From gangster to guardian: how a bullet led one man from the streets of NY to law school.

Protecting rights, pursuing justice, promoting professionalism

It's hard to think of Azim Ramelize as paralyzed, the way he maneuvers up the courthouse steps on his crutches lickety-split.

And there's no stopping his passion to speak up for children, his voice rising to make a point as a member of the Bar's Commission on the Legal Needs of Children. He knows the whole court system, drawing on his experiences as an assistant state attorney, assistant public defender, and now as assistant general counsel at the Department of Juvenile Justice in Davie -- oh, yes, and as a member of a gang playing out the high drama of gunfire and bloodshed on the streets of Brooklyn's Crown Heights.

The story behind his crutches is a wrenching, life-changing event that happened on his 17th birthday. Originally from Trinidad, he was a member of a gang called the Jolly Stompers, and they were as close as family. In a tough neighborhood where it was commonplace to get held up for grocery money or go to school with a coat and come home in shirt sleeves, the gang members learned young to arm themselves with guns, knives, or brass knuckles.

On this fateful night, Ramelize was defenseless when he was shot in the back, the bullet chipping a bone that splintered into his spinal cord, leaving him bleeding on a street grate in front of a store.

"I saw the life falling out of me," he said, describing how his whole young life flashed before him, swirling around like the lights in a patrol car siren, beginning with the image of him as a baby in a crib.

"And I said, 'Oh, God, I'm dead.' Then something inside of me said: You've got to fight.'"

And fight he did -- during a whole year of recovery in the hospital, where gang members visited him every day. Another gunshot victim, an older man in 'the next bed, had such a bedsore he had to drive his wheelchair on his stomach.

Another patient named Pearl had both legs amputated and inspired him when she said: "You give out, but never give up."

Young Ramelize -- known on the street at Bud -- thought: "Here I am running the street and playing gangster and people are just suffering. I was throwing it away. When I get out of the hospital, I'm not looking back, and I'm going to do something with my life."

Borough Manhattan Community College, he said, was "the place I realized I had a brain." From there, he went to Cornell University, where a special American history professor, Nick Salvatore, had him write a paper every week just to...