Jared Soares | The Roanoke Times

Anthony West attempts to calm his son, Debron West, after an encounter with his aunt's dog. West stayed with his first job out of prison because he didn't want to repeat his father's mistakes. He is also visiting schools and trying to reach more teenagers before they drop out of school and maybe make the mistakes he did.

West pats Virginia CARES participant Vincent Taylor after leading a support group meeting for parolees.

Anthony West (center) shares a laugh with his son, Debron West, 9, and girlfriend Jamise Hardy before his son's basketball practice at William Ruffner Middle School. West, who was involved with drugs as a young man in Roanoke, now works to keep others from doing the same.

Virginia CARES Program Director Anthony West talks with Executive Director Ann Fisher in her office at Total Action Against Poverty in downtown Roanoke. When he was in prison, West took classes through Virginia CARES. Now he counsels new parolees.

West helps Vonkuren Saunders during a rec-league basketball practice.

Follow Anthony West as he walks from his downtown office to the Roanoke City Market. The first block takes 10 minutes, the second block 20.

Count the jumble of people who stop to say hello -- street people, men in suits, folks in between.

Pass the bus station on Campbell Avenue, and a young guy with his hand in a cast wants to talk. The night before he was doing something West has lectured him repeatedly not to do: fighting, at a bar, over a girl.

Another block down, an old friend begs West to talk to his teenage son: "He's not going to school. Not working. Up to no good, if you know what I'm sayin'."

Tour the places that have made Anthony West, and you'll understand why the 40-year-old seems to know everyone in town.

The tour is not likely to show up on a visitors center map. But it is very much a Roanoke journey.

It begins in a house with no indoor plumbing and takes a hard turn through open-air drug markets, prisons and funeral homes.

More than 10 years ago, West took an unlikely U-turn. He now commands the respect of leaders in the black community, public safety officials and, more importantly, his family.

But instead of leaving the dark alleyways of his past behind, he wants to return to them and shine some light.

Stop one: Pinckard Court

The house was torn down long ago, but the West family still talks fondly about the black enclave in southern Roanoke County. They hauled their water from a well next door.

As a small child, West lived there with his mother, grandparents, aunts and uncles. He called his grandmother Gladys West "Mama" and his mother, Lula West, by her first name. He rarely saw his father, William "Buck" Nelson, an acclaimed boxer who was in and out of jail for drug-related crimes. (Presently, he's in.)

Gladys West worked for wealthy families in South Roanoke, cleaning their houses and tending their babies. She walked an hour each way for the job.

The family moved to Northwest Roanoke when Anthony West was 2. His mom landed a job working for General Electric. His grandma finally took the bus to work.

They lived on Miller Street, now called Westside Boulevard, in one of the roughest parts of town. But West says people looked out for each other: "Even the bad dudes would call my mom if they saw me acting up."

Fights and drug deals were rampant. When he ran home bleeding from a scuffle, his mother ordered him back outside and told him to fight back.

If they were going to live there, he had better toughen up.

Stop two: Miller Street

From his rent-subsidized apartment, now part of Shenandoah Village, West envied the middle-class homes up the hill, coveted their spacious yards. Wilmont Farms seemed like a universe away, not a few blocks.

He was an above-average student in elementary and middle school, a mischievous but happy kid. As his aunt Barbara Phelps recalled: "The boy had book smarts, but no common sense. He never thought about consequences." That was OK when the mischief was harmless middle-school stuff. But as a teenager, West started skipping school and hanging around the projects.

West and his friends called themselves the South Bronx Posse after a rap song. His nickname was Ant West.

They smoked weed and drank beer, stole to buy drugs and broke into houses. Most nights they ended up at a cinder block nip joint called Baby's Son. It was rough, but nobody bothered him much because he was Buck Nelson's son.

Stop three: Baby's Son

When West was kicked out of Patrick Henry High School for fighting, his mom pushed him to get his GED. She knew he was up to no good, even if she didn't know the details.

Her son was becoming a major drug dealer. Marijuana first, then crack. He cleared $1,000 to $1,200 a week.

Sometimes he worked a week or two in fast food -- long enough to get that first check -- but the pay was chump change compared with drug money.

Lula West was livid. One day he returned home and found his bags packed.

A friend at Shaw University had helped her enroll him at the Raleigh, N.C., college. But it didn't take Anthony West long there to find another wrong crowd. His entire freshman year, he passed one class.

Back in Roanoke that summer, he dove deeper into the drug game, finding even bigger suppliers. His territory was Lansdowne Park, across from Baby's Son.

Three weeks into his sophomore year, the phone call came:

His cousin, Chris West, was dead, shot in a convenience store parking lot. Chris and the crew had stopped there to buy gas on their way home from Baby's Son.

Someone bumped into someone else. An argument started, then the guns.

West felt guilty that he wasn't there to help his cousin.

"Once I got back for the funeral and got around my crew, I knew then I wasn't going back," he said.

Stop four: 11th Street

The telephone booth is still there, though it broke long ago. So is the storefront wall where West liked to "post up shop."

Here's how it worked: A buyer called the dealer's pager. The dealer returned the page from the phone booth. They agreed on the location for the drop -- a crack in the wall out back, the trash can out front.

That's how a wired undercover policewoman nabbed West in the fall of 1992. She used the tapes as evidence to prosecute him on accommodation charges. West had arranged the deal, but at the last minute had another crew member make the drop.

He'd been in the Roanoke City Jail before -- for driving violations, petty theft, marijuana possession. Once after fighting another inmate, they shipped him for a short time to a state facility near Richmond.

But this time he was going to Camp 18, the state prison in Wise County. He was sentenced to eight years, eligible for parole after three.

And this time he had a 3-year-old, Antoya, who was living with his girlfriend, though his family helped keep her, too. The aunts drove her to see him, explaining that daddy was there in "school."

West's mother was not so delicate. He'd made his bed, now he could wallow in it.

She had her phone blocked so he couldn't call.

Stop five: Camp 18

West was pulling roadside trash duty on a supervised work crew. It was his third day in a row of picking up trash, and he was tired. If he refused, he thought they'd assign him another job.

A guard ordered him repeatedly to pick up the trash. West didn't like his tone.

"I ain't pickin' up s---."

The guard cocked his shotgun and unleashed a line of tobacco juice on him.

"N----, you will pick up that paper," the guard barked.

West remembers thinking: Another man spitting on me, like I am nothing at all.

And: I'd rather be shot.

And: This getting locked up s---. This will never happen to me again.

He meant it. West dove into studying -- the Bible, the Quran, every self-help book the prison library had. He took classes taught through Mountain Empire Community College.

He hosted a weekly talk show called "Joe Money," using a pretend camera. Fellow prisoners asked him to mediate conflicts and give them advice.

He even made up with the guard who had spat on him. Before his release, West took classes through the Roanoke-based Virginia Community Action Re-Entry System, also called Virginia CARES.

He made a pledge to all the skeptical women in his family: For the first time ever, he was going to find legitimate work.

He imagined an office job, something in a tall building downtown.

And a decent used car; nothing ghetto.

He walked out of prison on March 8, 1996. He was 28 years old.

Stop six: the factory

The first years were rough. He worked at Valleydale Foods, then Rowe Furniture. At night he took computer networking courses.

The temptation of the streets was constant. Money, exhilaration, respect -- the old life was cake compared with mopping floors and nailing upholstery.

"If I was doing what I used to do, I'd have all the money I needed," West confided to Phelps, his aunt.

"You have to crawl before you can walk," she told him. Besides, West and his girlfriend had a son to raise now, too. He didn't want to repeat his father's mistakes.

West had trouble getting to work after Rowe moved its plant to Elliston, and he was fired.

Members of the old crew kept reminding him: You're welcome back anytime.

Stop seven: the downtown office

Shaheed Omar understood why West was teetering. "The culture tells you to get some money now. Or die," he explains. A case manager for Virginia CARES, Omar asked West to volunteer for the re-entry program, housed at Total Action Against Poverty.

West helped lead anger management classes and support group sessions for new parolees. Within a few weeks, a paid position opened up.

A job where he talked all day and helped people with problems? Joe Money was all about that.

"He had immediate rapport with people," recalled Correlli Rasheed, now the program manager. "Most of the folks, he already knew them in some way, from jail or from the neighborhood."

Some even brought him messages from the penitentiary. West's father wanted him to know: He was proud.

West bought a used Honda and took community college classes in psychology, earning a second associate degree. In 2001, he bought his first house -- a three-bedroom ranch in the Wilmont Farms subdivision he had long coveted.

Last year a higher-profile job as statewide program director opened up at Virginia CARES. West's drive had already captured the attention of TAP Director Ted Edlich, who recommended him for the post.

His new boss was blown away by his ability to work a room -- a gathering of ex-offenders, sheriff's deputies or even the Virginia General Assembly, which he addressed as part of a funding request last year.

"There's a lot of car salesman in him," says Ann Fisher, executive director of Virginia CARES. "He has convinced more people of things in the short time he's been here than I have in my entire career.

"He's so upbeat, people love being around him. When his car's not running and the kids are giving him trouble, he can still see the silver lining."

He doesn't forget from whence he came, either. During a recent staff holiday party, West reached for his wallet when an old friend of his father's showed up asking for $2.

Stop eight: Lansdowne

Baby's Son is now a tire-retreading business. The scene is quiet. But across the street at Lansdowne, young guys in oversized hoodies wave to West. Someone spots him from a car and beeps the horn.

He rolls down his window and asks one young man, not long out of jail: "You all right? You're staying out of trouble, aren'tcha?" He nods.

"I'm probably the only one who can rag 'em out without any retaliation."

He's trying to reach more teenagers before they drop out of school. During a recent talk at Patrick Henry, he told his own story -- the good and the bad -- and made sure to mention his 20-year nephew, in prison now on a home-invasion charge ("the very same s--- I'm tellin' you not to do!")

He tells them about the guys in his original crew: Eight went to prison. Five are dead.

Stop nine: Fairview Elementary

In November, West slapped on a Barack Obama sticker and, for the first time in his life, he cast his vote. It had been eight months since Gov. Tim Kaine signed off on the restoration of his voting rights, and he was thrilled.

Outside the school polling station, people shook his hand. Some knew him as a neighborhood coach for his son's rec league teams. Some knew him from the streets.

"I'm up here voting!" he enthused. "I got my rights back!"

As he emerged from the school, a former teacher hugged him and cried. An old friend gave him a new nickname:

"Hey 'mayor!' " he said. "When can we vote for you?"