Bobby Vega’s Urban Conservation Corps turns around lives

UNSUNG HEROES

Read more about heroes in your community in our 12 Days of Christmas Series.

SAN BERNARDINO Bobby Vega barely glanced at the spreadsheets and other documentation that are carefully gathered to show that the Urban Conservation Corps he leads transforms the lives of local young people and is worthy of the grants that continue to fund it.

He brushed aside mention of recent praise by city officials of how his corps members have cleaned up parks in the city and local mountains, including a rapid turn-around in response to criticism of the condition of the Feldheym Central Library.

He laughed at the number of meetings he’s asked to attend.

“I don’t have time for that,” he said. “I don’t care about what some agency thinks or about conservation. I care about these people, and I know it’s working because I’m not attending funerals. I’m not getting phone calls from parents saying their kids are being incarcerated.”

Vega, deputy director of the San Bernardino-based Urban Conservation Corps, said he’s learned from a 44-year lifetime in the city — growing up on its Westside and getting to know generations of people with serious issues — to do what needs to be done, rather than what’s supposed to be done.

“This is a place for second chances, third chances,” he said. “If we said it was gang intervention, no one would want anything to do with us, so we say we’re the conservation corps. And that means they get to be outside — in a place that’s theirs — and they learn a skill that can take them someplace.”

Vegas is a member of the city Parks and Recreation Commission and before that the Police Commission,

Since Vega started the Urban Conservation Corps of the Inland Empire five years ago, hundreds of people have come through, including about 60 currently involved, he said.

Young people from 18 to 24, some on probation, attend a charter school at the corps’ headquarters on Orange Show Road two days a week, graduating with a high school degree. The other three days of the work week, they trim hedges, mow — whatever landscaping and related work is needed.

Earlier this month, the San Bernardino County Housing Authority contracted with the group to provide landscaping services for the public housing at Waterman Gardens, on the condition that participants are themselves residents of the complex.

“It’s good work,” said Cahlin Florence, 22. “If somebody trashes this place now — I don’t think I’d let them. That’s more work for me.”

That’s part of the philosophy behind the Urban Conservation Corps, Vega said.

“They own it, they get that responsibility, and they’re not going to let anything happen to it,” he said.

Key to the program’s success, Vega said, is that he understands the problems people in his program face. He knows their families, and their families know him.

“I’ve built that reputation,” he said. “And I know — look, in their world, looking somebody in the eye — normal eye contact — that will get you killed, mad-dogging. You need to know that. And you need to know why they’re doing it and how to have them stay like that when they need to, but also adopt the right behavior for the right circumstances.”

Many of the logistical details of the Urban Conservation Corps are handled by program director Sandra Bonilla, who compiled the spread sheet showing where program participants wound up — the military, fire departments, in some cases more modest successes like a warehouse job.

She said she joined up with Vega with a background in government and a graduate school education she thought told her everything she needed to do.

“But I kept trying things that didn’t work,” she said. “And so many times, I’d go to Bobby, and he’d say, ‘Here’s the problem. You can’t do that with these kids. Adapt it like this.’ And then it’d work.

“Bobby knows what they’re coming from. And he knows what they need.”