Transformed by violence: Grief motivated him to change life's direction

TRANSFORMED
By Violence
An occasional series

Robin Rombach, Post-GazetteTaili Thompson with his 3-month-old son, Taili Thompson Jr. at their Observatory Hill home.
The North Side native, who was doing five years for running heroin, was sitting in a drafty, gray cell in New Jersey when he was called to the prison chaplain's chambers to take a phone call.

It was his mother, telling him that his brother had been killed -- shot several times after being dropped off by a jitney at his Jacksonia Street home.

Thompson wept, briefly.

Then he stuffed the grief so far down that four months later, talking with his mom, he asked how his brother was doing.

His pain was hidden, but not inconsequential. Thompson sees the sorrow as the beginning of the way out for him.

"I felt my brother's death was God saying 'Take this,'" said Thompson, as he sat recently in a sherbet-striped polo shirt at Community College of Allegheny County, North Side, where he's studying to be a paralegal.

"When I look back at the life I was leading and realize I didn't lose my life, I know God had been with me."

His thoughts mark a personal evolution that left Thompson in search of a cleaner, more complete life. Though it would not be easy, he sat in prison and vowed to summon the self-discipline needed to re-invent his future. He went from street-smarts to college honor student.

Once a rising heroin distributor, Thompson's access to drugs and cash possessed him with the power to destroy not only his life but the lives of those around him.

"With heroin, I could go and find nine or 10 people easily who were willing to sell dope," he said.

The children on the corner looked up to the brother who seemed daring and rich. At Christmas and for birthdays, he spent lavishly on his brother's children.

"As a drug dealer, I wanted to make millions," he said. "I know I made a negative influence, because I didn't want at do something positive, like education or construction."

Beginning again wasn't easy.

When he was released from prison, Thompson sucked in his pride and worked for $6 an hour cleaning bathrooms and washing floors for a temporary agency. The double overtime paychecks -- he sometimes worked 70 hours a week -- helped ease the need to make money illegally.

He made the restitution payments and paid the other bills, he survived the temptations of other dealers looking for an experienced steward and he rode out having to live at home again.

Then a clash with the agency's owner ended with Thompson out of a job.

"Man, I went from having this star aspect [as a dealer], to working as a temp, to being out of work. That really crushed me," he said.

Unglued, he headed back to the corners and sold "some weed."

Within a month, by chance, he met Richard Garland, a one-time Philadelphia gang leader who had dedicated himself to pulling others away from thug living. Coincidentally, a few years earlier, Garland had reached out to Thompson's brother, Cheo, hoping to pull him away from life on the streets.

Garland, a familiar figure in his graying dreadlocks, was often seen riding through the North Side. He drafted Thompson into a new program being supported by Allegheny County, One Vision One Life.

The program sends outreach workers, who have done the time and the crime, into Pittsburgh's toughest neighborhoods to try to stop the violence and mend gang feuds.

At its heart, One Vision One Life wants to break the cycle of violence and, like Thompson, show the community that there is a different kind of power -- the power of positive thinking.

It has worked so far for Thompson. He's convinced two guys in his North Side neighborhood to enroll at CCAC and he's taken a guy from his block to join the carpenter's union.

He wishes he could no more.

"I can't get nine or 10 people jobs today," he said, "because the leads just aren't there."

Instead of focusing on elaborate holiday and birthday gifts, he's now investing his money for Cheona and Tatiyona, his brother's little girls.

"I'm getting myself to the place where I can provide them money for college," he said.

For the past two summers, Thompson has coached a North Side basketball league, hoping to turn bad attitudes into hope.

"This is an investment, too. I'm investing in counteracting some the negative things that kids are doing," he said.

Thompson grew up in a family of seven children. They were Jehovah's Witnesses and went to Kingdom Hall on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays.

Though he later left the faith, he acknowledged the experience put morals into his life.

The family lived on Jacksonia Street in the North Side, when the Mexican War Streets still had some rough edges and when their neighbor, the artsy Mattress Factory, was still a dream. His mom was a single parent who ran a day care program and the house was like a community center.

Crystal Thompson-Dean was a stern parent who gave her dutiful, oldest son plenty of space, said Thompson.

By the time Thompson was teenager, Pittsburgh was approaching the height of an epidemic of drugs and gang wars. He seemed to sail above it all; an honor student at Perry High School, he played guard for the Commodores basketball team and was vice president of student council.

He owed much of his success to his mom, and to Chuck Franklin, a friendly but strict basketball coach who told his players to dream big. Franklin's team won the state championships in 1991, the same year Thompson graduated.

After high school, he ended up at Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, a small college founded 168 years ago to educate the children of slaves. At Cheyney, which is close to Philadelphia and not far from New York City, Thompson found he had too much freedom and not enough money.

A guy who had never even smoked weed in high school, Thompson began to venture into some of New York City's dangerous neighborhoods, buying cheap drugs and carrying them back to Pittsburgh, where he marked them up and sold them for profit.

His drug trade grew and so did his risks. He rode planes, trains and automobiles, ferrying his stash of heroin, cocaine and marijuana across state lines in his luggage.

The business administration major quit college and put his smarts into drug distribution.

He disguised his menacing side like he disguised his weapons, hiding them behind a preppy exterior; he put his guns under his polo shirts or strapped them to his leg under his khakis.

Never too flashy, Thompson lived in a North Side apartment and drove a 1971 Cutlass Supreme. His only blings: a $1,000 Lougines watch and a $1,200 gold necklace.

His luck ran out on the George Washington Bridge from New York to New Jersey. He was only a passenger when the car was pulled over and everyone was searched. He and the three others ended up charged with drug and arms violations, and he was sentenced to five years in a New Jersey prison.

Thompson, whose first name means "man of much wisdom" in Swahili, has learned a lot. In his early life, he said, "it's crazy how you convince yourself to do stuff. Now, I'd definitely rather be a broke college student than desire any success as a drug dealer."

Today, Thompson is a new dad; Taili Jr. is 3 months old. He's living with his girlfriend, Shenee, and aiming to be an attorney, helping people like him -- "those who make a mistake" -- not have to pay for it for the rest of their lives.

As far as leaving the street life behind?

"I refuse to not be there for my son, so I have to be strong for myself," he said. "God keeps making a way for me to keep on keeping on."