RACINE - Joseph Barker Jr. isn't the only former criminal who's ever turned his life around.

But if you're looking for a shining example of someone who has, he more than qualifies.

For most of his life, Barker could have served as the definition of "unemployable." A troubled, abused child, he joined gangs and became a habitual criminal, going in and out of jail and prison. He fathered three children whose support payments he could not and was not making.

Barker talks about all of that now. He knows it's in his past.

Instead of hanging out on the streets and living the gang life, he gets up before the birds to start work at 6 a.m. at his construction job, six days a week. That job happens to be the $2.15 billion We Energies power plant expansion in Oak Creek.

In talking to Barker, it's plain that he revels in his current life and line of work. He proudly shows a certificate proclaiming him Labor Apprentice of the Year for 2007 in the Laborer Craft trade.

And Barker takes his job seriously.

"I'll tell you how good a worker he is," said David Cummings, a supervisor for Bechtal Construction on the We Energies job site. "If he's waiting on the elevator, he's got a broom in his hands, and he's sweeping up till the elevator gets there."

"He tries very hard; he's very proud of what he's done," continued Cummings, lead general foreman over scaffolding. "The guy has really turned his life around - and we're proud of what he's done. And I don't believe he'll go back to the other life."

First Choice

But a mental transformation doesn't magically bestow work skills. Where does a new attitude take a high school dropout who leaves prison with a seventh-grade reading level?

The elements that took Barker to journeyman laborer were his new outlook, his determination and the First Choice Pre-Apprenticeship Program. He became the program's first graduate to complete an apprenticeship and become a journeyman.

The program's second journeyman, Ricky Pollack, is now working on the Sixth Street reconstruction, said the program's Executive Director Ola Baiyewu.

First Choice grew from the former Goodwill program called Children Up Front. The City of Racine picked up First Choice with the goal of getting more racial diversity into the construction trades.

Among the program's enrollees, Barker's background is not unusual. Eighty-two percent have criminal histories, said Baiyewu.

Those patterns and criminal tendencies often lead back to failure. The major stumbling blocks for enrollees include child support delinquency, another arrest or an old warrant catching up with them, and the tug of the old lifestyle before they drop out.

"The hardest part, what we confront the most, are influence by their friends," Baiyewu said.

None of those things happened with Barker. But then, he had already decided there was no going back to the old days and old ways.

Abuse, violence

Barker said he knows nothing - even the name - of his real father. Instead, he took his stepfather's name.

He fondly remembers the part of his childhood when he was living with his grandparents, Toby and Theresa Hardin. "Things got better with them. They loved me," he said.

But then his mother came and got him. "Then my troubled life began," he said.

Barker said his mother often whipped him with a belt or extension cord. Once she got "carried away," he said, and stabbed him in the back with a fingernail file.

None of it ever got reported, he said.

At age 10, he ran away to his stepfather's house. One day, his stepfather whipped him with a belt, and young Barker's rage - mostly at his mother - boiled over.

"He sent me to bed, and my mind just went hysterical. I said to myself, 'I'm going to kill him.' The devil was telling me to do it."

Barker said he got a knife and stabbed his sleeping stepfather in the chest, putting him in the hospital.

It also put younger Barker into juvenile detention at the Winnebago Mental Health Institution for about a year. That stay only made him worse, he said.

"I just did not care. I got out, and I turned to gangs. Things just went haywire from there. Ever since, I have been in and out of jails and penitentiaries. I have been locked up mostly all my life."

He first joined the Boo Crew and, about two years later, the Vice Lords gang. He loved getting into fistfights.

He dropped out of high school in 10th grade, dealt cocaine and committed other crimes. Barker's longest prison stint came after he got caught dealing crack cocaine. That earned him an eight-year sentence, of which he served five years, starting in 1999.

But it also led to his conversion.

Decision time

Two things happened inside the walls of Oshkosh Correctional Institution to change Barker's life. One was a program called Mental Illness-Chemical Abuse program, or MICA.

"It taught me a lot about myself that I probably did not want to face and did not want to hear," Barker said.

He said he also learned that, "If I changed my thinking pattern around, I would get a different result."

The other momentous event was being put into a cell with another black man, who was serving a life sentence. He told Barker he'd been there since 1967.

"I know for a fact that God put me in that cell to show me if I kept going the way I was going, that was going to be me," Barker said with conviction.

He left prison Nov. 18, 2003, "with a whole new attitude."

While walking down Main Street in Racine, looking for a job, Barker found Children Up Front and walked in. When it became First Choice, Barker was the first enrollee.

He passed the union's math test but failed the reading test twice. But he took classes at the Racine County Workforce Development Center, and eventually passed the reading test.

Getting into the union unlocked doors. Kenosha-based Bane Nelson hired Barker for Monument Square's reconstruction in 2005.

"I had a lot of fun there, my first job," Barker said. "That was a historic moment."

Both for him and for the Downtown Racine.

A good influence

Working construction, the reformed Barker would still see the old gang members and try to get them into First Choice. "I would let them know, 'Man, there's a better way than what you're doing now.' "

"Most of them want to get into it, but they're still addicted to that fast money."

But Barker succeeded with two of those former associates. They have completed First Choice training and are waiting to get into apprenticeships, Baiyewu said.

Meanwhile, Barker has become First Choice's first journeyman, the top level of his chosen field. As such, he earns $24.32 an hour - and is working 60 hours a week. "I don't mind it a bit," he said.

He also continues to try to better himself, taking a welding class while laid off, for example. "I want to become a boilermaker or iron worker," Barker said.

Working for one of the nation's largest construction firms, Bechtal, he said, "I can basically get a job anywhere in America."

Barker has an apartment, a steady girlfriend and is starting to pay off his accumulated child support debts. But with those payments, is he still financially doing OK?

"Very OK," he replied.