By Courtland Milloy
Wednesday, August 8, 2007

While many in the Washington area were participating in National Night Out, Danny Govan was taking another approach to crime prevention. The 16-year-old District resident, whose family has been racked by gun violence, simply got out of town. Adios to Dodge City.

Thanks to Ann Brogioli, a D.C. public schools social worker, Danny was able to jet away yesterday for a weeklong respite with her family in the seaside town of Wareham, Mass. Even as police were unleashing their saturation patrols, known as "All Hands on Deck," last night, Danny was abandoning this bullet-riddled ship of a city and heading for smooth sailing on Cape Cod.

"Up there, you can walk around at night and not have to look over your shoulder all the time," Danny told me before departing.

Any kid from a crime-ridden neighborhood would deserve such a break, but Danny especially so. In 2003, at age 12, he and then-D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey were featured in an anti-violence public service video. Five of Danny's relatives had been shot and killed.

"Enough is enough," was the rallying cry. Flash-forward to April. Danny had teamed up with D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) to announce the kickoff of yet another violence-awareness program, this one featuring anti-gun posters on the sides of buses. By then, however, Danny had lost six more relatives to gun violence, a total of 11: his father, a grandfather, two uncles, two nieces and five cousins.

Some of them had been caught up in the hustle of the streets. Danny wanted no part of it. But he was plagued by a fear that he'd one day share their fate.

"I just want a safe place to live," he said.

Brogioli met Danny when he was a seventh-grader at Hart Middle School in Southeast. He had become disruptive and was sent to her for help. "He was accused of breaking into a classroom and cursing at teachers," she recalled.

It would not have been unusual for school officials to suspend Danny. But when Brogioli discovered the extent of his family troubles, she embraced him and made his family a part of her own.

She sought medical help and counseling for Danny. She arranged for him to be transferred to a charter school with smaller classes. She helped his mother, who works as mail sorter, find solutions to her financial woes. For Brogioli understood all too well that many a boy has been killed seeking quick cash to help pay the family bills.

But even that was not enough. She wanted Danny to know a world beyond the basement apartment where he lived on Galveston Place, in a troubled section of Southwest.

So on four occasions in as many years, she has arranged for him to visit Wareham and hang out with her father, Jim Brogioli, a retired high school basketball coach, and play with her 17 nephews and nieces. Usually quiet and withdrawn at home, Danny comes alive during those visits.

He talks. He laughs. Just taking a walk is enough to make him smile. "You can walk more than a block and not worry about crossing into somebody else's turf," he told me.

Kenny Barnes, founder of a crime-prevention organization called Reaching Out to Others Together, is a friend of the Govans. "Compared to the life he has in D.C., Cape Cod is utopia," Barnes said. "It just shows what can happen when you're surrounded by loving people, whether it's your family or somebody else's."

During one visit, Danny caught a sand shark. On another, he went snowboarding. And when time comes for him to return home, he balks and asks to stay a while longer.

His mother, Sheila Govan, wishes he could. "He hardly ever goes outside around here, mostly just stays in his room with his door closed," she said. "The only time I see him really smile is when Miss Brogioli invites him to visit her family."

Of all the city's efforts to stop the violence, Danny seems to have found the one thing that works for him: Get out of the line of fire. Go where people shoot hoops and not each other. Be a kid. If only for a week.

E-mail: milloyc@washpost.com