A SMILE WORKS ITS MAGIC; DISABLED MAN USES SPECIAL POWER TO INSPIRE.

Byline: Dennis McCarthy 

It's impossible to say how many smiles the kid has handed out on this street corner over the years, how many lives he's touched when the traffic light turns red.

A couple of thousand? Easily. Probably many more.

Wednesday morning alone, the kid handed out at least a dozen smiles in a few minutes waiting for the bus at Wilbur Avenue and Saticoy Street to take him to the Easter Seal Society office in Van Nuys.

Smiles to harried motorists on their way to work in heavy traffic, caught at a light, their minds a million miles away on what? Problems? Probably.

Then they glance over to the sidewalk, at the bus bench, and there's Cilo Hidalgo in his wheelchair and smiling at them.

Adding a wave to the familiar faces he recognizes from many mornings of sitting on this street corner waiting for a bus to take him to the Easter Seal Society office or Los Angeles Valley College.

A few motorists will get embarrassed and look quickly ahead, averting his eyes. But only a few.

Most of the drivers smile back, their minds coming home from a million miles away to focus on the young man smiling at them from a wheelchair on a street corner.

What power the kid possesses. One smile, and he makes people in a hurry relax and forget their problems.

The night they wheeled the kid into the emergency room 12 years ago after the bike accident, the doctor took one look at him, and wanted to call a priest.

``He told my daughter that Cilo could die any minute,'' says the kid's grandmother, Betty Higgins of Reseda. ``His head was broken in six places.''

Three months later, when the kid woke up from a coma, his grandmother told him how close he had come to dying.

The kid managed a smile and shook his head. ``God wouldn't let me,'' he whispered to his grandmother.

``You spoke to God?'' she asked, not quite sure she heard him right.

The kid nodded. ``What did he say?'' his grandmother asked.

``It's a secret, grandma,'' Cilo said, closing his tired eyes.

Betty Higgins leaned down and kissed her 14-year-old grandson, telling him to go back to sleep and talk to God some more.

Her grandson was going to need every important contact and miracle he could get, she knew. He would live, the doctors told her, but as a paraplegic the rest of his life.

He would never walk again, let alone play football or any of the sports he played over at Cleveland High School.

After seven more months in the hospital undergoing rehabilitation, he would come home to a new high school down the block from the old one. Miller High, where kids like him - kids labeled disabled by society - went for special classes.

It was right around this time that Cilo's grandmother and mother, Louise, had their best suspicions confirmed. They always thought Cilo was the kind of kid other kids liked.

There was never an ugly girl in any of his classes, never a bad boy, they say. All his classmates were nice, good kids in Cilo's eyes when he spoke of them to grandmother and mother.

But what did the other kids think of him? Did they see the same goodness in this boy the two women in his life did?

``We decided to throw him a birthday party when he finally got home from the hospital after almost a year,'' Betty says. ``We were so worried about not many kids coming.

``We sent out 65 invitations, and 65 kids came,'' Betty says.

As Betty and Louise sat there that day watching the young man in their lives handing out birthday smiles to his classmates from his new wheelchair, they finally figured out the secret.

Figured out what Cilo and God had been talking about while the kid lie in a coma for three months.

Power. The kid had a special power. The power to touch and inspire people.

And that's exactly what Cilo Higaldo's been doing these past 12 years with the help of his mother and grandmother.

At his high school graduation, he brought a few hundred adults to tears when he fulfilled a promise to walk down the aisle to receive his diploma. It took two teachers on each arm to help him, but nobody saw them.

Everyone was too busy looking at the smile on Cilo Higaldo's face.

These days he's using his power over at Valley College where he's enrolled in an adaptive program through Easter Seal Society in physical education and computers.

One of his goals is to one day walk across the campus. Right now, he's up to almost making it around the basketball court before his legs give out, and he needs his wheelchair.

His Easter Seal coach, Lincoln Osborne, sees the looks of the students on campus watching Cilo work so hard - sees his power working its inspirational magic on them.

``It's amazing the ability he has to make friends, and become so well-known on campus just going two days a week,'' Osborne says. ``Cilo's got this charm, this smile that you just can't ignore. It's infectious.''

The regular transit customers on the Saticoy Street line say much the same thing when the bus stops at Wilbur Avenue to pick him Cilo up three days a week, and at Tampa Avenue for the trip twice a week to Valley College.

Twenty riders can have their noses buried in the morning paper or be staring out the window - their minds a million miles away on some problem - but when the bus stops, and the access lift brings Cilo Hidalgo aboard, they all come home to that smile - just like the motorists at the traffic light.

What power the kid possesses. One smile and a wave, and people in a hurry relax and forget their problems.

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PHOTO Cilo Hidalgo's wave and smile has become a familiar and welcome sight to morning commuters passing by his bus stop.

David Sprague/Daily News