VISTA – Perhaps it should come as no surprise that a young man fighting for a fresh start should find his way to a boxing gym. Fresh off the latest of multiple jail stints, 23-year-old Manny is looking for that start amid the heavy bags and jump ropes at Rhino's Boxing and Fitness in Vista.

“I would always see the gym, but I thought it was going to be, 'Oh, we don't accept certain types of people,' ” said Manny, who requested his real name not be used because of past connections to gang members in the area. “I kind of noticed I was falling into the same steps (after prison) and thought I better try it and see what's the outcome of it. ”

Five months later, Manny is a 12-hour-a-day fixture at the club, a jack-of-all-trades handyman who has transitioned from fringy club member to full-time employee.

“He was like, 'I really want to do this, but I have no money,' ” said club boss Nancy Saroyan. “At first we were trying to budget, but I said, 'Let's just forget this.' He's family now.”

As for what brings him and his bicycle to the club's doors at noon only to stay until midnight cleaning, repairing and maintaining the two-story building off state Route 78 at Sycamore Avenue, the answer is simple: “To stay out of trouble. I get mad sometimes; that's why I come here, to hit the bag a little, release the stress.”

Finding a safe way to relieve stress is more important for Manny than for most. Booked more than once on battery charges, his life has been filled with violence and gang connections from east Los Angeles County to San Diego. Putting that history behind him is a daily task.

“(Gang members) try to call me by what they used to call me, but I don't go by that no more. We're still cool, just you do your thing and I'll do mine. My personality has changed. I don't have to be tough here.”

That Rhino's should be the instrument of Manny's revival is in some sense only fitting. In the middle of a rebirth of its own, the club was on death's doorstep when Saroyan, 48, arrived as a consultant in January.

“I walked around with a pen and paper, and everything was wrong here,” said Saroyan, who spent seven years at Encinitas Boxing and Fitness where she added a boxing operation to what had previously been a fitness gym. “We did the same thing there, and that's why I knew it would work here.”

The void left by the closure of Tony Contreras' gym at the Boys & Girls Club of Vista left Rhino's with little competition and a surge of new members. In all, the club has seen almost 300 new members walk through the doors during this year alone.

Speed bags, heavy bags and a sparring ring have replaced a pair of lonely spin bikes on the gym's second floor, and Saroyan and her sister and longtime business partner, Dana Donahue, have bigger plans for the boxing operation, including a set of exhibition amateur bouts.

“It's not just Tae Bo,” said Donahue, who has been an instructor for more than two years. “We're going to make you look like a boxer.”

Meanwhile, Manny just completed a résumé with Donahue's help (he's working toward getting a trainer's license) and is reaching out to a few club members walking his old path.

“I'm telling them the same things my parents used to say,” he said.

For one burgeoning boxing club and its most unique employee, the fight is no longer uphill.

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