Recess at the beginning of the school year stood to be as usual on the playground of Florence Griffith Joyner Elementary School in Watts. Which is to say, strapped for enough balls and other basic sports equipment for kids to get some exercise.
Not lost on the principal is the irony that this campus is steeped in athletic tradition -- named for the late gold medal Olympian who herself had gone to school here.
"We were looking for opportunities to get new equipment, but of course books and supervision come first," said Principal Akida Kissane Long, PhD.
But then one day an odd motorcade pulled up in front on 103rd Street, a rented U-Haul truck escorted by LAPD officers assigned to the community safety partnership.
Local
Get Los Angeles's latest local news on crime, entertainment, weather, schools, COVID, cost of living and more. Here's your go-to source for today's LA news.
Officer Ron Harrell bounded inside to let Principal Long know the time had come. Not in uniform, Officer Harrell was instead wearing a T-shirt emblazoned "Play it Forward," a pun about to be demonstrated.
Outside at curbside, a team of visitors was preparing to raise the U-Haul's cargo hold door as
Principal Long and school faculty and staff led the assembled row of students outside to witness the event.
The door went up and cheers erupted as footballs and soccer balls and hula hoops and even volleyball nets spilled out of the U-Haul.
"You don't see donations like this very often," Officer Harrell observed.
Nearby, allowing herself a smile before rushing onto the playground to join the kids and their new equipment, was Emily Eisner, the youthful-looking founder of the non-profit organization
Play It Forward -- youthful-looking because she is herself a 16-year-old high school student.
After months of corresponding by email with the Play It Forward chief to arrange all this, Officer Harrell admits to doing a double-take when he was first introduced to Eisner in person.
"I was actually expecting someone a little older" -- something Eisner has heard a lot since she first came up with the Play It Forward idea more than three years ago.
Growing up in the San Fernando Valley, attending private Sierra Canyon, Emily was 12 when she visited a school in a less affluent neighborhood, and became are of a need when she suggested they play.
"I realized all the kids wanted to play the game," Emily recalled. "But there was actually no sporting equipment to do it with them."
She not only decided she should gather some to share with them. She went ahead and did it.
"When she realized the impact it was having on kids, she started crying," remembered her mother Kym Eisner. "And she looked at me and said, 'Mommy, I have to do more."
And she did.
"It really hit me how such a small gesture as giving a kid a ball can have such a pounding impact on their life," said Emily.
She committed herself to putting the "play" into the concept of paying it forward, creating from scratch a new nonprofit organization. She acknowledges help from some conveniently available in-house consultants--her attorney father, along with her mother, executive director of a nonprofit organization.
Emily's twin brother Zach and younger brother Ben help out. And their grandfather volunteers to drive the U-Haul.
But Kym Eisner says there should be no doubt about who has always done the heavy lifting as the prime mover.
"She filed for nonprofit status with her own money, and off she went," said a mom who can't help but let her pride show.
With the equipment, Play It Forward's chief brings an inspirational message.
"If you have a goal or have something else you want to do, don't be afraid of what anyone else might tell you, or anything that you think might stop you," Emily told the Joyner students at a gathering in the auditorium. "Just go for your goal and do the best you possibly can."
The virtue of exercise is the second message from a student athlete who excelled at soccer and track at a young age, and who hopes to compete at the NCAA division one level--Stanford or Princeton is her goal for 2017.
"It's my responsibility to play it forward to other kids and give them the same opportunities that I've had," said Emily.
The effort is welcomed by LAPD's Community Safety Partnership (CSP), an initiative launched in 2011 with the vision of building police/community partnerships in the public housing developments, and helping at-risk youth navigate the challenges they face growing up.
"The excitement of the kids is unbelievable," said CSP Officer Maribel Plascencia, moments after revealing her hidden playground talent for throwing a perfect spiral.
This fall marked the first time Play It Forward had extended its reach to schools south of downtown Los Angeles. The connection came about after a Sierra Canyon parent, Catherine Tripodis, learned from another parent about CSP's work in Watts, and reached out to Officer Harrell.
The first collaboration came last Halloween with a project called "Growing Hope" in which
Sierra Canyon students collected flower seed packets and helped Grape Street Elementary School Plant a garden, Tripodis said. For Christmas, Sierra Canyon Students stuffed gift stockings
with candy and delivered them from CSP's holiday sleigh.
Involving Play It Forward came next. Tripodis was well aware of what it had already accomplished.
In fact, her son Orion had become a volunteer on Emily's team.
Catherine Tripodis put Harrell in touch with Emily, and their email communications led to an ambitions plan. It was Harrell's job to reach out to the principals at the schools and get them to make grant applications to Play It Forward. It was Play It Forward's job to gather enough equipment for all of the schools.
Delivering the supplies to all seven was spread over three days, affording Emily some time to join the kids on the playground.
"She just wants to connect with them, and have them understand she is like them," said mother Eisner. "She's just a kid. And kids can do anything when they work together. And she lives that."
"It's somebody young," observed Leticia Estrada, principal at Compton Avenue Elementary School. "Like their...older brother or sister. And so, definitely a connection."
"I think it's a win-win," said Joyner Principal Long, agreeing that her school has a few budding Emilys "in the making."
As a high school junior, Emily realizes how difficult it would be for her to remain hands-on with Play It Forward on a day to day basis after she goes away to college.
She's already mentoring younger Sierra students to step into managing roles, in particular Orion Tripodis, now an 8th grader, who handled much of the logistics work for the deliveries to the schools in Watts, and three others for the current school year.
"Ten schools this year," Orion enthused. "And hopefully it can expand to 25 next year."
