ROLLING UP THEIR SLEEVES, GETTING THEIR HANDS DIRTY; VOLUNTEERS GAVE BURBANK YOUTH CLUB LIFE.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

BY day, Tim Murphy sat in a seat of power as a newly appointed Los Angeles County Superior Court commissioner.

By night, he was on his hands and knees, scrubbing the floors of an old, condemned fire station in Burbank.

Getting it ready for the kids. Hoping they would come.

That was three years ago. Now the Burbank Boys & Girls Club is a living example of how one man's dream has become one of the most successful Boys & Girls Clubs in the region, a primer for any community looking at its youth and wondering.

Are we doing enough for our kids to keep them busy and out of trouble? Are we listening to them - really listening, and not just offering lip service? Are we committed enough to put our money, time and backs where our mouths are?

Murphy was. Here's how he did it.

``I was a young public defender working out of the El Monte court in the mid-'80s, dealing with a lot of kids who were gang wanna-bes,'' he said Friday during a break in his chambers at the Criminal Courts Building downtown.

``One day, a man came into court from the Boys & Girls Club of San Gabriel, and he seemed to know an awful lot about these kids. Which ones were too far gone to try and help, which ones could still be saved from the streets.

``You could tell he cared about these kids, and the kids he reached out to really cared about him,'' Murphy said. ``It made a big impression on me.''

A few years later, Murphy, still a public defender, won a seat on the Burbank City Council - a seat of power from which he could spark interest in helping and guiding the kids at risk in his own community.

``We have a big senior population in the city saying the same thing: `The community's changing, there's more graffiti and gangs, we're afraid,' '' Murphy said.

The first step he took was a small one - augmenting an already good recreation and parks program with an outreach program operating out of an old milk truck.

``The truck would go out to neighborhoods where kids weren't coming to our rec programs because either they didn't have the transportation or they were afraid of going into another gang's territory,'' Murphy said.

``We set up traffic barriers and unloaded equipment on their streets, bringing the recreation department to them. It was and still is tremendously successful, but it wasn't enough. There were still too many kids out there we weren't reaching.

``When I left the council in 1992, I said just that. We weren't giving our kids enough support. They weren't old enough to vote, so why should we care what they think? They weren't a group that came to meetings and screamed for dollars to get the council's attention.''

Murphy took it upon himself to contact the headquarters of the Boys & Girls Clubs, and asked them to do a study in his community to see if, in fact, he knew what he was talking about.

``They confirmed what I thought - a lot of kids were falling through the cracks,'' Murphy said.

Next, he went through stacks of applications of community people who had expressed an interest in serving on a city board or committee, but for one reason or another had been rejected.

``They had the interest, and they had the time,'' Murphy said. ``Many of them agreed to be on my steering committee.''

Steering committee. A fancy title for a group of people who rolled up their sleeves and didn't mind getting their hands dirty.

``The city donated an old, condemned fire station on Buena Vista Boulevard that was in pretty bad shape,'' Murphy said. ``By then I had been appointed a Superior Court commissioner, and every day after recessing court, I'd drive over to the old fire station and scrub floors, paint walls and fix the plumbing with the rest of the steering committee.''

In three months, the Burbank Boys & Girls Club was ready to open on an interim basis - meaning the building was ready, but there weren't any kids to fill it yet.

``By that time, we'd started to get some negative feedback from some people in the city who were saying, `Murphy's bringing gang members to Burbank in this club of his.' I told them: No, I'm not; the gangs are already here. Look around.''

The steering committee soon hit the streets, talking to parents and handing out fliers - dropping them off at schools and anywhere kids gathered in Burbank.

What they didn't know until later was that they had caught a big break. The old, condemned fire station that now served as Burbank's new Boys & Girls Club was located in gang-neutral territory.

``We didn't have to worry about kids not wanting to come see what we were offering them because they were afraid of going on some gang's turf,'' Murphy said.

Slowly, the kids started to come, and so did the community donations and grants that have allowed the club to grow and offer kids ages 7 to 17 in Burbank a wide variety of after-school programs.

``For $15 a year (waived if a child's family can't afford it), it's the best deal in town, if only for child care,'' Murphy says. ``The kids come after school and can stay until we close at 7 p.m.

``But they must finish their homework before we allow them to play or take any classes. If they say they don't have any homework, we assign them some for the first hour.

``In the three years we've been open, we've gone from a handful of kids to about 600 now who come on a regular basis. I have absolutely no doubt that without this club, a lot of these kids would be out on the streets of their neighborhoods after school, with a lot of time on their hands to get in trouble.''

And all it took to give them something better to do was one committed Superior Court commissioner and a steering committee of rejected applicants, rolling up their sleeves and getting their hands dirty for Burbank's kids.