TEEN HELPS OTHER KIDS SURVIVE VIOLENCE.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

Odds and ends from around the Valley:

The yellow school bus pulls up in front of the Van Nuys courthouse complex every Tuesday and Thursday morning to drop off only one student at the school of hard knocks.

Her name is Mindy Luvisi, and her classroom is on the first floor of the new Marvin Braude Municipal Building in Room 151 - the City Attorney's Office.

This is where the 17-year-old senior at Valley Alternative Magnet School has spent the past five months settling an old score.

While victim advocates Rosa Prendiz and Belkys Ervin help battered mothers and other victims of domestic abuse get their day in court, Mindy helps their kids.

She knows a little something about the hidden scars they're carrying. When she was turning 12, her father was assaulted by a man who cut in line in front of them at a supermarket coin machine.

Mindy was holding her piggy bank filled with change she was going to turn into paper money to buy a bike for her birthday. The guy didn't care. He pushed past Mindy and her father, George Luvisi, who complained.

``When we got outside in the parking lot, he attacked me,'' George Luvisi says. ``Mindy went screaming into the market to get help.''

No one helped. Mindy watched her battered father being taken away in an ambulance, and never forgot the feeling of fear and helplessness.

When the chance came to help other kids who have witnessed domestic abuse and random violence, Mindy jumped at it.

``We needed the help because so many times the victims have large families with a lot of children who come with them,'' Prendiz said.

``Mindy stepped right in, and knew exactly what to do. She read them books and just hugged and held them to calm their fears.''

She knows how important that is, Mindy says.

``All I want to do is help these kids and make them feel better right now because it's a scary time in their lives,'' she said Thursday, waiting for the yellow school bus to pull up in front of the courthouse complex at 12:30 p.m. to take her back to school for her afternoon classes.

The graduating honor student is bound for the University of California, Davis, but it's doubtful she'll have a college class that's more gratifying and valuable than the one at the school of hard knocks, she says.

Another graduate who deserves special recognition this month is the Comeback Kid - Kristina Lopez - who graduated magna cum laude last week from California State University, Northridge.

If you've been reading this column for awhile, you remember Kristina. In 1998, epileptic seizures turned her life upside down, turning the popular cheerleader and honor student at St. Genevieve's High School in Panorama City into a social outcast.

She had to leave the Catholic school in her junior year for home schooling because the seizures were coming more frequently and violently.

At the homecoming football game that year, Kristina's cheerleader friends asked her to come down from the stands to be with them on the sidelines at halftime.

School administrators saw her on the sidelines, and told her she had to leave immediately because only enrolled students were allowed on the sidelines. This to a girl who was an honor student, cheerleader, and had been going to the school since kindergarten. Cold.

Hurt and embarrassed, Kristina ran away in tears. Her parents and friends found her sitting alone, crying under the bleachers - wondering what she had done wrong except get sick.

After an operation to remove her brain's right temporal lobe to end her seizures, Kristina went on to graduate with honors from Granada Hills High.

She was taking night classes at CSUN and working with special-needs kids during the day at Hart Elementary School in Canoga Park when she had another epileptic attack in 2003.

Again, the Comeback Kid fought her way back from another brain operation. Not only did Kristina graduate with honors last week, but she received a fellowship to the doctorate program at CSUN to get her Ph.D. in developmental psychology.

``I think my brain operations made me smarter,'' she said Thursday, laughing - getting ready for the big graduation party her proud family is throwing her this weekend.

Way to go, kid.

I don't know what my favorite southern belle, Henriette Eiseman, is taking these days, but I want some of it.

Next week, she turns 100 - still volunteering at the Valley Presbyterian Hospital gift shop a few days a week and flirting with all the guys in that slow southern drawl of hers.

The first time I met Henriette, she was only 90 and holding down three volunteer jobs six days a week. We got to talking about being tired at the end of the day.

I asked her how she ended hers - with a little warm milk, decaf coffee or tea like most people.

Henriette said she preferred a Bloody Mary. It was love at first sight.

Happy 100th, darlin'.

And finally, the next care package assembly for the troops from Operation Gratitude has been changed from this weekend to the weekend of June 18-19, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the California Army National Guard Armory, 17330 Victory Blvd., in Van Nuys.

As always, volunteers are welcome. For more information on the wish-list items needed for the troops, log on to www.operationgratitude.com.

Dennis McCarthy, [phone]

dennis.mccarthy(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

High school senior Mindy Luvisi, 17, is seen off by city attorney victims advocate Rosa Prendiz as she leaves for afternoon classes at Valley Alternative Magnet School after working with children touched by violence.

Gus Ruelas/Staff Photographer