TIGERS, EAGLES AND DOLPHINS, OH MY!

Byline: Dennis McCarthy 

You have to go back five years to family court in upstate New York to trace the steps of how a jungle, desert and ocean mural at the Crippled Children's Society in Woodland Hills made the world come alive for 36 kids.

How it turned a drab, off-white projects room at the society - which was recently renamed Ability First, Paul Weston Center - into a veritable daily field trip for urban kids who don't get the chance to visit the wilderness much.

``They've been able to learn so much from these murals about the different habitat and a life they've never known,'' said Marsheen Ryan, director of the center. ``It's expanded their whole world.''

All because a New York family court attorney named Todd Becraft found himself in court spending more time sketching people than prosecuting them five years ago, so he quit.

``I thought the law would support my passion for art, but I found out the law took up too much of my time, so I quit cold turkey,'' he said Monday, working on another mural project in Canoga Park.

Becraft, 43, left a life of prosecuting child abuse and child support cases in New York for a new dream life of portrait painting in Los Angeles.

But fate seldom allows any of us to make a completely clean break in life. There were already enough portrait painters in Los Angeles to satisfy the egos of people who wanted their faces immortalized on canvas.

Before long, Becraft was back dealing with kids again. Not abused or neglected ones this time, but handicapped and underprivileged ones.

His passion to paint had brought him full circle 3,000 miles away, and the only real change was the venue he now worked in.

Becraft wasn't protecting kids in a court of law anymore. He was expanding their world on the outside now. Ryan gathered her staff together last fall to tell them about the phone call she had just received from an organization called L.A. Works.

``They want to know if there are any volunteer services we need for the kids.'' Ryan told her fellow workers at Crippled Children's Society, as it was called then.

A few of the staff raised their hands and suggested doing something to brighten up the projects room because that's where the kids spent most of their time after school.

``We wanted to add some life to it because it was all one, drab color and so sterile,'' Ryan said, never imagining at the time how much life the new mural would mean to her center.

At L.A. Works, a private organization formed in 1991 through various grants to provide volunteer services to nonprofit agencies in Los Angeles County, Julie Rajan got the ball rolling with her staff.

``We sent out one of our volunteer muralists to look at the room and come up with a design concept that would fit their program,'' the director of L.A. Works said Monday.

That muralist was an ex-prosecutor from New York who had decided it was time to return to his roots - volunteer work.

``It's something I've done my whole life, so when I heard about L.A. Works, and all the projects it was involved in, I wanted to get involved,''said Becraft, who makes his living painting murals in private homes and other sites.

With two mural projects from L.A. Works already under his belt - both inner-city school murals - Becraft met with Ryan and a few of her staff last fall.

``I kept thinking these are mainly urban kids who can't get around a lot, so what is it they don't get a chance to see much of?'' Becraft said.

``The outdoors and wilderness. I wanted that room to come alive with those scenes,'' Becraft said.

The next day, he arrived at the center alone and began free drawing three different mural outline scenes on the walls: a jungle, desert and ocean.

``Some of the kids just sat there looking at me, trying to figure out what I was drawing on their walls,'' he said. ``I could tell it didn't make much sense to them.''

It wasn't until a few days later, over the weekend when 20 volunteers from L.A. Works joined Becraft to fill in those lines with beautiful, vivid colors, that the room came alive.

That Monday, the kids began arriving at the center after school for another few hours in the drab, old projects room. Not anymore.

``You could just see the excitement in their faces and the questions forming in their minds,'' Ryan said.

Everywhere they looked, there was something to learn - something Todd Becraft had left behind to expand their world.

Elephants, monkeys and tigers in the jungle. Eagles and vultures in the desert. Dolphins and octopuses in the ocean.

The outdoors and wilderness coming to kids who couldn't go to it.

Thanks to an ex-attorney from New York who found himself spending more time in court sketching people than prosecuting them.

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Photo: Former New York attorney Todd Becraft sits in the projects room with children at the Paul Weston Center in Woodland Hills. Becraft's murals helped bring light to a room for 36 kids.

Hans Gutknecht/Staff Photographer