By Jim O'Sullivan
News Editor

"My iPod keeps my sanity, this keeps me connected," says Carlos Henriquez, brandishing a BlackBerry, the current favorite bauble in the wirelesss device craze.

Tough to decide which handheld doo-dad the 27-year-old Uphams Corner resident uses more, or which attribute he needs more. Henriquez's is a hectic existence, a scattered schedule of neighborhood meetings and pick-up basketball games, sit-downs with school teachers and sessions with the Boston City Council president that are, he says, "really like brainstorming with a buddy, with an old pal of yours."

He is also, he'll have you know, "the dodgeball champion of the neighborhood. I've had the title now at least since the late-80s."

Beyond dodgeball prowess, Henriquez is a lot of things in his neighborhood, a young Turk who dashes from one passion to the next. He is a part-time student at UMass-Boston, a staffer who works with kids at both Little House and Dorchester House, an aide to Council President Michael Flaherty.

"I don't put too many constraints on it," he says of his time management," because it's all good work. I feel like I'm on the clock all the time."

Henriquez - whose mother, Sandra Henriquez is administrator of the Boston Housing Authority - traces his thirst for involvement to his father's zest for the same.

"As far as I can remember, he's been doing stuff in the community," Carlos says about his father, Julio, president of Dudley Neighborhood, Inc., a community development group. "I'd have to say that that's where the bug bit me the most. All my life, he's been helping people."

Henriquez, a Latin Academy product, went to work for Copy Cop right out of high school, and then Kinko's ("a billion-dollar version of Copy Cop"), and was scaling the corporate bluff through middle management when he decided the gig was not for him.

"I wasn't passionate about it, so it made it hard to get up and get there every day and put a smile on my face."

Out with the buttoned-down world of paper production, then, and in with the helter-skelter noise that comes from working with kids. At both community centers, Henriquez sits down with kids after school, helping reinforce skills and lessons they learn during the day. He works as a liaison for teachers and parents.

Anne Nee, Little House program director, says Henriquez's serves as an "out-of-school connector."

"He's respectful of the kids and he meets them where they are," Nee says. "He doesn't impose himself. Unlike some people who do youth work, who are overeager, he doesn't push himself on them."

Since coming on board earlier this year, Nee says, Henriquez has proved adept at dealing with the 40 or 50 kids who thunder through the halls of the Little House under his charge.

"He kind of gets kids' approval, so he's talked about at home," she says. "When issues come up, they'll talk to him because they feel comfortable."

That means time spent with the kids, something Henriquez is happy to do. He helps them with their homework, shows them how to box out on the basketball court, matches them with summer jobs. On his block, he's long been the organizer of football games and dodgeball tournaments, something he remembers from growing up.

"I just wanted to make sure that these kinds of traditions continue," he says.

His work on his own street got him noticed by Mike Flaherty, the city council president.

Flaherty remembers meeting Henriquez at a Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative walk-and-talk last year, and being impressed immediately that, when he asked for a pointman to help him stay on top of the problems, Henriquez volunteered, and made good.

"I says, 'Man, this kid actually follows up,'" Flaherty says. "You know, he cares."

Soon, Henriquez was a go-between for his neighborhood and Flaherty, who acknowledges that it's a part of the city where he needed strengthened ties.

"We just talked about the kind of things that he wanted to do in the community," Henriquez says, "and they were in line with things that I wanted to do, where I could serve my community, and he could help his outreach as well."

Now, Henriquez logs time in Flaherty's City Hall office and at community meetings, delving into the address-specific minutiae of municipal government: zoning, trash pick-up, helping kids get jobs. The arrangement offers dividends for both.

"He's seen as the guy who has an in at City Hall, who can deliver services, and that's invaluable for a young guy who wants to have a future in politics," Flaherty says.

And, in turn, Henriquez says: "He lets me just kind of work through the community. It helps position him. It helps him reach a community that he felt like he wasn't reaching before."

Flaherty recalls having to ask Henriquez to discipline the reports he'd bring back from community meetings, all ginned up with packed "to-do" lists. Focus on three or four things, Flaherty would tell him.

Could be a life lesson there for Carlos Henriquez, first of the next great ward heelers, new strain of machine politician, dodgeball virtuoso, and homework helper. Could be that paring back his frantic pace of activity is a better key to sanity than an iPod even.

But it's not one he imparts to the kids he works with along Dudley Street, or up and down Dot Ave.

"I tell them: You've got to do as much as you can. You've got to be involved."