Erasing the marks
From left, Jake, Cameron and Alfredo, the last two from the Little Valley Locos gang and all three wanting to shave off a few hours from their community service sentences, paint over graffiti left behind by other gangs on the walls of a house in the Longview Tracts neighborhood. Their work is part of a program called TKR, or Teaching Kids Responsibility.<br>Sebastian Moraga/Columbia Basin Herald
TKR hopes to turn kids' lives around - Gang members paint over their peers' handiwork Friday afternoon, thanks to program
MOSES LAKE — The house on the corner of Miller and Sunny does not look like a house, and it's up to three kids to turn it back to normal.
Armed with brushes and paints donated from local businesses, they will spend a few hours painting over graffiti left behind by local gangs.
These are not three kids trying to emulate Tom Sawyer or trying to earn a merit badge. Two of them are members of another gang and the third one is on probation. They all are there to shave a few hours off their community service sentences.
Overseeing their actions are Randy Moore and Joe Alfaro, code enforcement officers for the city and Kevin Hake, probation counselor for the juvenile detention center in Grant County. They head a program called TKR, short for Teaching Kids Responsibility.
Moore, a former gang member himself, tells the trio that they have to spread the word among their friends: When they leave their mark with graffiti, they will be the ones cleaning it off.
The boys continue painting. Moore unfurls a bag of Twizzlers and that lifts the painters' spirits a bit. The sight of notepads and cameras is disturbing to them, though.
"Are we gonna be in the paper? Oh, man!" said one of them.
"It's better than being on 'Most Wanted,'" is Hake's reply.
They manage to continue painting, despite the click-click of the camera. Throughout the experience, Moore keeps talking to them, on a line of banter that is half inspirational speech, half chastising parent.
"This is the time to change," he tells them, "When I left the gangs, my life changed, all of you can make it."
Now it's time for the kids to retort. "We hear that all the time."
Slowly, the house starts looking more like a house and less like a street canvas. The brushes and paint cans donated from Skaug's Hardware are put away and the Twizzlers begin being spread around. Suddenly, the painters are Sawyer-esque kids who have just been taught a lesson.
Or so Moore hopes.
"Next time they will think 'Man, we will have to clean this up," he said. "If they and their peers are doing it, why should the community pay for it? This is a good thing."
One of the kids shares in Moore's good feelings, for slightly different reasons, though. At 15, he is a leader in a gang. And it was his gang's rival group whose initials he cleaned off the walls of the house.
"It felt good," he said.
"In a week, this is going to come back up," he said of the graffiti. "But it's either this [cleaning it], or I can get locked up."
Another one of the kids has a different point of view. Painting the graffiti off will give people a better idea of the positive side of what he and his peers do.
"Everybody will see that we are not all about gangbanging," he said. "We can do other things."
The deed has been done, and at least for now, the house on Miller and Sunny looks like a house again. Profanity and gang acronyms have been erased from its walls, and three kids have had a few hours taken off from their community service requirements.
"I am optimistic," Moore said. "Even though some of these kids won't change, we will get to them eventually."