Kim Fletcher doesn't try to hide his past.

He sold drugs, smoked marijuana, and enjoyed the spoils of the trade: cash, cars, and women. He was so good at what he did, he said, he became head of The Woods, a gang at the former Cherrywood Apartments that sold drugs just up the street from Toledo police headquarters.

"We had one color and one color only: green," Fletcher said. "We wanted the money."

All that changed in 1995 after his younger brother, Jevel, was gunned down during a fight outside a Lagrange Street bar.

It didn't happen overnight, but Fletcher gave up his old lifestyle and now tries to help young men from going down the path that ensnared him for so long.

"When Jevel got shot, I didn't want to do it anymore," he recalled. "After my brother died, it was like, 'This isn't fun anymore.'•"

Today, Fletcher, 40, is a prevention specialist with the Urban

Minority Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Outreach Program of Lucas County, known as UMADAOP. He has worked extensively with juvenile and adult offenders in prison for crimes he's all too familiar with.

"It was easy for me to talk to criminals because I was a criminal myself," he said.

Fletcher has no college degree - he received a GED when ordered to by a judge as part of his sentence for an attempted aggravated trafficking conviction in 1989 - but those who know him say his life experience gives him a different kind of credential.

"We talk about the faces and voices of recovery," said John Edwards, Sr., executive director of UMADAOP. "His is certainly a face and voice of recovery in that he's a person who has managed to propel or somehow remove himself from the very, very high-risk, at-risk category and land on the side of the fence where he's helping other individuals to recover in like fashion. I think that's very valuable."

Mr. Edwards said he saw a spark in Fletcher one snowy day several years ago when Fletcher knocked on his door and offered to shovel his driveway and sidewalks. Their conversation that day prompted Mr. Edwards to invite Fletcher to come down to UMADAOP offices on Nebraska Avenue to do some volunteer work.

The volunteer position turned into a part-time job and later a full-time job with the agency, a nonprofit prevention and recovery center. Fletcher, he said, is particularly good at reaching often hard-to-reach young people.

"He brings a communication skill set where he's highly effective in communicating and impacting people in a positive way with positive messages," Mr. Edwards said. "He finds ways to permeate their thinking and somehow manage to help clear up some of the distorted ideas they may have about life."

Kelly Kollen, unit management administrator at the Toledo Correctional Institution, a 1,000-bed close security prison in North Toledo, said she met Fletcher about four years ago when, as a UMADAOP employee, he began working with soon-to-be-released inmates in a new "strengthening families" program.

When she learned about Fletcher's past, she suggested he be a mentor for some offenders, something he did on his own time.

"With his personal experience of what he's been through and the lifestyle he used to live, there is a genuineness there," Ms. Kollen said. "I don't have that experience and I can talk to them until I'm blue in the face, but there are a lot of things they're not going to take from me because I haven't been there and done that."

Fletcher, she said, had a way of showing offenders that good things can come from working, raising a family, and leading a productive lifestyle.

"The inmates really picked up on his sincerity and really believed he cared," Ms. Kollen said. "He helped them realize it's beneficial to be a law-abiding citizen."

Among the inmates he met with at the Toledo prison was former Ohio State running back Maurice Clarett, who is serving a 7 1/2-year sentence for aggravated robbery and carrying a concealed weapon. Clarett, now 26, helped lead Ohio State to a national championship in 2003.

Fletcher said he's a big Buckeyes fan, but he didn't meet with Clarett to talk football. "Football is the reason he got locked up because no one ever tells you no," Fletcher said. "My thing was to say you're greater than your mistake."

He said the two of them found common ground. Their fathers weren't around much as they were growing up. Both are fathers themselves - Clarett has a daughter; Fletcher has three sons. Clarett grew up wanting to be like his older brother; Fletcher wanted to be like an older cousin who sold drugs.

"It was like a breath of fresh air for him. I took him books. A lot of times I was just letting him vent, so sometimes I was just a good listener," Fletcher recalled.

It was at Toledo Correctional that Fletcher came face to face with someone who made a far deeper impression on him than Clarett: his brother's killer, Ronald Taylor.

"As soon as I saw him, I had to make a choice - avenge my brother or keep doing what I'm doing, keep doing positive stuff," Fletcher said.

He said it was clear the years in prison had been hard on Taylor, who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for the Nov. 5, 1995, shooting death of 19-year-old Jevel Fletcher and sentenced to 22 1/2 to 40 years in prison.

Fletcher said he quickly realized Taylor needed mercy more than anything.

"I asked my mom and my older brother what I should do, and they both said the same thing: Do nothing," Fletcher recalled.

Although he saw Taylor on subsequent visits to the prison, he said he took his family's advice and did not approach him.

Fletcher credits his mother's and grandmother's prayers with getting him out of his life in a gang. The man who once prayed to a "hustling god" to keep the dope coming and keep the police away now talks often of his own faith.

He and his wife, Veronica, have three sons - one a senior at Waite High School, one a sophomore at St. Francis, and the youngest a first grader at Spring Elementary.

Fletcher said he plans to see his children go to college, to take a much different path from the one he chose at their ages.

"I've broken the cycle," he said.

Fletcher also hopes to work directly with young men at the former Cherrywood Apartments, now called Greenbelt Place. He feels responsible, he said, for planting "bad seeds" there and wants to be part of removing them.

"The most powerful thing in my community is somebody who used to be a badass who has turned their life around and now wants to help," he said. "Those are the ones who would really do it and really have a passion and can really reach that population if they've got God's hands on their side."

And, although he's turned his life around, Fletcher is the first to admit it's a daily struggle to stay away from his old haunts and habits.

"It's been a long time, but those triggers and traps are still waiting on me," he said. "Every day at 5 o'clock I have to decide if I'm going to go to the Cherrywoods and break the law or go home and be the husband and father I am."

Contact Jennifer Feehan at:

jfeehan@theblade.com

or 419-724-6129.

First Published January 24, 2010, 9:26 p.m.