Former gang leader helps kids rewrite life's script

DURHAM -- As a teenager, Otis Lyons just about did it all on Durham's streets: robbery, dealing drugs, shooting people, extortion.

He says he started North Durham Vice, a street gang of about 30 members in the 1980s. Back then, he often spoke through two 9mm handguns. Charges on his pages-long criminal record range from driving infractions to assault with serious injury.

Now he draws on his past to improve the future. Lyons, 39, runs Campaign4Change, a theatrical production that is anti-everything that he used to embody: gangs, drugs and crime. He is paid for his performances. It is about a drug dealer and the hazards he faces that leave him broke, seriously injured and, ultimately, dead.

Lyons' production also includes him showing pictures of past friends and what happened to them. Most are dead or in prison.

As for Lyons, he has been to prison and has cheated death a few times.

Lyons' grandmother, who raised him, had one dream for him: that he finish high school.

Lyons did just that in 1986, when he graduated from Jordan High School. His grandmother was seriously ill, so after commencement, he went straight to the hospital. Lyons wanted to show her what she always wanted to see -- his diploma.

But it was too late. His mother had allowed doctors to end life support.

"That night, I got tremendously drunk with one of the most ruthless people in my gang, and I vowed that day to hurt everyone that got in my path," Lyons recalls. "I was so angry at the world. I was angry at God. I hated my mother; I wish she died. My heart became so cold."

By then, he didn't care what happened to him. He already had been stabbed, shot at and beaten on the head with an ax handle. After his grandmother died, he was shot at 20 times in what he says was an attempt by drug dealers to kill him. Those bullets missed. Another time, while outside a home, he was shot in the head.

His violent behavior caught up to him in 1989 when he was convicted of shooting two men outside a club. Witnesses said he did not do it, but Lyons got 30 years in prison.

There, he wrote to anyone he thought would help him. One letter reached Patricia DeVine, a state appellate defender in Raleigh. She was instrumental in getting his conviction overturned on the basis of an unfair trial. He was released in 1994.

'People can change'

DeVine, now an Orange County District Court judge, didn't hear from Lyons again until he invited her to a performance at Durham's Carolina Theater in 2005. The first time they met was on stage in front of a packed house.

Lyons is the only defendant of DeVine's who has thanked her and kept in touch, she says.

"It renews my hope in the belief that people can change and learn," she says. "God knows Otis Lyons is an example of that."

Lyons' turnaround was not immediate. When he got out of prison, he returned to selling drugs and added a few lines to his rap sheet: extortion, kidnapping and armed robbery. Those charges were dropped because the victim didn't want to pursue with the court case.

The charges were "a wake-up call for me to say, 'no more street life' and to go back to what I know best," he says.

What he knew best was entertainment. He had performed in rap concerts and on the radio while growing up. Lyons started Phatnum Entertainment in 2000, managing artists while producing a public-access show interviewing celebrities behind the scenes.

One night in 2003, Lyons says, God spoke to him, telling him to do something that would save lives.

And so "Riding with Joe Crack" was born. It was the blueprint for Campaign4Change. Lyons and six volunteers performed the production in January 2004 at a Durham community center. Tears were shed. People wanted hugs and autographs.