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A college drop-out abandons a lucrative tech career for a life of inner-city poverty – and hopes to save an urban school district from oblivion

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And the idea of living together in the neighborhood seemed mutually convenient.

Their meeting of minds spawned a new activist endeavor. One afternoon last March, West and Turner were having lunch, wondering what they should do about double-digit unemployment in the 3rd District.

"At that point, the hypocrisy of it all really struck home," West recalls. "We were sitting at a restaurant in the 4th District complaining about high unemployment in the 3rd."

He'd been working to get city leaders to direct more funds to the 3rd District, but he wasn't even spending his own money there.

That was the start of a project West and Turner called Viable Third. For the past year, the two have spent their money almost exclusively in the area bound by Independence Avenue on the north, Brush Creek Boulevard on the south, Troost Avenue on the west and Interstate 435 on the east.

It's been a revealing effort. Aside from catching Spider-Man at the I-70 Drive-In, West hasn't seen any movies on the big screen in the past year — there aren't any theaters in the 3rd District. He misses the days when he could buy syrup and peanut butter in bulk; there aren't any Costcos, either.

If he has to head to the suburbs, he makes sure he has enough gas and food before leaving home. When he needs to withdraw money or make a grocery run, he goes to the Central Bank of Kansas City or the Apple Market on Independence Avenue.

West says he's not trying to be a hero. He's just made a personal choice that works for him and may prove useful or inspirational to others.

The effort has generated some buzz, including hundreds of hits on the Viable Third Web site and segments about it on local radio. Missouri Rep. Mike Talboy and a handful of other community leaders have pledged a portion of their own dollars. West didn't grow up here, and he doesn't have to live like this. He could have just stayed in Johnson County, making money in the computer industry.

West's mother, Sherry Payne, was just 17 when she gave birth to him in 1979. She knew she wasn't ready to be a mother. At 6 months old, West was placed in the foster home of Dick and Linda Crabill in Joplin.

He has happy memories of the big, ranch-style house with animals, pecan trees and a fishing pond, and he still considers it home. When "Ricky" was 5, Linda Crabill and her husband — who raised nearly 80 kids over the years — tried to adopt him, but his biological family resisted.

On his 5th birthday, Payne showed up unexpectedly to take him back to Kansas City. West remembers that day as the first time he met his biological mother. The years with his mother that followed were dark, he says.

Payne acknowledges that it was rough. "I was dirt-poor," she says. "We didn't have a phone. I couldn't afford to keep all the utilities on simultaneously."

West returned to the Crabills when he was still in elementary school, then living in rural southern Missouri, which presented new challenges. In Mountain View, a small logging town of fewer than 2,500 people, West was the only black student in the district. In seventh grade, a classmate beat him up; he says the kid's father sympathized with the Ku Klux Klan. Crabill says West was constantly threatened. Though he was a gifted athlete, West was heckled whenever he touched the ball during football games.

The family moved back to Joplin when West was in high school, but by then, West seemed to have a chip on his shoulder, Linda Crabill says. "They would try to discipline him," Crabill says of school administrators. "He's super-intelligent. He thinks way beyond all that, so he didn't really want to go along with the rules. To him, they were in his way."

At 16, he packed up and moved back to Kansas City. Payne says West stayed with her for a short time but then struck out on his own. He lived with a couple of friends while he attended Shawnee Mission East High School. To make rent, he got a job in Westport. Then a friend borrowed and wrecked his car, making it impossible to commute. West says he ended up living in an empty building near the school. He showered each morning in the school gym's locker room.

He admits that he made plenty of bad choices as a kid, though he won't get into specifics. "One line I never crossed," he says. "I never sold drugs."

After attending 11 schools, he graduated from Shawnee Mission East in 1997.

One Friday morning that year, Payne says, West asked for a lift to Lawrence. He told her to pick him up after the weekend. "By Monday, he'd enrolled in school, talked someone into renting him an apartment — even though he wasn't 18 — and he'd gotten two part-time jobs," Payne says with a laugh.

He didn't stay at the University of Kansas for long. Records show that West was enrolled at KU only from fall 1997 to summer 1998. He'd always been skilled with computers, and a job opportunity in Lenexa was too good to pass up, West says. For his job with Cephas, a dot-com-era Web development firm, he jetted all over the country. West remembers making more money than he knew what to do with.

But Cephas went under. West secured some of the contracts and started his own company; when he sold out to Computer Sciences Corporation, a business technology services firm based in California, it seemed time to move on. Certain realities had begun to outweigh his financial comfort and professional success.

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