graduate because he could not pay his bills), he married wife Vicki (they’ve been together 23 years) and started a sports management company with some college friends.

Later he joined another group of partners in a similar field. He was financially successful, he says, “But it became clear to me that it was dangerous, that my life was at stake in both a literal and a more cosmic sense.”

He left the business and meditated on what to do next. He had grown up hearing his mother and other members of their Kentucky congregation telling him he was meant to be a preacher. At the age of 30, he decided they were right.

He went to Los Angeles Bible Training School for a year “to get a grounding in the Scripture and some better study habits.” Then he reentered USC, where he earned a degree in religion. (By this time he’d paid his back bills.)

Next, he attended American Baptist Seminary of the West, where he was eventually ordained.

During these years of schooling, he worked for the newly opened Ketchum Y. First as an outreach program consultant working with seniors, then with youth. Eventually he signed on full time as associate director, and he was named executive director two years ago.

Wilkins says he will leave the YMCA soon, because there is so much else he wants to do and so little time. His concepts are in place, he says, and others can expand upon them after he is gone.

Where to?

He is not sure, he says. He is waiting for God to tell him.

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Robert A. Wilkins

Age: 45.

Family: Married 23 years to Vicki, a medical plan administrator; three children--Brandi, 22; Robert Jr., 13; Courtney, 10.

Proudest of: The youth sports program he’s set up for elementary school kids. “Our area is heavily into gangs; the kids are really territorial, which is very bad. We wanted to break that down. So our program doesn’t allow them to play against each other and then go home. They get a half-day schedule, such as basketball game, art project, values rap and culture walk. The same little kids who played against each other finish the day by working together. They learn that respect, teamwork, even friendship crosses territorial lines.”

Awards: The Waller Taylor Achievement Award, offered only occasionally by the YMCA for highly distinguished service.