Brokering Peace

The staffers roam the halls and have her permission to pull any of the 236 students from class to resolve conflicts. "They allow us to focus on education," she said.

The Peaceoholics philosophy is simple: Most people want help and accept criticism when the person offering it is sincere. In neighborhoods rife with gunplay, where stares can get people killed, they target the troublemakers. "It's a chance you take," Abraham said. "You can't worry about it."

The need is overwhelming. Most of their clients are poor, have no father at home and are victims of physical or mental abuse.

"What you have is children growing up on battlefields," Abraham said. "Fifty percent of the people, staff and children, in my office have been shot or shot at. Everybody has lost loved ones to violence in the last five years."

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Relating to troubled youths comes naturally to Abraham and Moten. They rose from much the same background. That lends validity to their message among youths, but it makes some officials leery of giving felons with few paper credentials access to troubled teens.

Growing up in Southeast and Northwest, Abraham robbed, stole and fought. He was expelled from Truesdell Elementary at 8, and his mother moved to Langley Park. He was first locked up at 9. Three years later, he was arrested again; his mother, to teach him a lesson, refused to pick him up.

"He was a terror," said Lavern Harris, who warned her son that he was headed for an early grave. "It didn't seem to faze him one way or the other."

At 17, Abraham made his grandmother a deathbed promise to finish high school. After reading "The Autobiography of Malcolm X," chronicling Malcolm Little's transformation from street hustler to the nation's most prominent black nationalist, Abraham decided that he, too, needed to change. He got serious about his studies, graduated from High Point High School in Prince George's County and spent four years in the military.

As Abraham was cleaning up, Moten's troubles were deepening.

At 17, he was kicked out of the District's Roosevelt High School. He said he "went to the streets full time," selling drugs and paying his attorney $25,000 when he caught a charge. In 1991, he spent four years in prison for cocaine distribution. When his brother was shot to death, Moten wasn't allowed home for the funeral.

Stung by his brother's death, Moten began soaking up history: American, Native American and African American. The civil rights movement was particularly moving, the way washerwomen and, especially, young people helped change the world, he said.