Teen tagger, courts pencil out new plan for his life.

Byline: Rebecca Nolan The Register-Guard

In three years of tagging, Nathan Calkins left his mark on hundreds of buildings, bus shelters, windows, utility boxes, fences, benches and light poles.

While his friends drank and did drugs, Calkins, now 17, expressed his teen-age angst through graffiti. His prolific "writing" made him famous in the subculture of taggers, and the risk of getting caught fueled his fevered efforts.

Sometimes he'd walk around town with a thick marker in hand and hit every signpost, utility pole, and bridge support he passed. He could wreak hundreds of dollars in damage in a matter of minutes.

He started tagging during the daytime, to increase the adrenaline rush, but found it was easier to escape notice because "no one expects it then."

"I was just having fun, being cool," he said. "It's something that a lot of young kids want to do, but they can't. The letters don't come to them. But I can draw."

When Eugene police served a search warrant at his mother's Eugene home, they found 64 cans of spray paint inside his padlocked bedroom. They also found pens and glass-etching solution he used to burn his tag into bus shelters and business windows.

They found a sketchbook in which Calkins had studiously perfected his graffiti designs. They found photos of his bedroom before his mother forced him to repaint it. Every surface and piece of furniture was covered in spray painted letters and designs. It looked like a New York City subway tunnel.

He had even etched the screen of the family's television and tagged the remote control.

This week, Calkins became the first teen tagger to participate in a new program engineered by Eugene police Detective Julie Smith, whose arduous chronicling of Calkins' activities resulted in his arrest in March.

Smith has been working with Lane County Circuit Court Judge Kip Leonard to add graffiti clean-up to juvenile taggers' regular sentences. She hopes the labor will link cause and effect in teens' minds, while also getting rid of unsightly vandalism.

"The five seconds that it takes to spray paint on a wall takes more than eight hours to clean up," Smith said.

A number of Calkins' victims spoke at his sentencing on three counts of first-degree criminal mischief. They spoke of the financial and emotional damage caused by Calkins' thoughtless acts. In addition to probation and restitution, Judge Leonard ordered the boy to work with Smith on a project of her choosing. The tagger and the detective spent a day and a half last week cleaning graffiti from a 60-foot wooden fence in a southeast Eugene neighbor- hood.

Calkins and Smith sanded the fence and applied a fresh coat of stain, which they covered with a product called Vandal-Gard, which prevents graffiti from adhering to surfaces.

Five months after his arrest, Calkins has an entirely new perspective on his former hobby.

"I never really realized how much it affected store and business owners," Calkins said. "I never thought of it as money out of their pocket. Rather than spending it on their kids' education, bills or something nice for themselves, they had to spend it on repairs.

"I did a fair amount of damage to the community and I feel like I owe them back at least that much," he said of the 10 hours he spent cleaning up the fence. "It's partly punishment for me, but it's also like a role-model thing."

The boy who once lived to see his name in paint all over town said he now has goals other than being cool. And, he said he hopes other kids learn from his mistakes.

"I don't care whether I'm cool or not," he said. "I just want to do something with my life. I want to give back to people. I don't want to end up in jail."

Calkins' dramatic about-face may sound too good to be true, but Smith said the teen has been enthusiastic throughout the project from the start. He worked without complaint and declined her offers to take a break, she said.

"I'm kind of used to community service," Calkins said.

His sentence also included 40 hours of service at FOOD for Lane County, whose buildings he tagged, and $1,000 restitution, some of which he earned laboring for the county work crew.

He's on probation, and he had to leave his mom's house and live with his dad, where a court-imposed curfew requires he return home by 6 p.m. each day.

He's been taking summer school classes and he plans to re-enter high school in September. And he's found a new hobby to replace the rattle can - weight lifting. He works out three times a week in Creswell with a coach he met while attending classes at the John Serbu Juvenile Detention Center. He said his progress gives him a sense of accomplishment.

"I don't have anything to hide anymore," Calkins said. "I just feel good about myself. It's a total mind thing."

CAPTION(S):

Nathan Calkins applies a final coat to a fence in a south Eugene neighborhood Thursday to help repair damage done by his graffiti. He and Eugene police Detective Julie Smith spent a day and a half on the project.