I went to Queens University Thursday night to hear Westley Moore, a Citigroup investment professional, talk to students about the importance of community service.

If you never heard of Moore, his story is quite remarkable. But more important, it may offer lessons for mothers, teachers and mentors struggling with young black males who chronically underachieve.

Moore, 30, grew up in a single-parent home in the Bronx. His father died when he was three. At age 11 – a contented “C” student – he was kicked out of school for vandalism.

His mother, frustrated to the nth degree, collected money from friends and family and shipped him off to a military academy in Pennsylvania, where he continued his shenanigans and tried more than once to run away.

The future, some might have said, did not look bright for young “Wes.”

But things ended far better than anyone might have expected or imagined.

In 2001 Moore graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore with a degree in international relations. He went on to become a Rhodes scholar at England’s Oxford University. He served in Afghanistan as a U.S. Army captain with the elite 1st Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division. He was named a White House fellow in the office of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He even spoke at Mile High Stadium the night Barack Obama accepted the Democratic nomination.

In fact, before Obama was elected the nation’s first black president, Moore’s name was sometimes mentioned by those who practice speculation as a possible candidate to claim that title.

I talked with Moore before Thursday night’s speech and asked him what had made the difference in his life.

He gave me his list of “Four L’s”:

Leadership: Every young man wants to be in charge of something, he said. Give them responsibility, even if they haven’t exactly earned it.

Legacy: Talk to young men about how they want to be remembered, both now and in the future.

Leverage: Parents can’t do it alone, he said. Find others in the family, community or at nonprofit agencies to act as mentors.

Love (unconditionally): “A child needs to know that, though things won’t always be easy, the road won’t always be straight, that you will be there for him,” Moore said.

Ironically, the same week that Moore was featured in a Baltimore newspaper for being named a Rhodes scholar, another young man named Westley Moore also was mentioned prominently in the news. The two were about the same age and lived in practically the same neighborhood.

The second Wesley Moore, however, was being sought by police, along with three other men, for the murder of a Baltimore police officer during a robbery.

Moore said he could not stop wondering about the factors that made his life so different from the other Wesley Moore. He eventually wrote to the man in prison, after he and his accomplices were captured, and made more than 24 trips to visit him, his family members and friends.

Moore said he will chronicle their two lives in an upcoming book, tentatively titled “Elevate: American Journeys into Manhood,” due for release this spring.

“It’s nothing I did, in many ways,” Moore said of his own outcome. “Two kids going through their journeys. Two kids crying for help. One got it; one didn’t.”