DOCTOR PRESCRIBES GOOD ROLE MODELS.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

To understand the story behind Saturday's big Fulfillment Fund picnic at Lake Balboa, you have to go back 28 years, when a UCLA Medical Center doctor treated two quadriplegic patients.

On the ninth floor was 29-year-old Harvey Shapiro, paralyzed from the neck down after a diving accident at age 12.

Shapiro nevertheless had gone on to graduate with honors from the University of California, Los Angeles, and to pass the bar exam on his first try - taking the written exam by holding a pencil in his teeth.

``Harvey opened a successful law practice and garnered many awards before he died, including chairing the mayor's committee for the handicapped,'' said Dr. Gary Gitnick.

On the fifth floor was another 29-year-old quadriplegic. He was bitter, depressed and thought society owed him a living, Gitnick said.

``He was a handful to deal with, and the nurses disliked him,'' the Encino doctor said. ``He had not advanced or gone on with his education.

``Looking at both their backgrounds, I found they had come from middle- class, supportive families. There was no poverty or dysfunction in their backgrounds.''

Yet one of the quadriplegic men was succeeding in life; the other, floundering.

``One day I asked Harvey what's the difference. He said it was who you looked up to and used as a role model. He had positive, strong role models; the other man did not.''

And that's how Gitnick - professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Digestive Diseases at the UCLA School of Medicine - got the idea back in 1977 to start the Fulfillment Fund.

He called on his successful friends and acquaintances over the years - people with the means to help provide college scholarships and to mentor disabled and disadvantaged students - to give the kids a chance to see what the other side of life looks like.

People like Jan and Bob Goldman of Sherman Oaks, who have been involved with the fund for more than 10 years and have financially supported more than 25 students with college scholarships.

The only bill handed the students is on the back end - their promise one day to return to the fund for a five-year commitment to mentor the next generation of disadvantaged students.

That's what Rudy Lacayo, a management consultant with IBM, is doing today. He graduated from Hamilton High in 1990 and then graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1994 - the first college grad in his family.

He believes a key factor in his success was his mentor, Tom Daniels, who was working on a master's degree in business administration at UCLA and took Lacayo with him to classes - ``demystifying college for me,'' Lacayo said.

``I lived less than 15 minutes from UCLA and had never been on a college campus. My parents were hard-working people from Guatemala. College was some place other people's kids went.

``The Fulfillment Fund made it possible for me to go, too,'' Lacayo said.

In 27 years, the fund - now the largest private provider of college scholarships to Los Angeles students - has made it possible for more than 30,000 disabled and disadvantaged kids who work hard in high school to go on to college and careers.

It also provided more than $30,000 in cash awards this year to teachers and counselors making a difference in their students' lives in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

A few hundred of the high school students currently being mentored stopped by the fund's annual picnic Saturday with their mentors to meet and say thank you to the man who started it all 27 years ago.

North Hollywood High student Raul Cerritos was at the picnic with his mentor, Ben Tenn, a marketing consultant from Northridge. Patty Vazquez, also from North Hollywood High, was there with her mentor, Jamie Crystal, director of promotional marketing for FX Networks.

``We go to restaurants, museums and places I would never get to go if it wasn't for Jamie,'' said Vazquez, who, like almost all the students in the program, will be the first in her family to go to college.

What attracted her to becoming a mentor was exactly that, Crystal said - showing kids out there you don't have to come from a well-heeled family to get the advantages in life.

``I came from an area where everyone's parents were well off and paid for their kid's college, but I had to work to pay for my college education,'' she said.

``I want to show kids it's doable, that people are rooting for them to succeed. A lot of these kids don't think college is an option for them, but this program shows them it's for everyone - that there is someone out there to help them.''

For information on becoming a mentor, call [phone] or go to www.fulfillmentfund.org.

Dennis McCarthy, [phone]

dennis.mccarthy(at)dailynews.com

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North Hollywood High senior Patty Vazquez, right, picnics with her mentor, Jamie Crystal, promotional marketing director for FX Networks.