That's a sign that Gitnick, 62, is succeeding. A professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Digestive Diseases at the UCLA School of Medicine, he is founder of the Fulfillment Fund, one of the most successful mentoring programs in the nation and the largest private provider of college scholarships in California. About 2,000 underachieving kids from Southern California are in Gitnick's programs, and 92 percent go on to higher education. "I hate waste," says Gitnick, who grew up poor in Omaha, Neb. "I know from personal experience that youngsters who seem to be hopeless can change—and can change the world."
A physician to the stars (Barbra Streisand, Larry King), Gitnick counts on some high-powered support for his organization, which spends about $220,000 on scholarships annually. "What do I do for the fund?" asks Warren Beatty. "I do whatever Gary tells me." But the fund's foot soldiers are its 230 volunteer mentors. From architects to studio executives, these adults offer academic and life advice to teenagers whose potential has been blocked by poverty, family trouble or gang pressures. Along with a mentor, each fund scholar is given study workshops and trips to college campuses. It's the years of personal contact with the mentors, however, that keeps these often troubled kids on track. The idea, explains Gitnick, is to provide them with "a friend and guide who'll be around for the long haul."
That's what FBI agent Samuel Spencer, 40, has been to 18-year-old Jose Rosales since 1999. The son of Mexican immigrants, Jose was 13 when his mother's companion moved out, leaving him the man of the house. To support his four younger siblings, he took a job cleaning houses—and found himself pulling C's and D's. Then Spencer came into his life, organizing his study habits, engaging in heart-to-heart talks and arranging tutoring. "Sam always tells me when I do something wrong," says Jose. "He'll tell me there's another way of handling things." In June Jose became the first member of his family to graduate from high school, and he is enrolled in a local college. Spencer says he is proud to think that he had "a little input into the kind of man Jose is now."
Gitnick himself had to do without such help. Growing up in Omaha, he remembers, "we had a sense of hopelessness and lack of opportunity." Gitnick's father, Nathan, was a truck driver turned grocer who was hospitalized with heart disease and emphysema throughout much of his two sons' childhood and died in 1965. (Gitnick's brother Jerry, 68, is a retired superior court judge in Scottsdale, Ariz.) Gitnick helped his mother, Ann, now 94, run the household. His earliest ambition was to be an orthodox rabbi, but he eventually gravitated to science. Gitnick earned his B.S. and M.D. at the University of Chicago, interned at Johns Hopkins and did two residencies at the Mayo Clinic. Home from school in 1960, he met teacher-in-training Cherna Schrager at a friend's wedding. On dates "he kept falling asleep," says Cherna, now 59 and a homemaker. "He was so exhausted from school." Married in 1964, the couple have four grown children.
Gitnick started the Fulfillment Fund in 1977, a few years after he saw how mentoring had changed a young patient's life. Treating two quadriplegics, he was struck by their contrasting attitudes. "One was a successful lawyer who had passed the California bar exam on the first try, holding a pencil in his teeth," Gitnick recalls. "The other was depressed and thought society owed him a living." Both patients came from middle-class households, but the one with gumption credited his attitude to his parents and their friends. "He said you model yourself after what you see," says Gitnick.
Now he is offering a similar opportunity to thousands of young people—and a glimpse at the rewards that success can bring. After this year's gala, Rita couldn't get the glitter out of her mind. "It was crazy, all these stars," she says. "I was walking around saying, 'Ohmygod, Ohmygod.' "
Nick Charles
John Hannah in Los Angeles
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- John Hannah.
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