Article 5 of 11-Part Series

SAN FRANCISCO — Jackie Cohen is verbose and flamboyant. She sings loudly with the radio as she drives her school bus. She eats cheeseburgers and strawberry sundaes. Her cousin Diane Gray is calm, composed and articulate. Her long wool jacket encases her, heels clicking as she walks. She packs her lunches.

An odd duo, the bus driver and school district administrator form the perfect team. For a decade, they have devoted their free time to revitalizing their native Bayview-Hunter’s Point by keeping teenagers in school, getting them into college and finding them jobs.

“I owe what I am today to Jackie,” said 23-year-old Elizabeth Johnson, who is now a senior in college, an achievement she attributes to Jackie Cohen putting her on a plane to North Carolina. In the time she's been gone, two childhood friends in Bayview were murdered and a young cousin was shot in the leg.

The cousins began their endeavor in 1996 when Cohen was a part-time van driver for a local girls group. When the group’s coordinator quit, Cohen spontaneously took over, meeting with the girls to talk about rap music, boys and social dilemmas.

Impressed by her charisma, and weary of the neighborhood’s increasingly violent scene, the girls’ parents urged her to continue. The group soon grew in size from eight to 55.

Meanwhile Gray, who left Bayview as a teenager, had recently bought a townhouse in the area. “I wanted to live in San Francisco and housing was affordable here,” she said.

She was shocked by what her hometown had turned into. “I would see zombies on Third Street. There were certain times I would not want to drive for fear of getting into gang crossfire.”

Gray grew up in the 1960s, a time when Bayview was middle-class African American. People were not rich, but they were happy and safe. Her grandfather was a shipyard electrician. Her father worked at the post office.

As children, Gray and her friends had adventures cycling to Fisherman’s Wharf and organizing picnics on a patch of grass near the sewage plant.

But thirty years changes a place. “The five and dime stores were all replaced with liquor stores. It was the effect of the 80’s crack epidemic. It wasn’t safe anymore,” Gray said. Her plan was to open up a beauty supply store to contrast the liquor joints, but when that didn’t pan out, she joined forces with Cohen.

Since 2000, the duo has been running a center called the 100% College Prep Institute out of a Victorian-style house one block off Third Street.

Parents pay a yearly fee of $150 per child to support the group, with scholarships for those who need them. Fundraising dinners and a yearly variety show organized by Cohen help cover rent and bills. It takes about $20,000 a year to stay open and run programs. Somehow, the cousins, themselves unpaid volunteers, always pull it together with the help of supporters.

“See these steps here?” Cohen said, pointing to wooden steps leading to the back door. “On these steps are going to be my angels.”

When Gray and Cohen rented the house, the roof was leaking, the stairs were falling apart and the ceiling was caving in. Volunteers emerged from the woodwork to help, donating paint, nails and time.

“Every person who helped will be dedicated here,” Cohen said, climbing up the steps, a 7-Eleven Big Gulp fountain drink in hand.

On weekday afternoons, about 20 teenagers ages 13 to 18 file into the house from 4 to 7 p.m.

Some walk, some are dropped off. They come from the modest homes off of Third Street and the nearby housing projects.

A few of the center’s kids are on Cohen’s bus route. She picks them up from the white brick Aptos Middle School set in Ingleside and from the San Francisco School of the Arts, which borders the manicured lawns and water fountains of St. Frances Woods.

Other students are picked up from F.S. Key Elementary School near Lake Merced and dropped off in the housing projects, where the only color other than grey comes from a few flowered curtains.

The contrast pains the eyes, but Cohen is pragmatic. “It’s just the way the cards are dealt,” she said.

At the center, the teenagers learn to play with the cards they have. Tutors come to help them in math, science and English. They are coached for the SATs.

Cohen also runs training sessions for parents on everything from how to interpret report cards to “Hip-Hop” parenting techniques.

The bookshelves are filled with SAT books, guides to colleges, and Cliff notes. There are tables and couches in the two-story house, all donated. The kids assemble themselves in various rooms and diligently pull out binders and notebooks.

"Do I need straight A’s to get into UC Berkeley?" one boy with shy eyes and long eyelashes asked.

The ceiling fans have become dusty, and Cohen eyed them as the kids studied. “I can’t stand it any longer,” she said.

Grabbing a chair and some wet paper towels, she tiptoed to wipe them clean, but could not reach.

“Where’s that tall young man? Denzel, can you help me?” she asked a student.

“It’s like a family in here,” said Jumaane Bowdry, a ninth grader who has been coming to the center for three years. “I’ll keep coming here as long as I can.”

An unapologetic college dropout, Cohen said, “times have changed" and they've now started asking for a college degree to drive a bus. Gray graduated from San Francisco State University and works for the city's school district in the Office of Parent Relations as a parent liaison. Unmarried and free of family obligations, she devotes all her leisure time to the center.

This May, nine regulars from the center will graduate from college. Elizabeth Johnson, who studies at Bennett College in North Carolina, will be one of them.

Johnson grew up tossed between her grandmother and a single mother who was often in jail.

Her mother, also from Bayview, was a crack addict who neglected her children. She is clean now, and lives in the East Bay, but Johnson has not forgiven her.

When she was 19, Cohen told Johnson she needed to get out of San Francisco. “There’s nothing here for you right now,” she said. Cohen and Gray put Johnson on a plane and sent her to Bennett College.

“Going away was the best thing that ever happened to me,” she said. “Most of my childhood friends are pregnant, unmarried and on welfare. The ones with jobs don’t have long-term ones.”

“They need to know what’s out there in the world,” Cohen said of Bayview’s youth. “But I hope they come back and help the community.” Every summer, the college students do come back. They mentor younger students. And they work for non-profits and companies where Cohen and Gray set up paid internships.

Nevertheless, the cousins understand the odds they are working against.

But they keep at it. The center stays open. The tutoring goes on. Every year, a handful of students go to college.

“You’ve got to believe in something,” Cohen said, pointing to the walls of the center, painted by volunteers and decorated with banners from historic black colleges. “And I believe in this.”