BADGE OF HONOR; DEPUTY OATES OFFERS RAYS OF HOPE AND TRUST IN SUN VILLAGE.

Byline: Ramona Shelburne Staff Writer

There are no stop signs along 90th Street East in Sun Village.

Memorial crosses and flowers stand in their place along the dusty desert road in this small Antelope Valley community just north of Littlerock.

``People get going too fast on these streets sometimes,'' Los Angeles County sheriff's Deputy Johnie Oates said matter-of-factly as he drove slowly down 90th. ``They have some pretty bad wrecks out here.''

And car accidents are only one kind.

Oates has patrolled these streets for four years; he knows its people and their problems well. Drug abuse, domestic violence and poverty pervade this neighborhood.

Something Oates understands. Ten years in the Sheriff's Department and a childhood spent in the gang-infested neighborhoods of South Central Los Angeles had taught Oates first-hand about places where, as he puts it, ``people don't really have as much as others.''

Oates didn't look upon those roadside memorials judgmentally, his voice sympathetic. It was the kind of thing he has always worked to prevent.

Now 39, Oates is the director of the Sheriff's Department Youth Activities Program at Jackie Robinson Park in Littlerock, the same program that once pointed him in the right direction.

``I had an extremely good time, probably at the most critical time in my life,'' Oates said of his experiences at L.A.'s Athens Park. ``It wasn't just the sports, but the good men that were in the program.''

Oates is now one of those good men for about 60 at-risk youths, the majority of whom come from single-parent or foster homes. They are kids who dream, like anywhere, but fulfilling them in a neighborhood with few role models and little economic opportunity is difficult.

Johnie Oates knows these challenges because he has faced them himself.

Jackie Robinson Park is on the corner of 90th Street East and Avenue R in Littlerock. Aside from the memorial flowers, there is no greenery in sight.

Every afternoon around 2:30, school buses drop kids from elementary, junior and senior high schools on that corner. They come to play basketball, football or baseball, to see their friends or climb on the jungle gym. They come to ``Jackie,'' where, from behind the tall pine trees that line the park, the crosses and flowers on 90th are hidden.

Anton has spent much of his childhood riding his bicycle around these streets. He lives in a rundown trailer park across from Jackie Robinson Park and goes there almost every day.

The roads are unpaved; yards are unkempt.

Anton's prized possessions were a pair of black leather shoes. He wore them always - to school, to play basketball, to just hang around in the cramped trailer.

One day his mother took them away and sold them for drug money.

``She told me that she lost them, but I knew what she had done,'' said Anton, 15. ``I was so mad. She's been doing it (smoking crack cocaine) for too long. She always tells us she's going to stop, but she never does. She's the one who got me to smoke in the first place.''

This summer, Anton was expelled from his high school for smoking marijuana and cigarettes. It was the third school from which he has been suspended in the past five years.

In October, he will be tried for carrying a knife to school. If convicted, he could be sent to juvenile hall. If not, Anton will join Oates' boxing program at Jackie Robinson Park.

``I don't know why I get in trouble,'' Anton said. ``When I get in trouble, my parents would ask me why and I'd say, `Because I wanted to do that, I wanted to get something.' ''

But what Anton really wants, he reluctantly admits, is attention.

``The lack of structure and the lack of reinforcement of good behavior can really hurt a child's development,'' said Clarence Hibbs, a professor of psychology who specializes in family therapy at Pepperdine University.

``In essence, an addictive mother is an absent parent because she isn't there to set a good example. Everything he gets from the mom is what not to do.

``But it's amazing how a kid in that kind of situation can turn it around after being in contact with a person who sets a good example.''

In ideal circumstances, that person is Johnie Oates.

So far, though, Oates hasn't been able to reach Anton.

``He's always been kind of unapproachable,'' Oates said. ``Every time I've tried to talk to him, he gives me a lot of short answers. He's really into acting tough, like he's bad.''

A standoffish posture is common among adolescents who have been emotionally or physically scarred by their parents, according to Hibbs. Instead of searching for people who make him feel good, Anton insulates himself. His trust is hard to come by and with good reason.

That's not to say that Anton won't, in time, accept Oates' authority. The challenge, Hibbs said, is to create an environment in which he will trust Oates.

``Maybe this boxing program will be good for him,'' Oates said. ``I'm going to keep trying to help him get on the right track; I never give up on a kid.''

Harvey Hathaway took a liking to Oates almost the first time he met him. It was 1967 and he had just started his new assignment - director of the youth activities program at Athens Park - and was looking for kids he could help.

``He seemed even at that time to be very determined to meet certain goals,'' Hathaway said. ``I singled him out because I thought he had some potential to do something with his life.''

Hathaway tried to expose Oates to new things. They went to Dodgers games and on camping trips. He coached him in basketball and football. One time, Hathaway took Oates to his home in Orange County to see a more affluent lifestyle.

``I tried to look for kids whose parents cared, because those are the kids who have potential,'' Hathaway said. ``Johnie's mother was always right there with him, supporting whatever he was doing.''

Much like her son Johnie, Minnie Oates had seen the harder side of life. She struggled with it and overcame it. A single mother who worked hard at the post office to give her sons an opportunity to succeed, she enrolled them in as many activities as she could, mostly to keep them busy and out of trouble.

``Johnie always seemed like he understood what I was going through and what was going on,'' his mother said. ``He would always do whatever he could do to help me.

``Sometimes I'd come home from work and he had cooked Hamburger Helper and made Kool Aid for dinner. That used to make me feel so good to have him think of me like that.''

And for Johnie Oates, his mother's pain and struggle was his as well; helping out around the house was the least he could do.

His father had left the family when Oates was 5 for an overseas Army teaching program.

``It would always be a surprise to see him. I'd look over across the street and there he was, just standing there. He never called to say he was coming, he'd just show up sometimes. I'd talk to him for 30 minutes every three or five years and that'd be it,'' Oates said.

By the time he was old enough to understand, he had found ways to dull the pain. And his father wasn't the only man in Oates' childhood who disappointed him.

``There weren't too many adult male role models around there,'' Oates said. ``I joined the Boy Scouts, but we didn't have a troop leader for a while.

``One day this guy, I think he was somebody's dad, came by and volunteered to be our troop leader and take us places. So one morning, we all went down to the pier at San Pedro to go fishing. He told us all to bring $5 for food.

``We must have got there at 6 in the morning and left at 5. He starved us all day but on the way out, he stopped at a liquor store. I was just sure he was going to come out with some food, but all he had was a brown bag. He had gone and bought a six-pack and alcohol with our money.

``That was the first time and the last time I ever saw that guy.''

It's a story Oates laughs about. At the time it was just another man who asked for trust and betrayed it.

In his dealings with the children at Jackie Robinson, Oates remembers that ill-fated fishing trip. He knows how important trust and consistency are to a young child.

``I like him because he takes us a lot of places,'' said Justin Culver, 10, who participates in the boxing, basketball and after-school homework programs at the park. ``Deputy Oates acts like he's our daddy; he takes us places so that we can learn about new stuff.''

It was the kind of diagnosis a healthy 38-year-old man never expects to hear.

Cancer. One word that changes your life.

``He didn't have any of those signs that would indicate he might get sick,'' said Oates' wife Lisa. ``He didn't smoke. He didn't drink or curse. It just happened.

``But I don't think Johnie ever felt sorry for himself. He's not the kind of guy to complain about things. He just fought that bear and survived it.''

Today, a jagged scar along the left side of his neck is all that remains of the throat cancer that threatened his life in 1998. He has gained back the 40 pounds he lost during radiation therapy. Insatiably thirsty but too sore to drink anything, his spirit and will to live kept him from withering away.

The people of Sun Village understand and respect that will.

A few blocks from Jackie Robinson Park, near the entrance to Anton's trailer park, a dead pit bull lay on its side. It looked like a statue that had been tipped over, its arms and legs stiff from rigormortis.

``I guess I'd better call animal control,'' Oates remarked casually at the gruesome sight.

The neglected yards and abandoned cars in Anton's neighborhood suggested the idea hadn't occurred to anyone else.

No matter, it only takes one.

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

PHOTO (1 -- color) Like others once did for him when he was young, Los Angeles County sheriff's Deputy Johnie Oates caters to underprivileged kids at Jackie Robinson Park in Littlerock.

(2 -- color) Johnie Oates was reunited with his mentor, Harvey Hathaway, for this photo. The two met in 1967 when Oates was running youth activities at Athens Park in Los Angeles.

(3 -- color) Johnie Oates, center, hoops it up with members of the Sheriff's Department Youth Activities Program at Jackie Robinson Park in Littlerock, where he is director.

Tom Mendoza/Staff Photographer