.Minister Julius Malker: An average day on the job for Julius Malker, a network technician with New Community Corporation, goes something like this:

He installs network drivers on a computer and connects it to a network and the internet. He runs a network patch cord from one office, up through a ceiling and down to a computer in another room. He checks some phone lines that are causing problems. He handles some work orders for computer problems ranging from e-mail glitches to ailing hard drives.

Life for Mr. Malker, who has been with New Community's Management Information Systems Departments for about two and a half years, wasn't always so smooth and orderly.

A product of Hayes Homes, Mr. Malker remembers sleeping on the floor as a five-year-old during the 1967 Newark Summer Disorders. Mr. Malker was expelled from high school, enrolled in a youth employability program, became an apprentice painter and held a variety of jobs. He loaded trucks for UPS. He was a mail handler for the Newark Post Office. He spent ten years as a building maintenance worker for the Newark Housing Authority.

He also hung out on Newark streets, used a number of drugs, including heroin, and engaged in a variety of hustles. It came to a hard end on August 31, 1994, the day Mr. Malker was arrested for heroin possession. He found himself locked inside Essex County Jail in West Caldwell for nearly five months.

"It's by the grace and power of God that I'm able to live the way that I'm living today," says Mr. Malker, who is a deeply spiritual and religious man. "God is real. anytime you implement God in your life, it will never be the same."

He spent his time in jail reading the Bible, attending church services and fighting his addiction to drugs. It is the kind of story that may prisoners leave the jailhouse telling, only to return again and again. Yet, for Mr. Malker the change was real. He has been alcohol and drug-free for nearly ten years. He became a minister at Emmanuel Church of Christ. He got married, He started working up to sixteen hours a day to support his wife and his six children.

In 2000, Mr. Malker enrolled in the Cisco Networking class at New Community's Workforce Development Center on Bergen Street. "All my life I did maintenance work," he said. "This was an opportunity for me to educate myself and use my head as opposed to doing physical labor. I wanted to do something different, so I jumped into computers.

He studied hard and worked as an intern in the New Community MIS department. He also worked part time at NCC's World of Foods in the Neighborhood Shopping Center on Bergen Street and as a porter, maintaining floors at the Extended Care Facility. He completed the Cisco course and graduated from Workforce in June 2001. NCC hired him as a network technician that August.

"I'm really grateful to be a part of New Community," Mr. Malker says. "NCC gave me an opportunity to really challenge myself with the programs it offers. It helped me get myself back on track and gave me self-worth.

Mr. Malker recently gained his A+ certification, an important document for computer technicians, and plans to continue his technical education. He says he is ultimately interested in taking college courses, most likely in computer science.

Today Mr. Malker still lives in his old neighborhood, but is a lifetime removed from his old lifestyle. "If you choose to live right you can't go wrong," he says. "You'll still have your trials. But I know how to deal with them today."

As for his old life, Mr. Malker doesn't advertise it to everyone he runs across daily, but he's glad to talk about it and hopes that people facing similar difficulties can find strength in the challenges he's overcome. "You waste a lot of time when you're out there in the streets," Mr. Malker says. " A lot of friends I ran with are either dead or in prison or doing drugs. I know where I came from and I'm not ashamed. I'm grateful. Never ashamed."