In spite of this insanity, something clicked in Paul's mind and made him decide which way his life would go. He was going to do whatever was necessary to make sure he was going to turn his life around.

The day I met Paul, he was wearing his Golden State Warriors cap, and he and his best buddy, Johnny Cochrane, and a couple of his uncles were getting ready to go fishing. This was a far cry from hustling "rock" right around the corner from his own house barely a year before in his Oregon neighborhood.

"When my mom died, I could have went either way. You know, there's that little psycho stage where you just go crazy. I came close to doing that. But then i sat and thought about it, how life goes on. These things happen. You may not like it, but they do. You just have to go strong with your life. Go strong, finish strong, you'll get anything you want."

"He's had a hard life," says his uncle Quinn. "He had to raise his little sister by himself, but still, he's a strong young individual."

"If you let these things get to you, it just destroys you and then you just turn into a nobody. So you gotta have common sense," says Paul adjusting his cap. "Don't fall back into that little trap, 'cause you won't make it in life."

Having been released after doing a quarter of his sentence on a drug conviction, Paul's uncle refused to let his nephew make the same mistakes he had. "When I was young I was hard, I was robbing, doin' this and that. All of a sudden those folks said, 'Whaamm!! Mr. Brunson--twenty years.' I spent five years of my life in a penitentiary," says Quinn at age thirty-two. "Paul looks at that. He's not gonna go through that. He's gonna help people like me lead a better life. He's gonna help the younger generation and school 'em. He's what I should have been. Hey! Paul is my role model." Even so, things didn't always look as positive as they do now.

On one of Quinn's weekend prison furloughs, Paul bought his uncle a fishing rod. Quinn thanked him, happy to receive the gift but in the back of his mind wondered where Paul got the money to afford it. "Paul asked me if I wanted money to go out. He'd give me fifty dollars and I'd go out and have a good time. He'd have a big ol' bankroll, and I'd ask, 'Who's money is that?' He'd say, 'That's John's money. I'm holding it for him.' It didn't smell right.

"The next couple of weekends, we're watching the NBA," Quinn continues. "Paul's ordering pizzas and buying beer for my friends and me. I asked, where is this money comin' from? He'd say, 'It's not mine.' Now, I know if you're holding money for somebody, you aren't gonna be spending it! I just said to him straight out, 'Man, you're selling crack.'"

I ask Paul what was his response to that? "I just said, 'Don't tell grandma!'

Quinn couldn't believe what was happening. He knew he hadn't set the best example for Paul, but after all the little speeches he made, and being sentenced to 20 years in jail, he hoped it would have made some sort of a dent. "I had tears in my eyes when I talked to him. I grabbed him with both hands on his neck and I started crying. I almost choked him to death. I got so emotional, I didn't realize what I was doing. I said, 'Hey man! You ain't selling no dope. You got everything you want! Get into those books!' He hurt me and he knows better."

Seeing his uncle so torn up seemed to get the wheels turning in Paul's head, but he will tell you, only he could make the final choice. "I was hanging with gang members and making money and everything. I wasn't ripping anybody off, I was just selling dope. Everybody knew me, all the smokers knew me. I would make like a thousand a day. I started dealing in the beginning of the seventh grade. I was about 13. I stopped in the beginning of the eighth grade. That's when I started getting my good grades.

"I figured I could do what I wanted to do. If I want to get good grades I could have good grades. To be something, you've got to go up to that level. I wanted to do that and that's what mom wanted me to do. My grandmother, she wants me to do it. She knows I'm going to make it because I'm doing these things that her kids should have done."

Paul made the decision that he was going to be somebody and he knew he had to make a few simple changes in his life. "Study. Read books. Do what I was supposed to do mainly," he says. "Know what my teachers expect, and just do it. It's not hard. If you put your mind to it, you could do anything you want to do! It's as simple as that," he says confidently.

Those changes in his habits and a positive attitude worked well for him. "I never could get on the honor role for some reason. All my report cards I was getting D's--6th grade, 7th grade.

"Eighth grade I really started thinking, 'Man, I'm gonna have to do something, I'm gonna have to get good grades.' It's just self discipline. Then I got a 3.5, then I graduated with a 3.8. Now high school, first quarter I got a 3.5; second quarter 3.6; third quarter 3.8. For fourth quarter I'm striving for a 4.0." An "A" average.

Paul already has his plans for the future locked in his mind because at this point, there is little he feels will hold him back. "Master's degree!" he says enthusiastically. "In business or communications. I could be a counselor, talking with kids. I could help them a lot," he says. But Paul also has an interest in real estate. "I want that master's. I want to build and make them bucks!" he says rubbinbg his hands together with a smile.

"John and I, we study together, we just try to get everything down-pat. When we get older we're going to be tight. We're gonna have our cars, we're gonna have good jobs, our own businesses, and nobody's going to be able to touch us!"

John and Paul, like most best friends, spend a lot of time together and in the end it certainly helps them both do the right thing. "We have fun all the time," Paul says with a big smile. John's smile back is equally large. "We always go fishing. Come home, clean `em, cook `em. Every weekend is like this--fish, fish, fish. That's the only way to stay out of trouble. If you sit at home, you're going to run into problems.

"If you just do positive things, you can't get into no kind of trouble. We play tennis, football, basketball and chess. The only hard obstacle is school. That's the hardest thing for us right now. After school we might play Genesis or Nintento or we might play tennis."

"We don't worry what other people say if we do tennis," adds John. "A lot of people give us a hard time because they think tennis is a 'white' sport." He laughs.

"We just prove 'em wrong!" says Paul. "We got some of our friends to start playing. Now they can't wait to play! They see us and it's like, 'Dag! John, Paul! Let me see your tennis racket! Let me hit it a few times!' Then when they get their hands on the racket, they don't want to give it back, they want to keep playing. Then they go buy a racket and we all have fun. Now we teach everybody, and they love it."