Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette Rashon lives with his grandmother as he deals with the legal consequences of having marijuana in his school locker.

By Ervin Dyer
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

He sits in a former laundry in Garfield in an oversize chair wearing an oversize white T-shirt and tennis shoes laced with alternating red and white strings.

His hair, cut close around a cherubic face, is perfectly groomed with those little breaks of waves the guys like to wear. He talks of his days using and dealing marijuana. He's 13.

Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette Rashon's mother had five boys, but the siblings have never lived together. His mother has been a drug abuser for all his 13 years. Click photo for larger image. Video Rashon works to overcome obstacles and to turn his life around. Related articles Many young black males are in crisis Young men in trouble reflect on their lives A man and his mentor: pastor helps turn a life around

"I smoked [marijuana] outside. I smoked inside. I smoked walking around in public, just smoking," he says as he clutches his hands to his knees. "I thought I was bored if I was not high. I had money, jewelry. I had 'rep,' " -- he was someone others could count on to sell them the weed they needed to get high.

"It made me feel noticed."

An eighth-grader who likes rap music, basketball and math class, Rashon is one piece of a fraying social tapestry that includes up to 3 million other inner-city young black men across the nation. The common threads in their lives include fatherlessness, alienation from formal education, forays into criminal activity and a diminishing hope about their future -- predictors that studies show push them into lives on the margins of society.

Rashon is now in the Community Intensive Supervision Program, or CISP, an Allegheny County house arrest program that aims to keep kids like him in school, in their communities and out of trouble. CISP made Rashon available to the Post-Gazette on the condition his last name not be used.

Rashon has a large family.

His mother had five boys, the oldest is 24. Rashon is the third child.

The boys never have lived together. Some of his siblings are scattered into foster homes. For all of his life, his mom has been a drug abuser. Because of her addiction, he never has lived with her. From the time he was six months old, he lived in a Hill District housing project with a great aunt. She fed him and clothed him and let Rashon sleep on a couch in the living room.

When he lived with his great aunt, Rashon smoked weed. He walked the streets at all hours. Bored with school, he seldom went to class.

He now lives in East Liberty in a tidy two-story home with his maternal grandmother. She calls the stocky young man with a dark-brown complexion Shon, and he's lived with her for about nine months, since shortly after he was busted at 12 for having a marijuana blunt in his middle school locker.

At 67, Grandma Carleen has raised four boys and two girls. She has 11 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

She has raised Shon's younger brother, Ron, since birth. She leads a visitor into her sunny little living room with the big sliding doors. Here all the furniture is snugly fitted in plastic. On a nearby shelf are family photographs. There are several of the younger brother and scores of his academic awards.

There are no photos of Shon.

Grandma Carleen, a widow, has worked hard to make a comfortable life. Her modest dwelling is on a quiet street, and she has sisters living in houses on both sides of her home.

She is making the most of her life: She doesn't mind getting up with the dawn, as she's often out the door early to water aerobics, line dancing or exercising.

"These are supposed to be my years," she says, reflecting on the sacrifice of having to now raise Shon, too.

Shon, she says, "didn't get the right start. I took him in because he had nowhere else to go."

Rashon's mother infrequently comes around. He sees her, he might get a hug, but she remains a mystery to him.

How old is she?

	Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette Like many teens, Rashon likes rap music, basketball and math class. Click photo for larger image.

"I don't even know. Ain't that crazy?" he asks, shaking his head. "I don't know how old my mom is."

He's working to let it go, but it's tough.

"Sometimes I wake up in the morning and think of my mom and be mad and go to school. The first thing someone says to me, I just snap."

It makes him angry not having her there on holidays. Not having her there to talk about his math grade. Not having her there to help him avoid the same drug-abusing path she walked on. But he downplays it.

"Hopefully, she's doing good. I don't get my hopes up. I got my own life to worry about, not hers."

In 13 years, Rashon has seen his father twice. As he recalled, with each visit there was acknowledgement, but no affection. No hug. No handshake. No nothing.

Once, there was a phone call. Rashon thought it was a wrong number.

"I can't even remember if he called me son or Rashon. He said 'Wussup with you? How you been doing lately?' "

His dad, back in jail since last August, has a long list of burglary charges that stretch back to before Rashon was born.

"To tell you the truth, I really don't care if I saw him or not. For some reason, I really don't care," says Rashon.

"I can't even say if I love him or not."

This is not always the world that Rashon imagines.

When he daydreams, he sees a world with his father.

"Things would be different if he was around. If he was here, we'd play basketball together or something. Watch a movie or something. Ya know, a father and son thing."

In his dreams, it's always a happy place. Then reality crashes into it.

"I really don't know if I love him. I don't know him. I love my mom, though," he says plainly, matter-of-factly. "I don't know why, she'd ain't never been here for me, either.

"But for my dad, I can't find a place for him in my heart."

Rashon was 12 when he first began smoking marijuana. He was on the street, hanging out with Black Hawk, Dom, Hard Tizzy and 'nem.

He was always the youngest, and he wanted to be like the older guys. They were 16, 17, 18. They called Rashon by the nickname Young Shig.

Young Shig sold marijuana.

Young Shig got high almost every day.

Young Shig sometimes made $375 a week selling drugs. Add that up, and Young Shig would have cleared $19,500 in a year. Tax free.

Most of which he spent buying more marijuana for himself or gambling it away.

In fact, Young Shig called life on the street a blast.

This is despite the fact that three of his friends have been shot or killed because of gang-related drugs and violence.

Young Shig may have been having a blast, but Rashon wasn't.

"I noticed my grades started dropping. I started missing school and everything. My whole life felt like it was going down the drain. I mean, to miss 45 days from school in one semester, that's terrible. Now, I go to school every day."

While a student at Milliones Middle School in the Hill District, Rashon left the house about 7 every morning. He met with his friends and smoked a couple of blunts before going to class. They smoked on the city steps or near the shadowy, empty spaces outside of his great-aunt's apartment.

One day, he stuffed a half-smoked blunt into the corner pocket of his bubble jacket. The strong odor permeated the locker and after the vice principal confronted him, he confessed that it was his.

He was charged with intent to distribute and sent to juvenile court.

The judge saw his record of school absences and sent him to the Community Intensive Supervision Program.

Looking to give him structure on a personal level, as well, the court suggested he move in with his grandmother.

It is a beautiful Easter.

Rashon is with family. He is standing and grinning at himself in the mirror. It is his first time in a new suit.

"I feel different. Handsome," he says, purring over his faux snakeskin dress shoes.

Before leaving for morning service, his younger brother ties Rashon's tie. It's a skill Rashon has never learned.

Grandma is a retired operating room technician who sometimes worked two jobs to support her family.

She is a petite, church-going woman, and she is strict. When Shon came in, the rules came out. For a young man not used to many restrictions, he now had a long list: clean your room, get your pants off your butt, wash the dishes, turn the music down.

In her house, her call for order and obedience upsets him and he believes she thinks of him as "the devil."

"No, I don't think he is the devil," said his grandmother. "But he puzzles me. I say, 'What is wrong with this boy?' "

After his day is over at Sunnyside school, a van picks up Rashon and delivers him to CISP. There he is among a thicket of young men who have all been pricked by trouble at school, petty crime or drug abuse.

CISP is a chance for the counselors to stuff some accountability into their souls before they are let go.

Young men -- ages 10 to 18 -- who come into the program get monitors on their ankles and are electronically tethered to their homes, work places or school. The program is run by the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas, and youth come every day. Here they do homework, chores and have meals. They must account for their time in community service, their grades, and talk about restitution for their crimes.

Rashon is one of the youngest in the group.

Before he came here, he had missed an entire semester at school. His grades were in the dump.

"When I first came in with Rashon, I saw a very needy, high energy child," says Barry Canada, 52, a family counselor the young men call Uncle B.

"Every day with him was a new adventure. I would tell my wife, this kid is killing me. I wanted to put him on the next boat [and send him] into the woods."

Uncle B now has wrapped his steady arms around Rashon. He takes him to lift weights, helps with family counseling sessions and visits Rashon's school.

CISP has a structure and consequences.

The goal, says Uncle B, is to take the street out of Rashon.

The presence of Uncle B and other "old heads" -- role models -- living and articulating a different value system has helped keep Rashon more steady and focused.

"I've always been respectful," he says, "but I'm just a better young man now -- in a lot of different categories."

Part of his optimism has come from realizing that he can live away from the corners.

"I never knew I was this smart," says Rashon, reflecting on the change of perspective the program has given him.

"Beneath the rough stuff, this kid is intelligent," says Uncle B. "I think he's starting to see what we wanted to produce in him."

When he leaves CISP, the program will help him enroll in tutoring, a basketball league and other aftercare.

"He has a future. A real bright future," says Uncle B. "He's ready for the next step, but he's got to have the discipline."

The transition from the streets has not been without its bumps.

Weeks of good behavior are sometimes followed by bouts of what Rashon calls "I don't-care-attitude" days.

His monitoring ankle bracelet, removed a few weeks ago, was back on after he was inexplicably late for school and talking out of order during an accountability session at CISP.

Rashon has lost old friends, and he's been forced to examine some harsh realities about his family life.

But in recent weeks, he has impressed counselors, his therapist and teachers.

Here's what Rashon has to say:

"I will never sell drugs another day in my life. I will never smoke another chemical. I can say that with a straight face. I know what it done to my parents. I see that selling drugs is hurting someone's family."

And, just as easily as he opens it, he shuts the door on being an adult.

He flashes his boyish smile and bounces off to play ping-pong with a CISP counselor.

EPILOGUE

Rashon is free now. He "graduated" from CISP May 24. Uncle B cut the electronic monitor from his ankle, and his CISP family gave him a round of applause.

Because of some early behavioral problems, it took him 10 months to finish the six-month program. But he's finished.

In a few days, he'll graduate from eighth grade. His neighborhood high school is Peabody, but, in the fall, he wants to attend Schenley.

In a few days, he'll begin a summer job with Urban Youth Action.

He has no idea what it is he'll be doing.

"I really don't care," he smiles. "It means I can get my own account, make my own money, and I don't have to hustle no more."

The Post-Gazette will continue to follow Rashon, and at the end of the series provide an update on where he is and how he's doing.