AMBITIOUS ENTREPRENEUR; WHIZ KID USES SKILLS FOR SUCCESS.

Byline: Sonia Giordani Daily News Staff Writer

After years of helping friends and relatives with everything from questions about Web pages to desperate pleas to rescue their crashed computers, Scott Rein caught a business bug and set up a home-based computer company.

With a friend in tow, Rein combed county and city offices for the various licenses and permits once foreign to him. These days, he can talk sales like a veteran businessman at a chamber mixer.

``The real thing I hope to get out of this is the experience - with business, with computers, with working with people,'' said Rein, founding president of Photon Computers and a 17-year-old Westlake High School junior.

A member of that generation of kids raised playing with high-tech toys and programming their personal PCs, Rein is a self-taught computer whiz whose skills are already high in demand.

From his spacious bedroom - a generous gift from his parents when the family moved from Thousand Oaks to Westlake Village last summer - Rein has all the amenities a modern businessman needs to operate: a desk, his own telephone line, a pager and a Palm Pilot to keep track of his appointments.

Doing everything from building computers to troubleshooting and Web design, Rein has secured more than 50 clients with the help of friend T.J. Thomas, a 17-year-old junior at Thousand Oaks High School.

Thomas, a partner in the business, said he will have to give up his share when he moves to Louisiana this summer, but he added that Photon Computers has offered him more than he could have imagined.

``I learned a lot about how to manage a business and what it takes,'' Thomas said. ``And it was a good way to bring in money instead of some other job I could have gotten.''

In the coming weeks, Rein said he hopes to hire another consultant - a 14-year-old freshman.

``I plan on keeping it young. It makes us unique. I started this as a kid - I'm still a kid - and I think it's a great experience,'' he said.

From his normal youthful obsession with video games like Pong and Space Invaders, Rein's curiosity in the machinery he used led him to learn how to build his own computers and how to program them to do what he wanted.

At the age of 8, he received a new computer - an XT - from his parents and taught himself a variety of programming languages.

By the time he was in eighth grade at Los Cerritos Middle School, Rein had taught himself to translate Apple programs for PCs. That feat won him second

place in the 1995 state science fair at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Then his entrepreneurial side kicked in.

``Now my work day starts at 2:30 when school is out. It ends about about 6 or 6:30. Then I do my homework and go to bed,'' said Rein, adding that he still sets aside weekends to get his studies done and to have fun.

``Sometimes I'll walk by his room and hear him on the telephone using all these adult terms and business terms. I don't even know where he got it from,'' joked Toni Rein, Scott's mother.

While she encouraged her son to think about earning some spending money from his skills, she said Photon's growth has given her both pride and surprises.

``He consulted us actually very little. I guess he decided to just do it,'' Toni Rein said. ``And then one day it was like, by the way, I joined the Chamber of Commerce.''

While passing out fliers one day to introduce himself to the community, Scott decided to stop by the Conejo Valley Chamber of Commerce and join.

``When he came on board, we introduced him as the youngest member of our chamber,'' said Dyan Gennette, the chamber's director of operations.

``Some people may have been taken aback at his age, but Scott is one of those unique individuals. He has such a good head on his shoulders and he is a very responsible and mature young man.''

Since then, Gennette said he has participated in a host of events and programs from mixers to the chamber's Youth Education Motivation Program. Last month, Rein visited three area schools - including his own middle school - as a representative of the chamber to remind students of the importance of education.

``He has also helped us out a great deal with our Web site and with a virus that was in our system. He was great,'' Gennette said.

While the computer business bug has caught Rein, the honors student and karate black-belt adds that he hasn't ruled out some of the other dreams he has for himself.

``I've always dreamed of NASA and becoming an astronaut. We'll see,'' said Rein, who saves most of the money he makes for the university he will select next year. ``In the meantime, I get the best of all worlds. I can learn about business while I'm preparing to go to college.''

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PHOTO (Color in Conejo Edition only) Scott Rein, 17, manages a successful computer business from his Westlake Village home. ``I think it's a great experience,'' he says.

Evan Yee/Daily News