From Gangs to Grace: Jose Arellano's Journey of Transformation

In this powerful episode, Seano McFarland sits down with Jose Arellano, a former gang member who transformed his life and is now the Director of Case Management at Homeboy Industries, the world’s largest gang rehabilitation and reentry program. Jose opens up about his childhood surrounded by gang culture, the devastating loss of his cousin, and the pivotal moment that led him to Homeboy Industries. Today, he’s dedicated to helping others break free from violence, addiction, and trauma, offering hope and guidance to those seeking a new beginning.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I see my first murder when I was about six
and a half years old. Wow. Like I said, it
was the norm. But what's so interesting as well is
like always, deep down is Simon heart always felt like
it was wrong the way we were living. My mother
did more for me and death than she was ever
able to do for me in life. Wow. Because I
didn't know it at the time of sin home, but

(00:20):
her death was gonna be the beginning of my new life.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
We don't do gotcha, fuck up man clowns do gotch
We say welcome back. That's right because we know the
humility took for you to get your ass back.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Can salute and we're gonna love up on you. And
it's a miracle that you made it. Straight up, brother,
because a lot of people don't.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Welcome back to the Sino Show. I'm your host, Sino McFarlane.
Today we have a guest who's journey and work is
nothing really nothing to show to miraculous And I love
this brother from day one. Just to just straight up right,
let me just tell you about this cat. He's a
former gang member who turned his life around is now

(01:02):
the director capital d case Management at Homeboy Industries, the
largest gang rehabilitation and re entry program in the world Boom.
He's been helping formerly incarcerated individuals and those impacted by
gang violence rebuild their lives and create new pass forward.
It's my privilege to welcome my good buddy brothers. They welcome, Man,

(01:26):
welcome you.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
We like to say, right, blessed, Yeah, blessed, blessed, right,
truly blessed.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
But I want to let everybody know how we how
committed we are to our spirituality and carry the message
right now, literally as we're speaking, first inning of the
Dodgers ruled series game.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
We're not there, We're here.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
We're carrying, We're carrying the message. Buddy, thanks for making
it down.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
Thank you so much. I love you, man, I love
you too. I was going to start there. And it's
an honor, homie, and he is an honor to be
here in your presidence, and it's honored. And any chance
we get to do something together, you know.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
Yeah, I know it's always been that way.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
It's always been that way, and it's always been special. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:06):
I'm glad God brought us together.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
You've been a great friend, a great confident, a great teacher,
and just a kind human being. And somebody I know,
I can always count on it, somebody always.

Speaker 3 (02:14):
I always see you.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
And I just I see God, I see truth. Oh
thank you, and I just get happy for you man,
because you're doing great thing.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
That's the big boomerangs. You know.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
Let's just tell her a little bit about your story.
Let's just start your history, where you grew up. Let's
just start there.

Speaker 3 (02:27):
Is that cool?

Speaker 1 (02:27):
Yeah? Absolutely? Yeah, So it wasn't always the case. I mean,
you know, I growing up, I h that term even blessed,
Like I it's so interesting, like the terms that I
use today, and you know, where my life is at,
Like sometimes it feels like I'm living in a dream.
It really does. So I come from third generation gang culture,

(02:49):
Los Angeles gang culture. In my family, they're all from here,
own and raised in Los Angeles County. And yeah, growing up,
my mother was a gang member, all my uncles were
gang members. Grandparents, they're all from the same neighborhood. And
so it was kind of just the norm, you know,
to grow up like that. Alcoholism, subst abuse, issues in

(03:09):
the house, domestic violence. I see my first murder when
I was about six and a half years old. Wow,
And like I said, it was the norm. But what's
so interesting as well, is like always, deep down inside
my heart always felt like it was wrong the way
we were living, but I also just kind of accepted,
accepted it, embraced it. Growing up, I didn't want to

(03:32):
be a gang member. That was the furthest thing from
my mind. I had an older cousin that was a
couple of years older than me, and he was like
a brother to me, like an older brother, and him
and I actually like around I was like probably like
nine years old, it's probably like ten or eleven. He
calls me to my grandmother's backyard and we made a

(03:53):
pact with each other little boys, and we said, well,
he said to me, He says, hey, Brima, which his
cousin in Spanish, and she says, promised me that no
matter what happens, you and me are not going to
get jumped into the water, which means get jumped into
the gang. And I shook his hand and I promised
him when I said promise, And you know, like anything else,

(04:14):
you know, like we know, like the disease of alcoholism
or emotional trauma, if it doesn't get progressively better, it
gets progressively worse. And so that was my household. Things
got progressively worse, so my mother went from being a
full blown gang member to being a full blown drug addict,

(04:34):
and that was really hard for us all to cope with.
We grew up poor, but we became extremely poor after that.
And you know, like our lights being turned off, water
being turned off. I was still a hopeful child at
the time I went to school. I loved school. School
was my escapes, you know, I mean, I loved it, Homie.

(04:56):
If I was able to spend the night at school,
I would have you know. That's how much I am
enjoyed being at school. I enjoyed being a student. I
also I took up the trumpet, so I was in marching.

Speaker 3 (05:06):
Band, in marching bands.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
In marching band, I was in the Gate program, which
was the program in Los Angeles County Gifted and Talented education.
I excelled in school. I did well in school, yeah, man.
But like I said, things got progressively worse. And it
was the summer right before junior high school. And my mother,

(05:28):
by this time, she was battling a powerful power choice.
It was math then, yeah, back then, and it was
so interesting. So prior, like the generation before me, I think,
was suffering from like the crack epidemic, and then I
remember like math hitting our community and it was like
the plague onie. This was in the early nineties, early nineties.

(05:51):
And yeah, like my mother dibbled and dabbled in drugs,
but you know, once that came into our community, it
was like the plague. Seriously, it just it was it
was just ravaging through households and yeah, and you know, she, uh,
she battled with that and it was tough. You know,
it was tough. I never knew who my father was

(06:14):
growing up, and I was okay with that. I think
that if I would have, you know, just looking back
in retrospective, had I had my mother at that time,
I think I would have still kind of been okay.
But you know, not really having heard it was just
it was tough. You know, it was tough on me.
And so my cousin, the one that I made have

(06:34):
packed with It was a summer right before junior high school,
and uh, he got jumped into the neighborhood. From one
moment to the next. He didn't consult with me, We
didn't talk about it like that. He was a gang
member and uh, you know, of course he was dealing
with similar stuff. And uh, and I remember just like, wow, Okay,
we didn't talk about it nothing. We we we just

(06:57):
continue living, you know, continue moving on. And So I
had a friend that I used to frequent his house
that lived down the street from us. He had like
a semi normal life, had a mom's stepdad. They had
basic cable TV. So I loved being over there. You know,
they always have food in the fridge. Oh fuck yeah,
But I understand now, I get it now because you

(07:20):
know his mother would have to you know, she'd have
to ask me to leave. It'd be late. I didn't
have a curfew growing up. I could stay out till
whatever time nobody was going to come looking for me.
And I love being at his house because I hated
being at mine. I hated being home. I hated it
on me. So I would be at his house and
it'd be like ten thirty, eleven o'clock at night, and

(07:42):
his mother was he was a Christian, gots to go
to bed, It's time for you to go home, you know.
And I'm sure it was hard on her, you know,
having to ask me to leave. And so, you know,
my mother struggling. My cousin just got jumped into the
neighborhood and my house was like the hangout spot. So
there was always homies from the neighborhood there always, And so,

(08:04):
you know, one night, I walked down to my friend's house.
I knock at the door. Somebody comes to the people home,
but they didn't answer. So I knock again, no answer.
Go to the side window and I knocked, and I said, hey,
it's me Jose And they turned off the living room
like and they turned off the TV as if to
pretend like nobody was home, you know. And I just

(08:28):
remember philing. I remember feeling so hopeless. How were you then?
I was probably I was twelve, yeah, right there. Yeah,
And I just remember like, damn, this is my life,
you know. I got to go back home, and I
knew it was waiting for me at home. So I
walked back to my house and there was two homies.

(08:50):
One of them was another one of my cousins that
was already from the hood. He was older, like sixteen.
And then there was another homie that was around nineteen.
And I get back to the front of my house
and the hummy he asks me, he says, hey, what's
up for why? He looks so sad did your dog
die or something? You know what I mean. And I'm like,

(09:12):
uh no, I ain't sad. You know, I'm good. And
he says, you want to get jumped into the water.
And I had always I had an excuse, you know,
I had been asked before, I want to get jump
to the neighbor. No, I can't hold me. I got
you know, I got this to do, or I got marching,
you know, I gotta got banned practice, or you know what,
I gotta get all. I gotta go to school. But

(09:33):
that night was different. I remember before I couldn't even
think about it. Before I can even consider the question,
the words had left my mouth, and I said, yeah,
I'll get jumped into the water. Do a s aid
a matter of fact, I'll get jumped into jumped into
the water tonight. And we walked across the street. I

(09:53):
had another cousin that lived across the street. And they
jumped me. They beat on me, they kicked me, they
beat on me some more, and after they were done,
they hugged me and they embraced me and they whispered
things like I love you. You know. I think that
experiences is wow. It's big to share because from that

(10:19):
point on, my experience with love was tainted. It was
fractured because of the violence and because of the embrace,
and that left me. That experience left me not only
just confused, but lost for many years because I didn't

(10:41):
know what love really was after that. And what's so
interesting is that we still have a lot of our
youth today that subject themselves to those type of experiences
and others. As a society, it's not concerning or alarming
to us, you know that young people are subjecting themselves
something that's so dire, you know what I mean. And

(11:04):
but yeah, that decision changed the course of my life.
And it was shortly after on to say, maybe eight
nine months after my cousin Marlowe, who we had made
a pact in my grandmother's backyard to never get jumped
into a gang. He was He was shot in the
face with a twelve gay shotgun. He was murdered, and
he was fourteen years old when he died. And life

(11:28):
became real at that point.

Speaker 3 (11:32):
But what was going through your mind that night happened?

Speaker 1 (11:36):
That's a great question, you know, because uh, yeah, it's
it's uh. I think that more than anything, I just
missed him more than anything. I just like I lost
my best friend, you know, more than anything, I lost
like my like my buddy, you know what I mean.

(11:56):
Like we would play with toys. We would play with
our toys and my grandma mother's backyard. We were still
innocent case. Yeah, I remember that even after we were
both from the hood, we still played with toys. But
when the homies would come, we would hide them and
we would go we would go outside because we felt
like we had to be grown man already, right, and

(12:18):
it's a trip because about I don't know now, maybe
like seven years back, I was doing some writing and
I remember hiding army man with my cousin in my
grandmother's backyard. And I remember that no matter where I
was or where I would go, and whenever I would
come back, I would always look for those army men
and I would never find any I'd get busted, I'd

(12:40):
go to juvenile hall, I'd come home, and I would
remember like searching for them and I never found any
of them. That we hit it that we hit in
my grandmother's backyard. But I remember being still like not naive,
but like I just wanted him, you know what. I
mean like I knew him for who he was, and

(13:02):
now who the neighborhood thought he was, you know, or
society thought he was this gang member, this young gang
member that was murdered. I remember being at the at
his car wash because you know, another thing that we
go through being gang members and stuff is we don't
even have enough money to bury or dead, so we
have to raise money to you know, be able to

(13:23):
have a funeral. And I remember being at the car wash,
and as much as everybody was angry and upset about it,
and that was seeking revenge, I didn't feel that, even
though I pretended that I did. All I felt was
I miss him. I miss him, you know, and I
want I wish that I was able to tell somebody that,

(13:44):
but you can't, right, that's not a part of the culture.

Speaker 2 (13:47):
But do you remember, Jose, when you went from like
that suite, I love to play my trumpet.

Speaker 3 (13:53):
I loved school.

Speaker 2 (13:54):
I love to play with my little you know, army
guys in the back to like something shifted and it
got dark.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
That was one moment that things started to shift for me.
It wasn't that it got too dark, but it was
it was basically that Jose this is your life. This
ship is serious, and death is lurking around every corner.
And so I became, you know, like hyper vigilant about that,
became cautious. But I knew that death was lurking. Now.

(14:24):
I knew that it was lurking, and it was coming
for me, and it was coming for people that I love.
But like anything else, things get progressively worse. And so
you know, as I got older, I got more involved.

Speaker 3 (14:37):
And when did the drinking start. Let's start, I would
like to.

Speaker 1 (14:40):
Pre drinking started when I was like eight years old. Yeah, see,
we got to back up there, backup drinking. So the
culture growing up in my household was I was like
a gopher, go for this, go for that, all right,
go light a cigarette on the stove. I like the cigarette,
and I come bring it to him. Because my house,
like I said, was the hangou spot. So they partied,

(15:01):
you know, three four days straight in a row, and
we just grew up in that environment. And so that's
actually where I see my first death was a fight
that happened in my own home. And just from being
in that environment, so many things transpire, and so it'd
be a sip here, a sip there, it be older

(15:21):
homies giving me it and you know and getting the
kick out of me being drunk and being so young
and being drunk. But yeah, that it was just a
part of the culture going, you know, it was just
a part of it. It didn't really take off until
later on. It didn't really like become a very big
part of my life until years later. It was just survival,

(15:45):
you know, growing up at that age. From twelve on
was I was moving into survival mode and I didn't
even know it. So, you know, I get older, you know,
he passes away, We get progressively more and more poor
lights getting turned off, were being evicted. So at fifteen,
I decided that, you know what, I have to do something,

(16:07):
you know, I gotta I gotta be able to like
help my My grandmother at that time was taking care
of us. She stepped up to the plate while my
mother was struggling, and I started to sell dope. And
so my first case I got at fifteen was, you know,
I was I was sounding dope. And I remember when
I got pulled over and the officer finds what he

(16:28):
found in my car. He walks back to me and
he says, what are you doing so young? With so
much you know, dope in your car. And my response
to him was, I'm just trying to feed my family,
and so now enter the system, which is a whole
nother level of complex trauma, you know, like being and
just to share some of that experience, you know, being

(16:49):
fifteen years old and now you're stripping down naked in
front of a grown person. You know, you're you're going
in the shower naked, and it's just it's just, it's
so it's such an experience that it's even harder to describe.
And it's as much as I understand, like, Okay, I
committed a crime, and definitely I have to you know,

(17:10):
I have to pay for the consequences. But at fifty
years old, even though I think I'm a grown man
and I think that I'm doing the right thing based
off of my circumstances, the experience of incarceration is just
it's bad. It's bad for our youth. And you're left
in a cell. Just give you a little bit. So

(17:30):
you have no shoes in the cell, you have no TV,
you have no books, and you're left in the cell
for twenty three and a half hours a day. Fuck,
and that's your life and you're pacing it. And this
is where things got progressively worse for me. This is
where as you were asking, like when did they get
real dark? It was post incarceration boor it was actually

(17:51):
so I get locked up at fifteen, I get out
four months later, I get locked up again at sixteen,
and this time it's a gang related situation. And while
I was in there, because you're left with your thoughts,
you know, all day. So you know, I'm in there
and I'm like, dad, where's my mother? At where's my mom?
And damn, you know what, I don't have a dad,
Like is anybody coming to visit me? You know? And

(18:13):
so they have visiting hours and I remember being in
my cell. Like I said, you're stuck in that cell
all day long. And you're lucky if you get some
wreck at night. But you're just stuck in the cell
all day, left alone with your thoughts. And I remember visiting.
I would always be at my window like hoping, you know,
kind of semi praying, but hoping that somebody was gonna come.

(18:37):
My grandmother, you know, she did the best she could,
but she struggled. She was older, you know, she had
five kids, and that that weren't hers, that were her
daughter's children that she was raising. So she had a
lot on her plate. And then I remember one night,
and I don't know, something surfaced inside of me. They
were calling people to visit. I remember there was like
these little bags of popcorn that people would get it,

(18:59):
and I don't know, I'm just being a kid. I
just wanted one of those bags of populorn. And I
remember standing at my window and going inside of myself,
saying to myself, nobody's coming on me. This is your life.
And I walked away from the window and I walked
to the back of the sound. I said to myself,

(19:21):
this is your life. There's nothing else. This is the
hand you were down and you're gonna play this ship
until it's over. And that's why I got that was
a moment. That was a moment where it got dark
and I said, that's it, and I thought I was
gonna die like that, and I begin to live like that.
So it went from being cautious about death and being

(19:43):
vigilant to oh, death is lurking on, Well, I'm going
to meet it in the street. I'm going to meet
it in the street. And I begin to pursue it.
I begin to daydream about it. I begin to fantasize
about it. I would daydream about my funeral like I
would close my eyes and I would picture it, and

(20:04):
then I would think, like I would wonder, I wonder
if my mom will stop getting high if I die.
I wonder if she'll cry at my casket. And there
was game on, like you said, and my life just
became a blur, became a blur of violence. I got
out eighteen, I went right back at eighteen. I got

(20:28):
out at twenty two, and I was right back in prison.
At twenty two. I was in the county final life
sentence and I ended up getting six years. So by
this time, just to give you a window into mine
and my mother's relationship, it was so estranged that she's
from my neighborhood. And homies would come to me and
they would say to me, hey, dog, your mom's over

(20:49):
here getting high. You should come check on her. My
response to them was, I don't have a mother, homie.
O right, Wow, that's how bad it was. Yeah, I
got it. Wow in there. I take my time go
up state, and I'm just living like that. I'm just
it's like fish to water, you know what I mean.

(21:10):
It's just I'm in it. And that's just what it
was for me every time. And it was my last
prison term. I leave the county, I get to the state,
and as soon as I got to the state, I
got worried that my mother had died. And it's even

(21:31):
hard to describe the pain that I felt like I
had been through so much by this time in life
that I felt like none I can affect you. Yeah,
nothing can affect me. You know. I felt like I
didn't have a heart to be broken. That's how I felt.
And when she died, it was like my soul was broken.

(21:53):
It was a pain that it just don't matter. As
much as I would push it down, it kept surfacing
on me. And this is where alcohol and this is
where drugs became a big part of my life because
I tried to numb it, I try to run from it.
I participated in violence. There was no escaping this pain.
Scene what was the pain?

Speaker 3 (22:15):
But he walked me through the pain.

Speaker 1 (22:16):
It was it was like, I guess, deep down inside
of my heart, that little boy, that little good heart
that was there all along. I guess always wanted his
mother's love and I guess that there was this little
part inside of me that hoped or thought that one
day everything okay someday and one day completely shot and

(22:37):
that was completely gone. Yeah, I had never gotten high.
I had drank, but I had I do you suld spoke.
I was twenty four and so I was more of
just like gang member, didn't use drugs, drank here and there.
But everything that I hated I became right. All the

(22:58):
drug addicts that I used to look down on, the
dudes in the prison yard that I seen going over
here to score and get high, that the gattos that
I would thought, I thought I was better than them
when I was doing my time prior to that experience.
Everything that I hated I became. I put the I
put a needle in my arm for the first time.

(23:18):
I was trying to escape this pain and there was
no escaping it. You know that saying everywhere you go,
there you are where you are. Man end up on
my last shot term I do. I'm like, I'm saying,
I'm participating, inviting. I'm maxed out. They can't give me
any more time unless they give me a new case
at this point because I'm maxed out. I maxed out
my time, and I'm in the hole and I got

(23:39):
no more drugs, I got no more alcohol, I got
nowhere to go. I'm in this little cell and I'm
looking at myself and I'm going, what's going on with you?
I thought I was losing my manhood because I had
never experienced such a pain that I couldn't stuff back
down and just keep it moving through. And I would
look at my and I'm sitting back during the hole,

(24:03):
and I had to come to terms with the fact
that I missed my mother. And it was so tough
because in prison, you don't miss anybody. You're not supposed to.
You're not allowed to. It's not a part of the culture.
You don't celebrate holidays, you don't look at a calendar,
you don't tell somebody, hey, I'm sad because my mom

(24:25):
just died or my aunt just died. It's just not
a part of the culture. And so I'm going through
all this internally on my own, and it was it was,
it was hard. It was hard to face all that.
I remember I had this moment. We have these little
tiny mirrors and they're stuck to the cell wall, and

(24:48):
I remember looking in my reflection, looking at my reflection,
and I'm all tatted up, everything face tatted at that time.
My next I'm all tatted up, and I look at
my reflection and I look at myself and inside of myself,
I look at myself and I say, who the fuck
are you? Like? How did you get to this point?

(25:13):
M And I started to reflect on my life by myself,
and I started to think back on this little boy
that school. I used to watch sitcoms when I was
growing up, like family matters, you know, it's a small wonderings.
And I and my favorite part of those sitcoms was

(25:33):
the family was the dad, was the mom, and and
being when I was a little boy. I used to
sit there and I used to yearn for the family
that I saw on TV. Here I was grown man
in the hole, and I was yearning for that again.
Home home. We all want home, right, we all want

(25:54):
y'all want? And And what's so interesting I say this
now in might sound crazy, but that was the beginning
of my change. And I didn't even know it yet.
My mother did more for me and death than she
was ever able to do for me in life. Fuck,
And because her death was I didn't know it at

(26:17):
the time, but her death was going to be the
beginning of my new life. Wow, because nothing was going
to change me home. Yeah, you're right, and that changed
me wo forever altered, just like the decision I made
a joining gang. That experience, it changed the course of
my life because I had to come to terms with
everything else after that. I was only able to understand

(26:40):
my mother's drug addiction because I had one. I was
only able to understand my mother's alcoholism because I became
an alcohol I was only able to understand my mother's
pain because I had so much pain and I was
able to release her. And it didn't happen right away,
but are to reflect, and I started to think, like,

(27:02):
I'm a drug addict, you know. I said, I will
never be this because my mother was a drug addict.
And I started to understand her, you know, I started
to get to know her more than I had ever
known her because of the things that I had suffered from.
And and that was only the beginning, because a lot
of that I didn't know until I came to Homeboy.

Speaker 2 (27:23):
So let's walk from that moment, because how'd you get
out of jail?

Speaker 1 (27:28):
So I eventually came home I got. I parolled and
I probed with all of that. I parolled with, you know,
a drug addiction. I parolled with just this internal turmoil.
But I wanted to do the right thing. I had this,

(27:48):
you know.

Speaker 2 (27:48):
So that do the right thing started coming back for you.
That do the right thing got half that day. And
so that was your white light experience.

Speaker 1 (27:54):
That was it, right, Yeah, I'll sure, let me give
you a little bit more context walk through that. All right,
I'm going through all this in the hole, right, And
so I start seeking and I don't know what I'm seeking,
but I started to like have these subtle prayers like
are you real? You know? And then it was more

(28:16):
like if you're real, are you real? If you're real,
show yourself. And then it was like show yourself to me,
like help me. I would standing on my cell door
and where I was at. They're called honeycomb, So it's
this metal sheet but it has these little small holes

(28:37):
in it, so all you can see is shadows of men.
You can't see their face, you just see shadows of men.
And at this time ACLU had come into the California
prison institutions because they were leaving us in the whole
too long, and they were leaving people back there too
long and left with their thoughts too long. And they
knew it was wrong, but because of our culture, we

(28:57):
couldn't talk to anybody. So the therapy would start and
they would have their stab proofs vest and they would
walk the tears because they just had to. It became
a part of the programming in there, and they would
check on people like, hey, do you need anybody talk
to you? You guys, okay, But everybody would do the
same thing. They would say, get off my door, don't
stop on my door, because, like I said, it's just

(29:17):
not a part of the culture. So they would walk,
and I remember when I would see the first therapist
get on the tier and start to walk, something inside
of me would be like, oh, I wish I could
talk to somebody right, you know, but we can't, And so,
you know, I would have that yearning. And then they
would get to my door and I'd do it like
everybody else, they get off my door, don't stop here, okay,

(29:39):
you know. But then there was another dude that would
walk the tier and he was a pastor or a chaplain,
and he would come with a book cart and he
would passed out books. Micelli was an atheist, so we
didn't believe in anything, didn't talk about God, no connection
to anything. Really, there was no talk of any of
that in myself. But he was an artist, so what

(30:00):
he would do is he would rip the books, rip
the literature out of the books, and he would draw
on the white part of the books. And so, like
I said, I'm yearning, I'm seeking, like I want, like,
I want to figure out what's going on in me,
you know, I want to figure out am I connected
to anything greater than myself? But I didn't know how
to do it. So I'm you know, I'm trying to
be slick with it. So the therapist come one day,

(30:23):
boom and here comes the chaplain. He has his little
book card and then so I wait till he gets
to my cell. Well before he gets to my cell,
I asked my Sally, I go, hey, homey, you need
any of those little pamphlets or whatever. He goes, yeah,
grab me a couple. He's facing the back of the wall.
He's drawing. So the chaplain comes and I said, hey,
you got any of those pamphlets? You know that you
normally hand out he says, oh, yeah, I got something.

(30:45):
I go, you got a Bible in there? I whisper,
all right, we got a Bible in there. The chaplain
was on point, like Stacy Adams. He slices me this,
the packet, the pamphlets. I grabbed the Bible with this hand,
and the papilids to my sally, and I stashed the Bible.
I don't even touch it until later on at night,

(31:07):
so I leave it there. But all day I'm thinking
about it. You know. Nightfall comes and we had this
little beam of light through our back of our cell,
through the back window, a little beam of light. So
I wait, I wait to see, Like it's mysell asleep
while I'm listening. So I think he's asleep. I get
up and I grab the Bible, open it up, and

(31:29):
it was the old King James version, right, so it's
not thou Art. And I'm like, what the fuck is
this saying? You know what I mean, Like what is
he saying? So I put it away next, you know,
next night, try to read a little bit more. But
I sell that to say, it's like I begin to
actively seek something greater than myself. Didn't understand much of it,

(31:57):
but it was the beginning of seeking for me is like,
if there's something else, if there's a possibility that there's
something else for me out there, I want to find it.
You know. I know I can't fully do it where
I'm at, but I want to find something if there
is something for me. And I came home. I came

(32:18):
home with a bit of that seeking, but a whole
lot of trauma and a whole lot of baggage, and
a whole lot of pain, a whole lot of shame,
a whole lot of guilt. But my best thought was
get a job, you know, find a job, And so
I did. I worked for a temp agency in South LA,

(32:41):
and so you had the facetastic did yeah fuck dude,
you know, yeah, wow, I get a job. But because
of these you know, I'm on parole, I'm on high
control parole, and I got all these barriers because I
got to put on the application. So they're giving me
like four hours at one spot, and they're giving me

(33:02):
like four hours across town and another factory. So I'm
going through all of this, right, and my best way
to cope is drink of forty right, you know what
I mean. And that's just how I live. That's I
didn't know anything else, and so here I am struggling boom.
I didn't know Father G growing up the way a

(33:22):
lot of homies do. But I had heard about him
growing up. But he's like a mythological creature, what I mean, like,
you know, because what priests you know what I mean?
Does this for gang members? Specifically intentionally helps gang members,
you know what I say? And so you know, you hear
stories from homies that are from his area and they

(33:44):
would be like, oh yeah, Father G G Dog. You know,
he looked out for me and he helped me out
when I was a kid, and I you know, would
be like on the pull up bars or whatever and
on the way power and I do my next set,
like yeah, sure, homie, sure this pre I bought you, yeah,
the shoes for school. But I stumbled upon the number

(34:04):
to Homeboy Industries, and I called down there looking for
a job, though not looking for anything else but a
job because I didn't have what year we got now
this is twenty thirteen, twenty thirteen.

Speaker 4 (34:17):
Yeah wow, yeah wow, I know, fuck man, No, So
I called down there and Homie answers the phone.

Speaker 1 (34:27):
I could tell to Homie, but he selfs pretty professional.
So he says, uh, well, I say to him, I say, hey, well,
he says, homeboy Industries, how can I help you? And
I said, I'm looking for a job. Are you guys hiring?
And he says, well, let me ask you a few questions.
I said okay. He says, have you ever been locked
up before? I'm like, what kind of question is this?

(34:50):
I said, uh yeah, Homie, I just got out. He goes,
have you ever been involved with gangs? And I'm like, yeah,
you know, I'm honest. I said, yeah, I'm a gang member.
He says, are you currently on probation or parole? I
say I'm on high control parole. He says, okay, one

(35:10):
more question. Do you have any visible tattoos like on
your face, neck, hands, or arms? Hey. I remember looking
at myself and I'm all tatted up. And I said, yeah, homie,
I'm all tatted up. He says, okay, we'll give you
a job. And I'm like what, I say, are you serious? Onie? Wow?
He says, yeah, we'll give you a job. Can you

(35:31):
come down here today? I said, I'm on my way
and I went, and I would like to say the
rest was history. But it was a lot of work.
It walked me through.

Speaker 3 (35:42):
Going through to the first time there. Buddy, what was
that like?

Speaker 1 (35:44):
Yeah, it was. It was intense for me. It was
I remember walking up looking in and gang members everywhere,
and you've been there, you know, you know what it's like.
It's very stimulating. It's a lot of people.

Speaker 3 (35:57):
There's an energy there.

Speaker 1 (35:58):
There's an energy there. But there's GAG members everywhere, everywhere.
Everywhere you look, there's a dead everywhere. Right. So I
walk up and that's the first thing I see, and
I remember thinking to myself, Oh, no, this place ain't
for me. I'm trying to get away from the gangs,
you know what I mean. Not knowing that it was,

(36:19):
I was going to have a different experience with it.
So I walk in and they asked me to fill
out the intake for him. And so I'm sitting there
and I'm filling it out and I noticed this dude
walk by. Most tattoos I've ever seen, eyelids, head, face, ears,
everything tatted up. And I noticed him walk by, and

(36:40):
then I noticed him noticed me. I'm not go oh,
here it is, you know. I put the clipboard down,
get it. I'm used to this, you know. So as
he begins to walk towards me, and my heart starts
to raise, and I say to myself, here it is,
you know, it's on. He walks up and he extends
his hand to me, and he says, hey, my name

(37:02):
is Mario. I've never seen you before. Oh man, is
there anything I can help you with? Would you like
some water or something to drink? And I remember shaking
his hand, and I'm thinking to myself, what the fuck
is this place? Right? And I know that might sound
trivial to some people. I know, you know that it's
not man, but just to share with the audience, it's

(37:22):
it's for a gang member to approach another gang member
and to not asking where he's from, or to not
you know, initiate some form of violence. It's huge, right,
And I remember thinking to myself, like, what is this place?
Our experiences they shape us, you know, they shape the
way that we view ourselves, and they shape the way
that we view the world. And so I've had a

(37:45):
world at that point, I've had a world of negative
experiences and it shaped me, shaped my perspective, you know,
on the world and on myself in the world. And
so it was experiences like that that begin to reshape
my mind, but not only my mind, my heart, begin
to reshape my heart. I'll share another experience that was

(38:08):
like one of those pivotal moments in my life. I
ended up bringing my little brother to Homeboy. Well, I
asked Father Jean, I said, hey, Gene, you know I've
located my little brother. I want to help him out.
You think we can help him out? And he said, sure, son,
we'll bring him. We'll put him in school, and we'll
give him a part time job and he could be
here with us. And I was just so grateful, and

(38:31):
so I bring him. And you know, we didn't have
much in the early days. Whatever clothes we had on
our back and whatever he had, but we would share it.
And so I was a lot dinner back then, like
sixty pounds dinner. So my brother and I wore the
same size of clothes. And so if I had these
pants on, he would have them on. We would swap.

(38:53):
And we had this saying at homeboy, we see you,
We see you, yeah talking right now, We don't watch you,
but we see you.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
Because that brother that shook his hand, he saw you,
he saw me, he saw you. It's disarming, and it's
real and you can't fake the fuck.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
You can't because it has to be authentic. It has
to be real, right, you know, just like when we
see homies here and it's real, real, authentic, because then
what that is that creates hope for me, it's hoping
the flesh, that's what it is. And it has to
be real, you know. And that's why it's so important
that we're doing this and that you're doing what you're

(39:27):
doing and she's doing what he's doing, because it gots
to be real. Use will have an excuse to go
back to that life exactly and go, oh, I knew
this was faith that yeah, and then exactly exactly, and
so it was real, it was authentic. I could reach
out and touch it. And that's that whole thing about

(39:48):
I see you and and so they've seen us, you know,
they've seen us fully. They've seen us for our gifts
and they've seen us for our challenges. And so one
day we come in, you and your brother and my brother,
and the homie at the front desk. He says, hey, father,
G wants to talk to you guys. And I look
at my brother like, oh, what did you do? HOI,

(40:08):
you know, we're in trouble. And we go into G's
office and he's sitting at his desk and he has
these two serious cards in his hand and he tries
to handle to us and we say, no, we're okay, pops,
we don't need anything. Said, son, take these cards and
go buy yourself some clothes reluctant, and he we took
the cards and we laugh immediately. H We're going down Alameda.

(40:33):
And you know, growing up, we lived a certain way,
you know, we abided by certain rules. It was instilled
in us as children. And I'm ashamed to say this now,
but I don't believe in this anymore. But growing up,
we would always say, don't ever cry, don't ever demonstrate weakness,
because people will see it and they'll take advantage of you.

(40:54):
So don't ever cry. And that's how I was raised,
and that's how I raised them. And so here we
are now leaving in G's office and we're going down
on the media and my little brother's crying and he's
sobbing on me and I look over at him and
I say to him, I said, what's up, Why are
you crying? And his response to me was, why the

(41:15):
fuck do they care about us so much? Fuck? Man right,
It's like he couldn't wrap his head around love is
too much. It was so much. I didn't have any
words for him at that moment. But that experience, just
like the experiences I had as a child that changed

(41:38):
the course of my life, that experience changed the course
of my heart. Like I knew in that moment that
I wanted to be a part of Homeboy. I knew
that I wanted to be a part of creating experiences
like that that that help people see their words. Because
if I would have had the words, my words to
him would have been because you mad at homie, because
you're a good kid, because you're because you're important, because

(42:03):
you deserve to be loved. But I knew in that
moment that I wanted to help create experiences like that
for people, you know that did it. And it was
after that. Whatever they put me on, I was on it.
If it was the restrooms, whatever it was, if it
was security, if it was in the bakery, Like I

(42:24):
just felt like, I'm down to do I'm down to
make the coffee here, you know, because this place is
real and I want to be a part of doing this.
For others, and then it was a whole lot of work.
You know, it was just a whole lot of of
course that type of work, but it was a whole
lot of internal work.

Speaker 2 (42:42):
Yeah, let's talk about that, okay, and then we'll get
more into the day to day of homeboy, right, okay, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (42:47):
Because you said it wasn't easy.

Speaker 2 (42:49):
You walked in there all of a sudden, you know,
you made peace with your past and the PTSD is gone,
and your drug fiction's gone, and your pay with your
mom's gone, and you know.

Speaker 1 (42:58):
It was a process, ye know. And it was being
in therapy. It was talking about some of the stuff
that I was feeling. It was identifying some of the
things that were happening internally with me being able to
put words to what I was feeling, like PTSD, trauma,
social anxiety, Like I had no idea what any of

(43:20):
that stuff meant. I knew how I felt. I knew
that I felt like I knew that how I would
fill in a grocery store, but I didn't know that
it was social anxiety or and I didn't know that
it was PTSD, you know, because in prison everything's control movement,
so it's you know, you go from your cell to

(43:41):
the chow hall, back to your cell. The door closes,
you don't open the door. Everything's controlled. You go from
your cell to the yard, back to your cell. You know,
you go from your cell to the yard. Someone gets stabbed,
right back to yourself. From your cell to the chow hall,
someone gets stabbed, or as a riot, back to your
cell or back to a cell. And so what was

(44:05):
so interesting that I became more comfortable being in such
a confined setting than being in a setting that had
too much movement, or that what I thought was too
much movement because there was too much there was too
many variables, there was too much room for something bad
to happen. And as I look back on it now,

(44:26):
because of therapy and because of a lot of these processes,
I was able to identify the moment or one of
the moments. And I was nineteen years old, I was
in corkin state prison. I remember walking to chownel and
I got this feeling that something bad was going to happen,
and I tapped my sound and go, hey, it's going
to jump off. Get ready. I feel it's coming. Because

(44:47):
we had already endured so much, and we had already
seen so much, and I said, get ready on me,
and then we go We get our trade, we sit down,
we eat, we finished eating, we go back. We're walking
back towards cell, get back into our cell, and nothing
ever happened. So I'm okay, my spidy sensors are off,

(45:10):
and then we do this all over again, and then
here it comes again. Ain't something bad is going to happen?
And then nothing happens, So my spidy sensors are off.
So because of so much, it was like, and I
didn't know it at the time, but it was just
I didn't no longer feel safe in that chell hall. Yeah,
you know what I mean. I felt even though not
consciously but subconsciously, I felt like I could deal with

(45:32):
one dude in a cell, but I don't know what
can happen potentially on this yard, you know what I mean,
or in this chell hall, or on the way pole.
And so it became more of a comfortability in that cell.
And then being in the grocery store was similar, but
even more intense because there was so much movement. There

(45:54):
was so much movement. There's people walking this way, walking
that way, walking behind you, shopping carts, clerks, all these
different sounds going off, you know what I mean. And
I had to figure all that out. But I had help,
you know, I had help. I had people in my life.

Speaker 2 (46:11):
Because now you're telling people you're scared. Yeah, but now
you're asking for help.

Speaker 3 (46:14):
Yeh know.

Speaker 1 (46:15):
Shit, it was hard, you know. Yeah, I know, brother,
I know it was hard. Yeah, I know, because you know,
you have to trust somebody enough to.

Speaker 3 (46:24):
Tell them and trust to take it takes time.

Speaker 1 (46:26):
Trust takes time. Trust takes time, it does. And you
know I didn't initially trust the therapist at first. Why
should you? Yeah, because I didn't know what therapy.

Speaker 3 (46:36):
Everything's jibe very right, exactly right?

Speaker 1 (46:39):
Yeah, or they're a cop or something. Why are you
shocking many? Why are you writing this down? So it
was it was, uh, you know, I I you know,
they say you don't have to dance with everybody, but
you gotta dance with somebody, you know, And I found
dancing partners.

Speaker 3 (46:54):
Let's let me just add to that.

Speaker 2 (46:55):
We say in the program you don't have to have
twelve people.

Speaker 3 (46:59):
All you need is one person you tell the truth to.

Speaker 2 (47:01):
That's right, just one person that you can lay the
truth down, right. But I want to get into Homeboy,
the day to day operations.

Speaker 3 (47:09):
Your experience there, but I think I just want to.
I don't know. We're in the timeline Salvation Army.

Speaker 1 (47:14):
So it's during the same time as Homeboy. Yeah, everything's
parallel now because now I'm actually getting the help that
I need. Boom. I'm starting to realize that there's things
which I knew already. I knew something's broken inside of me,
but I had no idea how to fix it. So
I started to trust. You know, Initially it was hard.
It was difficult because we were bombarded by so much love.

(47:37):
So my first my early days at Homeboy was five
feet Homie. I want you arms distance away from me.
You feel me like I was shaking hands and I'm
having a stiff army. I want you here or here.
I don't want you hugging me. I don't want you
coming too close to me because if you get too
close to me, you could potentially hurt me. But that
wasn't sustainable, you know, it was it was. It was. Yeah,

(48:01):
it was hard to be around so much love and
not be able to embrace it because of my own stuff.
So the first time I left, I left for you know,
a month or whatever, a few weeks and I came back.
The second time I came back was more. Now I
had more people that I knew, excuse me. And what
brought me back was people actually knowing my name and

(48:23):
people actually reaching out to me to check on me.
You know how you doing when you're gonna come back?
We miss you here, And I'm like, what, how do
you miss me? Exactly? How do you love me? Don't
they know that my own mom would show up? That
was the narrative. How do you ourselves? We're starting, we're

(48:45):
telling ourselves, how do you How is it that you
loved me? And my story is not even my own
mother loved me, This false narrative. But I'm living it
out time. But they're just breaking down the walls. We
love you, we miss you, can't wait to see you.
How you been? Can we get some coffee? You want
to get a burger? So it started to it started

(49:09):
to pierce, you know, it started to chip at the walls.
And then I started to trust, you know, And I
remember the homie that first sat down with me. He's
the one that encouraged me to go to the Salvation Army.
His name is Fabian that Borda and I remember him.
He's just this. I mean, he has just a way
with his words of paying a picture for you. Right.

(49:31):
But when he first set me down to talk to
me about this drug issue that I had, or this
addiction issue that I had, I was thinking to myself,
who is this fool to tell me that I'm a
drug addict? You know what I mean? I got high
with my own mom, homie, you know what I mean,
And you're gonna sit here and tell me that I
have an issue with But because I started to trust,

(49:54):
and because I started to be open, especially to Father
G's love, Like, if ged trust is this dude, then
I got to at least give him a chance. Wow.
And I did, and he said to me, he goes, yeah,
you know what, we're gonna have you go to rehab.
First time was for ninety days. And my response to
him was, I don't have a drug problem. Ho mean,
you know I have a gang problem. You know I've

(50:15):
never been locked up for drugs, only for selling drugs,
but all my adult cases, I have no drug possession
anything on my record. And he's like, yeah, well look
at it as maybe your lifestyle is an addiction. Then
and he just always had a response to all my rebuttals.
He said, just give it a chance. And so I
did it. I did ninety days, and man, and this

(50:37):
is this is where like the rooms, and this is
where recovery, and this is where like that spirit that
Father G has like we get to really really see it.
And I'll explain how I got to see it. So
I do this program, and I programmed, you know, as
if it was like a little little you know, I'm
doing a ninety day whatever blackout. And so I'm in
there and I'm doing my birpies and I'm going to

(50:59):
work every day, but I'm still not walking a straight line.
I'm signing my groups, I'm forging them. And so I
had got to my ninety days already, but because I
wanted it was like one of those things like I
wanted to complete it just because I wanted to complete
it now right, but I was still doing it wrong.

(51:20):
So at ninety days, I could have left and went
back to Homeboy. That was the deal. They told me.
They say, hey, if you do ninety days, you come
back and we have your job for you. But if
you don't do ninety days, we don't have your job.
So I said, okay, boy, I'm gonna do the ninety days.
But then I remember at a certain point I said,
you know what, I think I could do the whole
six months, but I'm doing it wrong. And I got caught.
And so the manager of the house one night, he

(51:41):
calls me down and he has all my signatures and
he says, what is this man? You know you're forging
your signatures? And I was so offended, I said to him,
and I worked for a word I can't remember, but
I said something them to the likes of I said, homie,
fuck you. You know what I mean? I go, I said,
you know what on me, I'm not even a drug?

(52:03):
Had it done? I said, you know what on me?
I'm leaving tonight and you'll never see me again. And
I got my bag and I walked out of that house.
And I want to say about four months later, I
was begging me to go back into.

Speaker 5 (52:20):
That program, right because I you bagging because I had relapsed,
right and the addiction was worse than it had ever been,
and I felt so ashamed and disappointed, and it got.

Speaker 1 (52:34):
Dark again and I got hopeless again because I couldn't
stop this time, right, like there was no stopping me.
And I did everything I could to stop. You know,
I worked out in the morning, you know, all these
things that we go through to stop on our own,
and it just didn't happen. And I lost my place

(52:55):
again at homeboy, but same deal applied. They said, look it,
we love you, we got you. But if you can
go back into a rehab and this time you do
six months, we got your job, we got your spot.
And I couldn't catch. I couldn't get clean. To save
my life. I couldn't catch a day, homie, and I
need it. I needed three days to get into the

(53:16):
Salvation Army because you have to go and clean. You
can't go in dirty for anything hard. And I remember like,
I'm going now, I'm back at that prayer again. Now
I'm back at that help me. I need you desperate desperation, homie,
and by the grace of God, there go I yeah,

(53:39):
And so this is the this is the kicker, though.
So I go back to the Salvation Army and I
was so ashamed of myself because the same house manager
was there and I dreaded seeing him because of the
last words that I said to him. And I remember
being an intake, and I'm doing my intake and I'm like, damn,
I don't want to run into this dude, Like how

(54:01):
you know, I feel so stupid, I feel so ashamed
of myself. And then I get my role and my
going to the house and he comes out to greet me,
and the first thing he does, Homie, was hug me
and embraces me. He says, welcome back, dog.

Speaker 3 (54:15):
Yeah, welcome back, right, because we don't do gotcha here.

Speaker 1 (54:19):
We don't do that. We do we say welcome back,
welcome back. That's not a part of our program. Now.

Speaker 2 (54:24):
We don't do gotcha, man clowns do gotcha. We say
welcome back. That's right because we know the humility took
for you to get.

Speaker 1 (54:30):
Your ass back here.

Speaker 3 (54:30):
Absolutely, and we're gonna love up on you.

Speaker 1 (54:32):
And it's a miracle that you made it straight up, brother,
because a lot of people don't. And I remember, and
it just I felt at h and then like the
way that I felt at homeboy was similar to how
I was feeling now, And I was like, you know what,
I'm gonna give myself to this. I'm gonna give myself

(54:52):
to this program. And I remember the first time because
I the first time around, I never raised my hand
and said my name so, and I thought I was
too cool for school to do that. And I remember
the first time I did that. My name is Jose
and I'm an alcoholic. I felt liberated home. I felt

(55:15):
connected to something greater than myself I did. I felt connected.
I felt like I found my place. I found I
found my tribe, but not even just my tribe. I
found my village. Because you have your outers, you know,
you have the homies your age, you have the ones
that are struggling still. And I gave myself to it

(55:35):
and I completed. But so that now I want to
give you more of the spiritual aspect of the program is.
I had a sponsored old timer, straight old timer, just
he was one of those like we're not waiting, We're
doing this shit. You know, we're gonna take you through
the twelve steps. We're gonna go sit, you're gonna write
your stuff out, We're gonna go through it. You're gonna
burn it, you know what I mean. Like we got

(55:57):
busy and uh, this is you know, this is just
what it is. He one day, you know, and he
had a lot of respect for me. I have a
lot of respect for him to this day. Older dude. Older,
older dude. And then one day he says that he
goes hey, he takes me to the side and he says, hey,
you know, I'm smoking a little bit of weed. And
I just wanted to be honest with you. And so

(56:17):
I used to also have a loyalty problem, or I
was one of those dudes. I didn't care if you're
doing wrong or not. I'm rolling with you. But by
this time I had learned a little bit right and
I started to love myself and I would have stuck
with him, but I knew that I couldn't. I knew
that I had to say to him, I appreciate you

(56:38):
for telling me this, homie, but I got to find
somebody else.

Speaker 3 (56:42):
Trust your gut.

Speaker 1 (56:43):
I trusted my door, trust your gut, and he respected it.
And so and this is a miracle. You know. I
have a bro named Adam, and I'm talking about this
dude is my spiritual brother. Like I feel like he's
my spiritual brother. And we would go well, I would
go to this minute. So I got into I got
heavy into meditating bro heavy because I couldn't do it.

(57:05):
Like I remember the first time trying to meditate because
of all the prison I could not close my eyes.
I was sitting there and I would open my eyes
immediately because I just couldn't, like emotionally, physically, I couldn't
do it. And so I said to myself, Okay, he
gotta do it now, because it's this is something that
can help you. The Eleventh Step sot through prayer and meditation

(57:25):
to improve our conscious contact with God. And I needed
a whole lot of God. And so I started to
go down the street. There was this every day. Every
day was eleven Step meeting, and I started to meditate,
and I met a bro there and he would, you know,
so I'm still like limited to how many people I
want to dance with. Sure, bro, I still have kind

(57:46):
of my walls up, right. So he would tell me
about this amazing dude named Russell. And my response to
him was always, I don't need anybody else. You know,
I'm cool. I don't want to meet anybody else. But
I got to introduce you to him, and I would say,
I don't want to meet anybody else. Dog, it's just
me and you. It's cool, you know, I'm good with that.

(58:08):
And then one night he convinced me. He says, come
to this meeting, dog, that that was a good bro
of mine, has as pat. I said, all right, I'm
gonna go because of you, but I really don't want
to kick with nobody else. I don't want to meet
anybody else. I didn't even have a cell phone at
that time, so you know, I'm using the patient. It
was rough. And so I get to this meeting. I

(58:29):
walk in and uh, you know, immediately the story starts
in our head. I don't fit in here. I'm all
tatted up, you know, I'm in this penthouse, beautiful penthouse, beauty,
these white dudes. Yeah, exactly. It just started to go.
And so I kind of, you know, I I put

(58:50):
myself off to the side and and Russell walks over
to me. What's up, bro? You know, welcome? I said,
you good? You know? I said, oh, yeah, you know, yeah,
I'm all right, but you know, kind of feel like
I don't fit in right here, only you know, and
well why, well, I don't know, maybe because how I
look or I don't know, kind of maybe what are
people gonna think of me right here? And his response

(59:13):
to me was he says, damn, you're kind of selfish.
Hum And I said what yeah, right. He goes, yeah,
you're a little selfish. Huh yeah, I said selfish? What
do you mean? He says, yeah, because all you're thinking
about is yourself. Yeah, how you fit right here? If
we're thinking about you, have you thought about anybody else today?

(59:36):
And I said, damn, it just hit me knockout much.
And immediately I knew this was the dude. This is
the cat man, this is the cat right, because he's real,
it's authentic, and he sees you and he sees me right,
and I could reach on and touch it because it's
that real, right, and I needed that authenticity right.

Speaker 2 (59:55):
Wow, wow, Okay, you meet Russell, the five foot handshake
becomes three feet, becomes two feet, becomes hugged. Absolutely, Okay,
I'm sober, you're tapped in your love being sober. You
meet a girl along the way, Yeah, I met my
wife actually when I was in prison.

Speaker 1 (01:00:10):
Yeah, yep, and you know that was rough. We're together,
but I'm living that life and so I come home
and and just try to do the best I can
with what I know, and fail and fail and fail
a lot, but with the intention that I wanted to
do good you know, I wanted to take care of
my family. You know, as I look back on my life,

(01:00:31):
I always wanted to be a dad. Yeah. I used
to pray when I was a kid and when I
was going through things. I remember being like fourteen and
I was living with somebody and I was going through
a lot, and I had I was going through this,
this abusive situation. I live with this lady. She would
put she would say, put your hand out, and she
would whip me with this bound I lived with her

(01:00:51):
for like a year, and but that didn't hurt me
as much as the words would hurt, you know. And
so she would say things to me like, your mother
doesn't care about you. You know, nobody cares about you.
That's why you're living with me. So the beatings were
nothing compared to her words. And I remember one night
she she was yelling at me and she was telling

(01:01:13):
me that, you know, your mom doesn't even care about you.
And I would never cry in front of her. I
would never give her the satisfaction to see me cry.
But I would go in the restroom and I will cry. Yeah,
I would let it out. And I remember one night
I going to the restroom and I'm crying, Hoian, and
I don't know why, but I was just like I prayed,
like I pray that I have five kids one day

(01:01:36):
because I'll never do this to them. Because there was
five of us growing up in South the oldest and
then my two brothers and my two sisters. And you know,
fast forward today and I have five kids and they're
loved and the loved and they're safe and they're safe
and they'll never know what it is to be a
gang member. Why is that, buddy, Because we created a

(01:01:58):
different situation for them, right, you know, a different circumstances
for them. They're not growing up in intensive poverty. They're
not growing up, you know, being abused. They're not growing
up lacking the basic necessities that a child needs to develop.
You know, they're supported, they're held, they have a roof

(01:02:19):
over their head, they have a sober father. They have
a sober father.

Speaker 2 (01:02:22):
Right wow, wow, right on man, that's so beautiful, buddy.

Speaker 1 (01:02:27):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
Well, because as you know here at Shell, our big
thing is any generational trauma.

Speaker 3 (01:02:32):
That's right, and you're doing that. The greatest thing Father Boyler,
I ever taught you is man.

Speaker 1 (01:02:39):
He's taught me so many things yeah. I think one
of the things that I think about that as I'm
getting older now and i'm realizing, is one night we're
in his office kind of after hours, and we're sitting
there and we're talking. We're going back and forth, we're
talking about stuff, and I don't even know how it
came up or why it came up, but I remember

(01:02:59):
him saying, oh, it was about God's love. I think
it was about God's love, and like, God's love sustaining us, okay,
And so he says something to me to the like,
so he says, son, he says, everything that you love
in life, one day you're going to lose it all.
Can God's love sustain you? And I remember thinking, like, damn,

(01:03:24):
that's a morbid kind of you know statement. But as
I think about it today in my own personal life
and my journey, I'm starting to realize. And it's not
always as simple as just realizing it, but it's a practice.
I'm starting to realize that life's not about what we get.
Life's not about getting things, you know. And I always

(01:03:45):
thought it was like get the house, get the car,
get the family, get the job, get the career, get
the accolade. But as I get older, and I've learned
this from g to have a light grass is life
is about how do you let go, you know, letting
go and not taking things so serious, having a light

(01:04:07):
grass and you know, not taking things personal and just
like letting go, you know, to all these things, but
not like not connecting to them, like connect to them,
but don't attach to them, you know what I mean.
So I think that's one of the biggest things because

(01:04:27):
I see him in the day to day and I
see him like, go through stuff, but not hold on
to it too long.

Speaker 2 (01:04:32):
You're dealing th real stuff over there all day long, right,
all day long? Right, yeah, I mean, but what has
kept you going there? Because it's an art dealing You've
got a lot happening there. I mean, walk people through
a little bit of the energy when you go there
and what you're dealing with and the messaging and how
you've learned to be patient, generous, right and walk people

(01:04:55):
through that process.

Speaker 1 (01:04:56):
It's triage, it really is. You know. We have we
definitely have like we have our social enterprises, we have
our restaurant, we have our bakery, but we hire people
that are in desperate need of health and resources. So
we hire the most violent offender. We hire, we reverse
cherry pick, So just like myself when I called down there,

(01:05:17):
we hire the ones that are most likely to reoffend
if we don't help them. And so it's trio just
like you know, gang members that come in that are
high control parole. Some of them have to check in
with their pro office twice a week. Some of them
are have DCF cases, they're trying to get their children back,
struggling with subst abuse issues, mental health issues, dual diagnosed.

(01:05:42):
I mean people that have done thirty eight years in
prison to gang members that have not done a lot
of time but are still living in those circumstances and
those environments that are active and violent. So we're just
doing the best we can to one connect them with
people that they can trust, because we believe in connecting

(01:06:02):
people with people first, and then people the resources, because
nobody will ever tell you what they need unless they
trust you, amen, you know. So we're big on connecting
people to people and then providing a community of tenderness
and belonging where people feel like they matter there and
so they come back the next day, you know what
I mean. And then of course wrap around services, mental

(01:06:25):
health services, anger management, domestic violence, meditation, every you know,
mostly every We try to create as many pathway as
the healing as possible. The arts. We have a youth
reentry center to have an art academy. We have a
tattoo removal clinic where we remove more tattoos than anybody
on the planet because we remove them for free.

Speaker 2 (01:06:48):
Why do they do that, Why it's the principle behind
tattoo removal.

Speaker 1 (01:06:51):
Well, I think, well, now I understand it a lot more.
I did it at first, right, But when you see
like gang members with tattoos on them, their neighborhoods on
their head, they're inviting death right, they're chasing death right.

Speaker 3 (01:07:04):
It's a message.

Speaker 1 (01:07:04):
It's a message because it's basically saying to your enemy,
and you don't have to ask me where I'm from.
You can see it right and you know, shoot at
me whatever whatever you're going to do. And I started
to realize that when one day I was pumping gas
and I had my kids in the car and I
was pumping gas and the car pools into the parking lot,
and I had my neighborhood all over me, and I thought,

(01:07:27):
in that moment, I was afraid a little bit of
like something happening or me not being there for my children.
And after that date, I was on a Saturday. On
that Monday, I began tattoo Remobile to get my tattoos removed,
my gang related tattoos removed. Right. That's huge, man, because
it was now now no longer chasing death, but it
was pursuing life and wanting to live and having something

(01:07:48):
bigger to live for.

Speaker 3 (01:07:50):
Amen, Amen, fuddy, Amen.

Speaker 2 (01:07:53):
A lot of brothers and sisters listening to the show
is struggling right now, having a hard time, try and go.
We got holidays coming up, you know, hard time for people.

Speaker 1 (01:08:03):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:08:04):
What's your message to everybody right now? What do you
want to say to everybody?

Speaker 1 (01:08:09):
I would say that you're worthy, above above everything that
you've been through, things that you've been told or things
that you tell yourself. You are worthy and you matter
to somebody, and it's okay to reach out, it's okay
to share with somebody that you're struggling. And you don't
got to dance with everybody, but you got to dance

(01:08:30):
with somebody. And my prayer and my hope for you
is that you find somebody that you can dance to,
and you can dance with and be honest with and
get the help that you need because you're deserving of it.
You're deserving of it. Beautiful.

Speaker 2 (01:08:45):
What's the message you have for the person who keeps
free lapsing, keep.

Speaker 1 (01:08:48):
Coming back no matter what, just keep coming back, keep
showing up right right.

Speaker 3 (01:08:54):
Thank you brother? Yeah, it's so good right it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:58):
Just look at that smile, man, there's nothing but lighten
God and love and Saruner and that smile of yours.

Speaker 1 (01:09:02):
Brother.

Speaker 3 (01:09:03):
Let's keep it going than.

Speaker 1 (01:09:04):
Okay, thank you so much. You know, it's just like
I said, it's always just amazing to being your presence.
And I love you, don I love everything you do,
all the honies that you help. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:09:15):
Man, we're like Homeboy West. We're a little hub representing you.

Speaker 1 (01:09:19):
Right, we're all helping each other absolutely, all right, thank
you for go Dodgers, Go Dodgers in the world series. Baby, Yeah,
all right, beautiful.

Speaker 2 (01:09:28):
The Sino Show is the production of iHeart Podcasts, hosted
by me Cina McFarlane, produced by pod People in twenty eighth.
Av Our lead producer is Keith Carnlik. Our executive prouser
is Lindsey Hoffman marketing lead is Ashley Weaver. Thank you
so much for listening. We'll see you next week.