“I wish I had my running clothes,” Mayor Sheila Dixon told a group of preteens at the third annual track meet put on jointly by the Korean American Grocers Association and the Police Athletic League at Northwestern Senior High School.
In a white pants suit and summer shoes, Dixon had a different kind of running clothes on as a campaign worker plastered Dixon for Mayor stickers on the kids? T-shirts.
About 250 children ages 7 to 17 were expected to participate in the event, according to Sgt. James Vaughan, coordinator of PAL, which operates 18 centers in the city for close to 1,000 youth. The daylong summer program that begins next week serves even more.
Vaughan said the programs include education and tutoring, sports, arts and culture, and character development. The kids are fed as well through the Maryland Food Bank and other donors, such as Pepsi that co-sponsored the track meet with the Korean shop owners.
“We?re fortunate to have many benefactors,” Vaughan said, including “a lot of support from the Ravens.” The city pays him and two other officers to work on the PAL, but scores of other officers volunteer.
The Northwestern track and football field on Park Heights Avenue was familiar stomping grounds for Dixon, who was a cheerleader at the school.
The city has PAL “to keep you off the streets and to help you make the right choices,” Dixon said in an opening pep talk.
“All these adults are out here to give you guidance and support,” she said. “They don?t want to preach to you.”
She told the children, almost all of them black, that the Koreans “have the same concerns that you have ? they want a safe community” and they have the same color blood.
She advised the students to read books this summer ? she asked the names of the schools that didn?t have assigned reading lists ? and urged them to stay in school. When attended Northwestern, she said, most of the 1,000 students graduated, but now only about 200 of the 700 or 800 make it through.
“Keep in touch with” the Korean grocers, she advised, “because they have scholarships.”
Korean American Grocers Association President Kap Park said the organization, which has 950 members, mostly in Baltimore, distributes about $10,000 a year in scholarships, half to residents of Baltimore.
