On Oct. 31, Orlando Ramos was in Richmond, comforting community members he met when he was principal of the high school there, the same campus that's now notorious for the Oct. 24 gang rape of a 16-year-old girl.

He says he knows three of the teens accused in the attack.

On Nov. 1, back home in San Jose, Ramos got an early morning phone call.

Two of his students at East San Jose's Lee Mathson Middle School had been attacked on Halloween night, the caller told him. The boys had been trick-or-treating when they ran across a group of gang members. One was shot in the head, the other stabbed.

Now, Ramos, entering his second year as principal at Lee Mathson, finds himself in the thick of two of the Bay Area's most horrific crimes. After working at some of the toughest schools from New York to California, Ramos has seen plenty of violence.

Every year, he has "lost a student or two," he said.

But the attacks in Richmond and San Jose are both stunning and bewildering to this 44-year-old who was expelled from two high schools himself — even though his vantage point gives him insights into the hardscrabble environments that bred both the offenders and the victims.

"I can't understand this," Ramos said in his trademark Puerto Rican-Bronx accent. "It's just incomprehensible."

"This is the worst I've ever seen," he said, referring to the middle school students, "because they're so young."

The 13-year-old boy is

Poverty and despair

Grasping for reasons, Ramos said the common thread between the schools he's served in the East Bay and South Bay communities is that they share cultures of poverty and despair.

"These kids have a history of failure, low parental supervision and not feeling good about themselves," he said. "And society has low expectations for them. So they find friends in a gang, where they create acceptance."

Perhaps it was that same twisted, group-mentality that led teenagers in Richmond to stand by — or join in — as a girl was gang-raped for two hours Oct. 24 after a homecoming dance. And maybe those sensibilities contributed to the attack Halloween night at Story Road and Hopkins Drive, reportedly because one of the victims was wearing a pair of Nike Cortez sneakers, a brand preferred by some gangs.

But just because Ramos has a perspective on the events doesn't mean he accepts them. "That's beyond crazy,'' he said.

In the Richmond case, six suspects have been charged for beating, robbing and raping the girl who had been drinking and was semiconscious in a dark campus courtyard. Of the three suspects he knows, Ramos said he believes they were the "followers," not the leaders. He has declined to say more.

In San Jose, four suspects were charged on attempted murder charges. San Jose police say they all confessed to being Sureños and were on the lookout that evening for the enemy Norteño gang. The defendants are: Hugo Torres, 15; Erik Diaz and Diego Gutierrez, both 16; and Eduardo Cristobal, 18, of Milpitas.

The fact that Ramos doesn't give up on impoverished communities isn't lost on his Mathson middle schoolers.

"Everyone loves him," said Julia Ruiz, a seventh-grader. "He cares about us. All the teachers do. We feel really safe here."

Some trustees also like the approach of a man who looks more like a Gold's Gym trainer than an award-winning principal, with a commendation from U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer to his credit for his work with gangs.

"Dr. Ramos is different," said Esau Herrera, vice president of the Alum Rock Unified Elementary School District. "And he definitely rubs some people the wrong way. He's not a Brooks Brothers-suit wearing guy who speaks correct King's English. If some say he's unorthodox, I say he's down-to-earth. He gives a personal and powerful message, 'I care about you, and I am going to push you on the path of success.' Difference here is good."

What distinguishes Ramos from most principals are his personal story, and his methods.

At Richmond High, where he worked from 2006 to 2008, Ramos held special conflict resolution classes just for gang members. Instead of expecting students to fail, he said ramped up the number of Advanced Placement classes. The nearly 2,000-student body is 77 percent Latino, and nearly the same percentage are poor enough to qualify for free or reduced-priced lunches.

"And these kids were passing those classes at higher rates than schools ranked in the top 1,000 in the state," he said.

Lashing out

West Contra Costa County Unified School District administrators declined to comment on Ramos. But the United Teachers of Richmond wasn't shy about lashing out at him.

"I was very, very, very happy when he left," said Carlos Taboada, the teachers union representative for Richmond High. "His stay here was disastrous. He has no notion of academics whatsoever. He had no notion of the proper procedure to evaluate teachers and he blamed them for everything. He thought the force of his personality was enough to get them fired but it was not. And he has the uncanny instinct of attracting press."

Some teachers in San Jose also said privately that Ramos focuses too much on gangs, and not enough on the honor students and kids already doing a good job.

Ramos admits his desire to fire teachers he considers mediocre, and to act as a public "cheerleader" for the schools. He says he wants to show off the kids and teachers, not himself. He sees himself as an agent of change — change to a society that in his eyes expects failure in poor, immigrant communities, where gang violence runs amok.

He came from such a community.

Born to Puerto Rican parents, Ramos grew up in a home where his mother divorced twice because of abuse. He got into fights. He abused drugs. He was expelled from two high schools. And he finally got his GED when a teacher knocked on the door of the Ford Pinto in which he was living, and told him to get his act together. He took classes at Bronx Community College, where he saw blacks and Latinos getting an education — something he thought was a privilege only for whites. Today, he holds his doctorate in education from Nova Southeastern University in Florida.

'Click' goes off

And the life-changing "click" that went off in his head about the benefits of education is what he wants to impress on other at-risk kids, too. He believes that it's his nontraditional approaches that will save his students from gangs.

"I don't believe in suspensions or expulsions," he said. "They don't work. Then, they're dodging drug dealers and gang members out on the street."

Instead at Mathson, where 60 percent of the students are English language learners and 100 percent are "socioeconomically disadvantaged," Ramos has kids who get into trouble sit in "Reflection Sessions" to hash problems out immediately with their teachers. In one year, principal referrals and suspensions are down 40 percent, he said.

Students like Isaac Sirmiento, a seventh-grader, also love the school's "Stepping Up" assemblies, where students with historically low grades are brought onstage for improving their scores.

"He plays music before assemblies, and makes them fun," Sirmiento said.

And while Ramos said he hasn't gotten much sleep lately, running between Richmond and San Jose, he says there's no place else he'd rather be.

"I love it," Ramos said. "I'd go nuts somewhere else."

Reach Lisa Fernandez at 408-920-5002.