Former L.A Gang Member Saved by NFL Legend

The rec center is the home base of the I-Can All-Stars, the basketball program founded by Rudolph (Rockhead) Johnson, a 48-year-old bear of a man with flecks of gray in his hair and goatee, a former Compton Crips leader who was once one of the most feared and dangerous men in South Central Los Angeles.  His life changed after he was mentored by NFL legend Jim Brown.  Read more after the jump.

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Rockhead once ruled the streets not far from the rec center by stabbing, shooting and beating anybody who got in his way, but that was before he met Jim Brown, the NFL legend, movie star and founder of the Ameri-I-Can Foundation, the gang-intervention program that has rescued thousands of young men and women from the streets. And it was before Johnson developed a passion for basketball and for mentoring kids who are filled with the same fury that once churned inside of him.

“Jim Brown saved my life,” says Johnson as he helps Trevor Ariza, Matt Barnes and other NBA stars hand out bags of groceries to needy families in the sunlight-filled gym on an October Saturday at the Big Assist, a charity event organized and hosted by Keyon Dooling of the Milwaukee Bucks. “Amer-I-can taught me how to be responsible for my actions. But if I didn’t have basketball and these kids, I would have taken a step back. Basketball gives me life.”

Johnson was a stone-cold thug who used guns, knives, pipes, his ham-sized fists and even his own head − hence the nickname − to inflict pain on anybody who crossed him. He has been shot and stabbed, and he has spent more than a third of his life incarcerated, much of it in the “hole,” separated from the rest of the prison population.

“Rock enjoyed being the vicious cat, the cat that everybody was afraid of, the cat that nobody could control,” Brown says. “He enjoyed creating fear in people.”

B ut thanks to Brown, Johnson now only battles for redemption. The man who once made big money selling drugs now constantly scrambles for funds to pay for travel expenses and tournament entry fees, and often dips into his own salary as an Amer-I-Can facilitator to supplement his program’s shoestring budget. He recruits kids who have been overlooked or ignored by other travel teams, and constantly pushes his players to improve themselves both on and off the court. He requires his athletes to complete Brown’s Amer-I-can curriculum, a course that teaches life-management skills.

“A lot of AAU coaches are more interested in shoe deals than the kids,” says Robert Ringer, a former I-Can All-Star who played college hoops at Alabama-Birmingham and now works for ESPNU. “There’s a shady side to it. Rock uses basketball as a way to open up opportunities for his players.”

Johnson’s kids have to attend school and pass their courses. Players who screw up, no matter how good they are, sit on the bench, but they are never thrown off the team. “I don’t give up on kids, just like Jim didn’t give up on me,” Johnson says.

Before he established the I-Can All-Stars, Johnson’s only previous basketball experience was shooting free throws in the prison yard. But the I-Can All-Stars often beat teams with more talent and resources, says former sneaker executive Sonny Vaccaro, the godfather of grass-roots youth basketball. “His kids play hard every game,” Vaccaro says.

Greg Hamilton, the father of former I-Can All-Star Jordan Hamilton, a first-round pick in the NBA draft this summer, is a youth minister who says the tough love and respect Johnson shows his players deeply reverberates with kids from broken inner city communities.
“He was in the hole and he got out,” Hamilton says. “If there’s hope for Rock Johnson, there’s hope for anybody.”

* * *

Rockhead Johnson’s mother was 14 years old when she ran away from home, 15 years old when she had her first child. She had eight babies with eight different men, and Johnson is her third oldest. He never met his father, he says, and until he met Jim Brown, he never had a positive male role model in his life.

Johnson says his mother worked hard to provide for her sprawling family, but she was a stern woman who beat her kids for even the smallest infractions. “I literally grew up hating my mother,” Rockhead says.

Johnson was living on the street and committing petty crimes by the time he was 11 years old. He started running with the Compton Crips a year later. He was just a ’tween when he was arrested on burglary charges and sent to a boys’ home. When older residents beat him up and threatened to rape him, Johnson used a metal pipe to exact a bloody revenge. There are only two kinds of people in those kinds of institutions, Johnson says: predators and prey.

Rockhead spent most of his teen years in correctional facilities and state prisons thanks to his frequent assaults on guards and other inmates. But Johnson says he had his limits. He looked down at gang members who extorted or sexually assaulted unaffiliated prisoners. There was no honor in exploiting the weak.

“I always dealt with cats tougher than me,” Johnson says. “I had to prove that I could be a monster.”

Johnson enrolled at Long Beach City College in 1981, after he was released from prison, paying his bills by dealing weed. The cops came looking for him again, but not because he was selling dope. He was accused of shooting three people while trying to rob a Burger King. Rockhead says he had nothing to do with that crime, but he was convicted on murder and robbery charges and sent to prison yet again, this time for 19 years.

He became an influential leader in the Consolidated Crips Organization, the hierarchy that called the shots in the state prison system. Johnson was an enforcer. He liked stabbing and beating anyone he thought needed to be disciplined. “We controlled 19 prisons by fear,” Johnson says.

The murder conviction was overturned, and after 10 years in prison, Johnson returned to Compton in the early ’90s. He heard that Brown had founded a gang-intervention organization called Amer-I-Can, and that he would invite the gangs to his home in the Hollywood Hills, hoping he could help Crips and Bloods forge a truce.

“Black men were killing each other over blue and red rags,” Brown says. “I thought it was what was needed at the time.”

Johnson figured Brown was just another hustler looking for a way to exploit L.A.’s gangs. But the football legend was respectful, intent on building bridges. He had a quiet power that Johnson found appealing.

To Brown, Rockhead appeared to be a natural leader. Underneath his swagger, Brown says, was an intelligent man.

“I was always told I was cursed at birth, but Jim gave me respect as a man,” Johnson says. “Nobody had ever paid me that kind of respect before.”

Still, Rockhead was reluctant to give up gang life, a mind-set that deeply changed when Johnson needed Brown’s help to stay out of jail. He was driving on the freeway with his friends when young men in another vehicle started pumping bullets into his car. The passengers in Johnson’s car returned the fire. When the California Highway Patrol stopped Johnson, he denied he had been involved in the incident, but the bullet holes in his car and a 9mm clip in the trunk left them unconvinced. Johnson, still on parole, was about to go back to prison.

Rockhead called Brown and asked him to appear at his hearing. “If you get me out of this,” he says he told the NFL Hall of Famer, “I will give you all of Compton.”

“I don’t want Compton,” Brown says he told Johnson. “I want your mind.”

Brown appeared at the parole hearing and persuaded the board that Rockhead could be a positive force on L.A’s streets. Johnson was sentenced to the three months he had served waiting for the hearing.

* * *

Johnson, as promised, gave Brown his mind: He completed the Amer-I-Can curriculum, a 15-point course that helps its students learn how to set goals, solve problems and strengthen family ties. He became Brown’s chief-of-staff and traveled to dozens of states to teach and share the curriculum. The ties that bound Brown and Johnson grew stronger; Johnson calls Brown his surrogate father.

Johnson turned his back on violence, even after rivals − angry that he had joined Amer-I-Can and was working to get gang members off the street − shot him 11 times in 1993. He remained committed to Brown’s message of non-violence even after his 16-year-old daughter, Mercedes, was shot and killed in 1998.

Johnson had seen the potential impact of basketball to help spread Brown’s message when he took a group of kids to a Southern California AAU tournament in 1994. He had seen his boys play hoops on the street, and he wondered out loud why they weren’t playing organized ball. Bad grades and bad attitudes, they told him. Nobody wanted them on their teams, they said.

Johnson persuaded Brown to cut him a check for $17,000, enough money to pay for uniforms, travel expenses and entry fees for a Las Vegas tournament. His teams lost every game. “We stunk,” Johnson laughs, “but the kids had so much joy. Most of them had never been out of Compton before. We got our ass whupped, but we went home happy.”

Rivals quickly dubbed Rockhead’s guys the “I-Can’t All-Stars.” But by emphasizing conditioning and tenacious man-to-man defense, by doling out big servings of discipline and praise, Johnson transformed the I-Can All-Stars into a competitive program. His roster may not be full of McDonald’s All-Americans, but Vaccaro says it regularly beats teams that are.

“Rock is a great motivator,” says Jordan Hamilton, the former I-Can All-Star who will be a Denver Nuggets rookie when the NBA lockout ends.

The program now has four high school-level teams and three 14-and-under squads. Nearly 200 of Johnson’s players − mostly kids who were not on the recruiting radar when they joined the program − have received Division I basketball scholarships. Former I-Can All-Star Derrick Williams was selected by the Minnesota Timberwolves with the second pick of the NBA draft this summer. Former Net Hassan Adams is also an I-Can alumnus.

Despite his program’s constant money woes, the I-Can All-Stars don’t charge players. Brown continues to help the program financially − one fan recently donated $8,500 in exchange for an autographed football. Los Angeles Lakers star Lamar Odom paid the bills for a couple of seasons. Vaccaro supplies sneakers and other gear when he can. New England Patriots coach Bill Bellichick is also a supporter.

Dorell Wright of the Golden State Warriors, who used to play for a rival program, is a sponsor. “I like to give to people who do something good with my money,” Wright says. “I know Rock works hard for his kids.”

For Johnson, it’s all part of his journey from the streets to the basketball court, the transformation from monster to mentor.

“My power always came from putting the fear of God in people,” Rockhead says. “But there’s nothing good about gangs. Nothing good came out of my past life.”

NYDN