by Richard Demeter

ruising with "homeboys" and being ordered by police to "spread eagle" on the side of a car are not experiences that most high school teachers undergo on a typical Saturday night. But for Paul Stroup, a 40-year-old theology teacher at Don Bosco Technical Institute in Rosemead, Calif., these experiences are part of what he refers to as his "ministry."

"I’m there bearing silent witness to the fidelity of God’s love," he explained. "I want to show these homeboys that God is faithful even when they make bad choices or when other people aren’t there to support them."

For the past 12 years, Mr. Stroup has been taking his mess-age to homeboys in Rosemead and East Los Angeles, usually by "hanging out" with them or just listening sympathetically, frequently at their homes, where five or six of them are gathered. On other occasions his ministry involves visiting gang members in the hospital or in the juvenile detention center.

"When I was visiting a kid who had been shot and was near death at the county hospital, I told him I’d pray for him," Mr. Stroup recalled. "He grabbed my hand and squeezed it real tight and asked me to pray now."

The veteran teacher has no illusions about the physical danger in which he often places himself. He occasionally recounts an instance when he and a group of homeboys were getting out of a car and shot at five times by rival gang members in a pickup truck. "I got down after the first shot," he said with a smile.

Despite his concern for the homeboys he has met, Mr. Stroup makes no active effort to get the kids out of gangs. "I’m there for them precisely because they are gang members who need to know that God cares about them," he pointed out. "Only after they’ve become convinced that they are unconditionally loved will anything else change them for the better."

Mr. Stroup, who completed a master’s degree in spirituality at the University of San Francisco, describes himself as a Salesian type of contemplative whose work with youth is an expression of his spirituality. "Rather than respond to problems through some structured program, I look upon my work as a journey with these young people, whether it leads to a hospital or a cemetery or bigger and better things," he explained. "Even when I’m in prayer or contemplation, I’m in the presence of the kids. It’s another way of being with them."

Mr. Stroup is taking a similarly supportive role toward the dozen homeboys enrolled in a pilot summer program conducted by the construction technology department at Bosco Tech. The program is designed to provide work skills for a group of older at-risk teenagers who are serious about improving their lives and giving up the negative influences around them. "I’ll try to help them before, during, and after the program," he said.

During the past year the youth advocate wrote his second fictionalized work based on his street experiences. Entitled "Milagro in the Street," the book is about a rivalry for leadership between Milo, the conscience of his homeboys, and Stranger, who has a warped idea of what a leader should be. The character Milo is based on a real-life homeboy whose recovery from a car accident was deemed a milagro (Spanish for "miracle").

"Rival homeboys will read this book and identify with some common adolescent motives, whether it’s to be liked by the girls or to fit in," Mr. Stroup predicted. "By the end of the book they’ll realize their similarities as well as the false hope that life in the gangs originally held for them."

His earlier book, "Barrio in the Heart," tells the story of Li’l Man and the South Side Locos, a typical barrio gang. The au-thor hinted at the theme by saying that "although each gang has the good intention of protecting their family and friends, in the process of defending their neighborhood, they are destroying it by killing those who live in it."

Despite his own good intentions, Mr. Stroup sometimes questions how much positive influence he is having on the homeboys he meets. But he says he realizes the effort is worth it when kids who have left the gangs come back to him and thank him for his earlier support. And occasionally he receives a tribute that could serve as an epitaph: "He is the only one who loved me and came to see me in prison."