The Honorees

In the following pages, we present a diverse group of California Peace Prize honorees from over the years and share the effects this leadership recognition has had on their lives and their organizations. Much of this information comes from interviews conducted at the Foundation’s final Violence Prevention Initiative conference in San Francisco in December 2002, and from the evaluation of the Initiative’s Leadership Development Program conducted by Oakland-based Leadership Learning Community.

All of the honorees have powerful stories to tell about how violence affected their lives and how it fueled a commitment to prevention. The combined work of these pioneers and unsung heroes has contributed to making a profound change in the way California views prevention of violence against youth. We believe it has been important to invest Foundation resources to tell the honorees’ stories to the public and other key audiences in order to help advance their important work.

Lorna Hawkins, Drive-by Agony (1993)
Lynwood (Los Angeles County)

The first of Lorna Hawkins’ sons to die was Joe. He was 21 when gang members shot him on the night before Thanksgiving in 1988. A child counselor in the Los Angeles area community of Lynwood, Hawkins found an outlet for her grief by forming Drive-by Agony, a network of grieving mothers whose children died in similar circumstances.

Vowing to make the public aware of the lives lost through gang violence, the group expanded its reach by tracking news stories about the latest killings and visiting the families of murder victims. Then, in 1992, Hawkins’ son Gerald, a 22-year-old criminal justice major at Compton College, was also shot and killed by gang members.

“My sons meant everything to me, and I want people to know that,” Hawkins said. “I also want other mothers to know that, yes, it’s devastating; yes, you may feel like dying or killing yourself, but the best thing to do with that grief is to give back and help others. It’s all about getting out of yourself and your pain, and helping others.”

In 1993, Hawkins became one of the first honorees of the California Peace Prize for her tireless commitment to preventing violence against youth.

After being awarded the California Peace Prize, Hawkins received widespread public acknowledgment for her work. Former Gov. Pete Wilson presented her with the Sharon Tate Victims of Crime Advocate Award. In 2003, Hawkins was named “Person of the Week” by the late Peter Jennings, then anchor and senior editor of ABC’s “World News Tonight.” Hawkins’ story is also related in a chapter about death and dying in “Understanding Your Health,” by Wayne A. Payne, Dale B. Hahn and Ellen Maver (McGraw-Hill, 2004). She has been interviewed on national TV and radio and has been profiled by many newspapers.

Her story took on legendary dimensions in the song “The Ballad of Lorna Hawkins,” performed in 2000 on Mother’s Day during the Million Mom March on Washington, D.C., a gun violence protest in which an estimated 750,000 people participated.

Hawkins has been a member of the city of Lynwood’s Public Safety Commission since 1996. Operating in Compton, Lynwood, Watts and several Los Angeles communities, her group continues to educate thousands of youth about violence prevention and to support victims of gun violence. Hawkins has also led marches in California, Illinois, Michigan, New York and Wisconsin. As a result of the widespread publicity about her work, she has become an advisor to other mothers who have started similar programs across the country, and she devotes a portion of her time to victims’ rights issues.

Judge Leonard Perry Edwards II, Santa Clara County Superior Court (1996)
San Jose (Santa Clara County)

Leonard Perry Edwards II, supervising judge of the Family Resources Division of Santa Clara County Superior Court, is one of the country’s leading experts on legal issues pertaining to juvenile and domestic violence. In 1996, the Foundation honored him with its California Peace Prize for his pioneering work in violence prevention.

Judge Edwards has devoted his long career to implementing and disseminating innovative approaches to the treatment of abused children, the rehabilitation of youth and the rights of victims of violence. He pioneered the use of mediation in child protection cases, which provides an alternative to the high-pressure courtroom environment. This procedure has now been adopted by approximately 60 courts across the nation. In 1999, he established one of the country’s first dependency drug treatment courts.

In 1985, close to 4,000 children were under the jurisdiction of the Santa Clara Juvenile Dependency Court. Today, after 24 years of Judge Edwards’ leadership, this number has fallen by more than 25 percent, despite a 20 percent population increase. During this same period, annual adoptions have increased from less than 30 to more than 240. The court’s success has been attributed to long-term planning, a commitment to change, the implementation and utilization of best practices, and strong judicial leadership.

Judge Edwards is a prolific author and lecturer, founder of the Juvenile Court Judges Association of California, and past president of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges. In 2004, he was the first juvenile court judge to receive the William H. Rehnquist Award for Judicial Excellence, presented annually to a state court judge who exemplifies the highest level of judicial excellence, integrity, fairness and professional ethics.

Judge Edwards stands out — not only for his numerous achievements but also for his leadership style, which has positively influenced courts in California, the nation and the world.

Officer Malcolm “Jerry” Williams, Oakland Police Department (1997)
Oakland (Alameda County)

In 1992, Officer Malcolm “Jerry” Williams was an undercover narcotics officer working in the Lockwood/Coliseum Garden complexes, one of the most notorious public housing tracts in the country. When people were murdered elsewhere in the Bay Area, it was not uncommon for their bodies to be dumped in these barren and blighted housing complexes.

A few years later, when Williams was serving as a community housing police officer with the Oakland Housing Authority Police Department, he helped transform these two dangerous housing projects into peaceful communities that remained homicide-free for eight years.

Williams, the local housing authority, the Oakland Police Department and the community worked together to build a police substation at Lockwood, conduct a community audit of community resources and their availability to residents, offer health education training for residents and start a volunteer program in Haves Court Middle School and Lockwood Elementary. Williams also persuaded the local garden center to subsidize a day-care center and helped initiate a community lunch program for the kids.

Assistance from local organizations and elected officials, along with millions of dollars in federal grants, enabled Williams to initiate “Operation Weed and Seed.” The focus of the project was to “weed out” violent crime, gang activity and drug use, and then “seed” the economic and social restoration of the area.

In 1997, the Foundation honored Williams with its California Peace Prize for his efforts to develop trust and partnerships among youth, their parents and the Oakland community.

After receiving the California Peace Prize, Williams was profiled by national and local news media organizations, including one that dubbed his work “Miracle on 65th Avenue.” Williams was amazed at the sudden interest in his work. “The next thing I knew, I had news commentators tripping over their feet trying to get to my office,” he said. “They were competing to get the story.”

His groundbreaking methods and outstanding results were cited by former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, who visited the public housing complexes on two occasions.

The recognition and resulting media coverage also began to expand Williams’ influence as a violence prevention expert. Police departments in troubled communities across the country requested more information about his methods, which led to speaking engagements across the U.S. and Canada. Williams also provided technical assistance to cities that wanted to replicate his form of community policing and taught college courses on the role of police in violence prevention.

Gianna Tran, East Bay Asian Youth Center (2000)
Oakland (Alameda County)

When Gianna Tran was 12, she and her family left Vietnam to seek refuge in the United States. Tran quickly learned that violence was not a problem unique to Vietnam’s war zones. In 1988, she began working with juvenile probationers at the East Bay Asian Youth Center (EBAYC).

Promoted to associate director, she has helped transform the organization into a multicultural center that provides services in 12 languages for youth throughout the East Bay’s diverse neighborhoods. In 2000, the Foundation honored Tran with its California Peace Prize for helping Asian youth in Oakland develop the confidence and communication skills to resist gang life.

Tran uses her professional training and her personal experience to develop strong youth leadership and create community models for preventing violence against youth. In addition to her work at EBAYC, Tran’s grassroots advocacy of mental health and drug, alcohol and physical abuse treatment, has helped spread the word that violence prevention improves the health of entire communities.

Since receiving the California Peace Prize, Tran has often been called upon by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency and the Alameda County Juvenile Probation Department to discuss issues related to at-risk Asian and Pacific Islander youth. Her work and her organization have been featured on PBS’ “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” and on “Voices from the Trenches,” a project of San Francisco-based KQED-TV 9 that addresses juvenile justice issues in the Bay Area and Northern California.

Last year, “C me in, C me out,” a documentary about Oakland’s Cambodian gangs, produced by EBAYC’s Streetside Productions video program, was awarded an honorary mention in the Best Short Documentary category at the 2004 Oakland International Film Festival.

“Violence takes many shapes and forms and comes in many different ways,” Tran said. “The people in the Vietnamese community see violence as an individual family problem, not as a community problem. To compare it to a preventable disease may be something very new to immigrants, but I think that’s the best way to make people understand that it is a serious thing.”

Tran’s utopia is one where the services offered at EBAYC would be unnecessary. She would like to help create a truly healthy community by developing the ability of young men and women to lead others in violence prevention.

Brian Contreras, 2nd Chance Youth & Family Services (2001)
Salinas (Monterey County)

Growing up in Modesto, Brian Contreras experienced firsthand the effects of gang violence. After spending time in prison, he decided to turn his life around.

Relocating to Salinas, similar in size and demographics to Modesto, he became aware of escalating gang violence. In 1989, frustrated with what he thought were inadequate prevention efforts by local agencies and organizations, Contreras founded his own program, 2nd Chance Youth & Family Services.

In the beginning, 2nd Chance was primarily an outreach program for gang members. Contreras and his staff redirected youth to lead productive lives. In 1993, Contreras decided to bring the program to North Salinas High School, which had experienced some of the worst fighting among the city’s schools, including one incident in which a teacher was shot.

Contreras and his staff worked throughout the school year to build relationships with the rival gangs in the school, eventually persuading 175 students to attend a conflict mediation meeting to resolve underlying tensions within the group. By the third year of the North Salinas High program, 2nd Chance achieved a 95 percent reduction in incidents involving weapons and a 65 percent reduction in gang fights. The number of expulsions dropped from 22 to three.

2nd Chance now serves seven schools in Salinas and North Monterey County. Over the past decade, 2nd Chance Youth & Family Services has given second chances to more than 3,000 youth ranging in age from 11 to 18.

Since receiving the California Peace Prize in 2001 for his outreach to gang members and at-risk youth, Contreras has been involved in numerous public activities. He has served on panels and committees to provide expertise on gangs and juvenile violence, and has participated in discussions with the city of Salinas about the positive impacts of funding violence prevention activities.

Contreras was elected chairman of the Monterey County Juvenile Justice Commission and was appointed to the board of directors of United Way of Monterey County; he is currently chairman of its Human Resources Committee. He has also served as chairman of the California Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Commission.

In 2004, he was named a distinguished fellow by California State University (CSU), Monterey Bay, for community and public service. The award is the highest nonacademic recognition granted by the CSU system.

Contreras was also asked to participate in the Safe Schools/ Healthy Students Initiative and the Gang Violence Reduction program of the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office. He was invited to meet with U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer when she came to Salinas in 2004, to discuss the high levels of gang violence in Monterey County.

“Receiving The California Wellness Foundation’s California Peace Prize was similar to getting the Good Housekeeping seal of approval,” said Contreras. “This helped to establish our agency as the premier gang prevention and intervention program in Monterey County.”

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