Role model reaches first goal

Benjamin Grove

Friday, June 5, 1998 | 9:53 a.m.

It's a long way from being face down on the violent streets of a West Las Vegas neighborhood to standing tall on a graduation podium. But 17-year-old Tyesha Sykes made the trip.

Sykes graduates Tuesday from Southern Nevada Vocational Technical Center, Clark County's magnet program trade school, an unlikely honor student from one of the toughest areas of the city.

Sykes is among the 7,500 seniors county-wide graduating in ceremonies that began Thursday and will run through June 11. But in someways, Sykes stands alone.

"Of all the kids I grew up with, I'm the only one to graduate," she said.

Thursday also marked the last day of school before summer break for about two-thirds of the 219 schools in Clark County. Classes continue at 62 of the district's year-round elementary and middle schools.

Sykes spent Thursday morning with her fellow seniors, running through a rehearsal of the graduation ceremony.

Soft-spoken with strangers, Sykes said she watched gangs, drugs, pregnancy and violence pick off her childhood friends and pull them out of school.

Sykes said she escaped four years ago into her neighborhood Boys & Girls Club, where she tutors younger children. She said she stayed focused on her schoolwork, especially electronics, because she wanted to be a role model.

"I live in an at-risk area," she said. "I have to set an example."

Colleagues said Sykes bonded with the neighborhood children.

"She knows the stress of what these kids go through because she has been there herself," Boys & Girls Club staffer Ed Weathers said. "These kids are going through a lot -- family abuse, child abuse. There isn't a kid here who hasn't witnessed the shooting of a gun. She wants to put a stop to it."

Sykes discusses her childhood sitting on a favorite picnic bench outside the Andre Agassi Boys & Girls Club on Martin Luther King Boulevard. Two years ago, she and several friends survived a drive-by shooting nearby.

"We just laid flat on the ground and waited," Sykes said. "Luckily none of us got shot."

Sykes said she recognized early that tutoring and school were her tickets out of the neighborhood. Her school counselor, Angie Armstrong, has helped her secure about $16,000 in scholarship money.

"She's strictly an inner-city product," Armstrong said. "She grew up with drugs and drive-bys. But she managed to keep going. Her whole thought pattern is, 'I need to get above this.'"

Sykes, who finished with a 3.5 grade point average, studied electronics at the vocational technical center, where one teacher called her a "once-in-a- lifetime student."

"I've never seen her deviate from an assignment," electronics teacher Henry Jojola said. "She was always on task. She wouldn't hand in her paper unless she knew it was the best paper."

Sykes plans to attend Southern University in Baton Rouge, La., beginning in August. She wants to be an electrical engineer.

"It's going to be hard, but I'm going to do it," she said.

Sykes also talks about her three brothers, who she said are "not on the right track," and her single mother, LaDonna, whom she said she will miss.

"I'm furthering my education for them," she said. "It's not just for myself. It's for the kids in the community. I'm going to come back. I just don't know if I'm going to stay."