By JACK HOPKINS
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

King County Executive Sims moved into the neighborhood in 1978, ignoring what then was the area's reputation as a community plagued by urban strife.

"Nobody wanted to move into the neighborhood," Sims recalls. "But I thought, here's a whole neighborhood within walking distance of Lake Washington."

Over the years, however, what Sims found was an area where "everybody strives to make the community better."

"You're expected to contribute to the neighborhood in some way," he says. "When people come to your door and ask you to volunteer, you know you are expected to do it. It's a neighborhood that can raise money, and you know you are going to be asked."

Sims and other community leaders are especially proud of the community club's Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship Fund -- money raised directly from the neighborhood -- that began in 1985 with three $250 scholarships and grew to 10 $2,000 grants to outstanding students this year. About $30,000 in scholarships are expected to be available for next year's round of awards.

Investment in what in the past was a marginal business community along Rainier Avenue on Mount Baker's eastern flank has added to the stability of the whole area, says Earl Richardson, executive director of SouthEast Effective Development (SEED), a grass-roots urban redevelopment association in Southeast Seattle for more than 20 years.

The 1994 completion of Rainier Valley Square -- including Safeway, Drug Emporium, Blockbuster Video and Starbucks -- represented the first major commercial construction in the area in 30 years, he says.

With the Safeway store and a QFC store that located on Rainier Avenue in 1995, Mount Baker residents no longer make the trip across the floating bridge to Mercer Island to shop for groceries.

SEED also was instrumental in landing the huge Eagle Hardware store on the former site of the Sicks' Stadium, a number of affordable-housing projects, including rehabilitation of the Mount Baker Village Apartments, and creation of the Rainier Valley Cultural Centers at a historic church acquired by SEED.