CAMP CASTLE, Kuwait -- John Stevens was 2 when his father went to prison. He was 7 when his mother became homeless and he landed in his first foster home. At 13, he stole a car.

He seemed destined for a life of difficulty and disappointment.



But now the United States is depending on Stevens. If there is war with Iraq, Stevens and his fellow Seabees with Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 4 might be counted on to build roads and bridges into Iraq.

Despite the odds, Stevens is up to the task.



"The Union Pacific didn't build the railroads, laborers did," said builder Chief George Freese. "Who will build the road to Baghdad? It will be laborers like him. He's a good kid. He'll do well."

Stevens is 19. His face is pale, his brown eyes intelligent. His mouth forms quickly into a gentle smile. His thin, elongated body hasn't entirely lost its adolescent gangliness.

"My goal is to have a family and provide for them and give them a nice house in a good neighborhood with good schools and pay for their college," he said, sitting on a sandbag and eating a tasteless cookie from his military bag lunch. "My ultimate goal is to have a normal family, not a dysfunctional family. My children will never end up in foster care."

The military is made up of people from every strata of life. NMCB-4 includes many people who weren't born in the United States, but grew up loving it. At their camp in Kuwait, there are civil engineers in tents next to men who didn't graduate from high school.

"The military is a great benefit for people with a background like Stevens," said NMCB-4 Chaplain Lt. Brandon Harding. "It gives them the opportunity to make anything they want out of their life. The military will pay for them to get their college degree. I know enlisted men who went from E-1 to getting medical degrees."

Stevens chose to go into the military mainly because it would pay for his college education. He'd gotten a scholarship, but it wasn't near as much as the military pays. He had two reasons for joining the Seabees: His last foster father had served in the Navy and one of the Seabee home ports is in Port Hueneme, near his hometownof Camarillo.

In the middle of the Kuwaiti desert, Stevens lives in a Bedouin tent with 20 other men. Outside his tent, the horizon is only sand and, during the day, the sun reflects off it like a mirror. When he's not training to build bridges or engage in combat, Stevens studies the Bible and tosses a football with his bunkmates.

Stevens hasn't seen his father since he went to prison. Stevens' mother tried to care for him and his two older brothers, but she suffered from blindness, epilepsy, diabetes and bad taste in men. They lost their home after one abusive relationship went awry, he said. The county put the family up at the Regal Motel in Oxnard.

"It had a Jacuzzi and I remember I wanted to use it," Stevens said, "but the social worker came and took us."

His first foster home was with a relative. But, at 11, a social worker came again.



"We don't know why, they just come and take you," he said. He was put into Casa Pacifica.



"It was a really good place to stay for kids from abused and neglected homes," Stevens said.

"I was depressed, but it was fun, too, because any time I wanted to ride a bike I could and they took us to basketball games."

He lived in his next foster home for three years.



"My brother ran away from his group home," Stevens said. "He came to my foster home and we stole the car and went to my mom's house."

When his mom learned he'd stolen the car, she turned him in. The foster family declined to press charges, and Stevens went back to Casa Pacifica. He hated the restrictions and ran away a few times but was either picked up by police or realized he didn't have anywhere to go and returned on his own.

While at Camarillo High School, he joined Future Farmers of America, and Casa Pacifica allowed him to keep a goat. He started to understand responsibility.

"The only way to get out without being homeless was to do what I needed to do," he said. In his senior year, he went to a new foster home where he was allowed to raise a cow. His foster dad, Doug Harwood, also taught him to write checks, buy a car and live on his own. Stevens calls Harwood "Dad."

"Most kids in foster care don't really amount to much," Harwood said in a phone interview from his Camarillo home. "They end up homeless or in prison, but (Stevens) had goals. He saw things he wanted and made the decision to do the things he needed to do to get them."

Two days after he got his high school diploma, Stevens was on his way to Seabee boot camp.

Now, he's practicing building bridges in the desert.



He knows he faces danger if he's part of a team building bridges that have been blown up by Iraqi forces. But, he quotes Jeremiah 31:16 and 17: "EThey shall come back from the land of the enemy; there is hope for your future, says the Lord: your children shall come back to their own country."

At home, he goes to church with his girlfriend. Here, he is part of a daily prayer meeting each evening. In middle school, he wanted to be a truck driver. Now he plans to attend college and become a teacher, police officer or psychologist.

"I started in a real low spot, just thinking about survival," he said. "But at Casa Pacifica, the second time I realized it didn't have to be that way."

He said teachers at Camarillo High School and Harwood helped him realize his opportunities.

"When I get out of the Navy, I'll have skills and if I play my cards right, money, and I'll definitely have determination and drive," he said. "When I get out of here, my past is wiped away, and I'm a whole new me."