LA Youth, November-December 1998 Issue: Leave gangs before you get shot

Maybe you think you are so tough, tagging and carving up property that doesn’t belong to you, threatening to jump people, giving yourself a gangster nickname, talking with a vato accent, and dressing in baggy clothes. Maybe you think you’re tough, but you’re wrong.

Tough is when you end up in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the waist down. Tough is what your parents feel when you are six feet below the ground. Tough is what you are not going to feel when someone asks you if you’ve ever killed anyone and you don’t really want to say anything because the answer is yes. I have a story of two young people who can show you the true meaning of tough.

By Ambar Martinez Espinoza, 15, University HS

The first time I saw Gilbert Salinas, I thought, “Don’t mess with him.” He was sitting in a wheelchair, with baggy pants and a shaved head. Standing next to him was Patricia Madison, a tall girl wearing a happy green-colored outfit. Their faces looked both sad and hard-core.

Gilbert and Patricia are two speakers for Teens On Target, a program that lets teenagers see how gangster life really is: a life of tears and confusion, of family and friends being shot, of bouncing between prison life and the streets. “It is a myth about it being good. You see fast cars, fast money, a fast life. But what you don’t see is the jails, the fast deaths. You don’t see the consequences—jail, the hospital, and death—and the pain you go through when you become a gang member,” said Gilbert.

Before, I resented gangsters. I saw them as lazy people who did nothing but ruin other’s lives. But now I see that something drives them to seek the love and respect or the “family” they need somewhere else. Gangsters need someone to listen to them, to encourage them to study and to pull them onto the right track.

When Gilbert was eight years old, he witnessed his brother getting shot in the face. By the age of ten, he was involved in gangs. At 12, he went to juvenile hall for the first of many arrests. Each time he got out, he would promise his mother that he would change. Then he’d get in trouble again. “I felt like I couldn’t get out of it. In reality, I didn’t want to get out of it,” said Gilbert.
As a teenager, he ran away for about four years, selling drugs and staying with friends or in hotel rooms. He was expelled from the Los Angeles Unified School District for shooting, the Montebello school district for fights and the Norwalk school district for assaulting a teacher.

One day when he had just turned 17, he and his friends were hanging out and drinking. One of his friends was very drunk and started to point a gun at people. As Gilbert and two friends struggled to take the gun away from their drunken homie, the gun went off, hitting Gilbert in the stomach. He was in a coma for 26 days and awoke to find his legs paralyzed. He would be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He spent six months in the hospital. “You’d think this would’ve changed me, but it didn’t. I came out even worse. I didn’t want to hear no peace, no love from nobody. I was blaming everyone else.”

After he got out, he was living two lives. He got his high school degree and furthered his education at DeVry Institute. After school, he hung out with his homeboys, gangbanging like always.
Then in 1993, there was a shooting. Gilbert wound up in state prison. There he had a cell-mate who was twice his age—a veteran gangster. Even though they were in prison, it seemed like his cell-mate was on the streets. All he cared about was selling drugs, making weapons (like a knife made out of a milk carton) and sharing stories about all the bad things he had done—some of which Gilbert had already done. “This guy scared me. I didn’t want to end up like him, even though I saw myself in him. He showed me what not to become…what not to be. I was looking into a mirror, afraid I would fall into the same cycle with him.”

While everyone else was playing poker and lifting weights in the yard, Gilbert caught up with his studies with some books another cell-mate had ordered. When he got out in three and a half years, he enrolled in school, achieving a 3.8 GPA. Then he joined Teens on Target to speak about his experiences and now serves as coordinator. Gilbert, now 23, hopes to attend UCLA or Cal State Northridge to major in sociology.

Patricia also got involved in gangs early in life

Patricia’s story is equally inspiring. Everywhere Patricia lived, South Central and Compton, gangs seemed normal. She became involved in gangs at the age of 9. “If I didn’t get in trouble, I’d cause trouble. I didn’t care. The first time I got screamed at, then I got grounded, then I got hit,” said Patricia. What more could her parents do?

When her brother went to jail in 1992, sentenced for six years for a car-jacking, Patricia became more involved in gangs and drugs. The only person she really trusted was her big sister, who used to be in a gang. ‘People you trust influence you,” said Patricia.

When she was 16, she got pregnant. One night she left the house to meet her boyfriend. Before she left, she grabbed her gun because she knew that her gang had shot somebody—and the rival gang would be seeking retaliation. She and her boyfriend were walking under a bridge when they noticed a car following them. A guy got out and said, “What’s up, Patricia.” She knew him from school. When he pulled a gun and began shooting, she and her boyfriend tried to hide behind a tree. She looked down and saw blood, and she figured her boyfriend was probably going to die. She didn’t know she had been shot until the ambulance came. They both ended up in the hospital—and Patricia was frantic, worried she would lose her baby. (The shooter was killed four months later in a separate incident.)

In high school she had been on the track and softball teams, but now her doctor told her she would never run again. Her legs were paralyzed and her liver was damaged—she can never drink alcohol again, and she has to follow a special diet. During the months she spent in the hospital, she dropped from 155 to 98 pounds, but her baby survived and was born healthy.

While she was in the hospital, she learned about Teens On Target. “I liked the idea. I became more motivated,” said Patricia. As a Teens on Target member, she knows from experience that gangsters will be in denial and stubborn. She knows how hard it is to reach out to them. “Even if you’re in denial, don’t wait for something to happen to you or your family. Wake up, finish school, you have other resources than gangs. Be a leader, not a follower—in a positive way.”

Patricia, now 21, is a happy single mother of two: Joanna Patricia Perez, 4, and Samantha Danielle Morrison, 1 1/2. Her face glowed with pride when she showed their pictures. She has also learned to walk and someday hopes to run again.

Still, it’s been hard to leave the past behind. She still gets chills when she passes by the place where she got shot. “Every time I go somewhere, I see someone I did something to. I don’t apologize for what I did, but I do it in my head or I ask God for forgiveness when I pray,” said Patricia. “Some girls started messing with me when I picked up my daughter from school and they teased me. I dealt with it; I walked away, covered my daughter’s ears and ignored it.”

When I was interviewing Gilbert, I asked him “What can others do to help those who are stubborn and refuse to listen? How can we help them?”

“Be persistent. They will learn the hard way and that’s a sad thing to say but it is a dangerous life. And I’m not talking about statistics. I’m talking about real pictures. They are really going to respect those who have been there so give them my business card.”

For those of you who don’t have the courage to speak to someone who really needs some help and advice, show them this article. Hopefully they’ll get the point that they are welcome to call Gilbert, Patricia or anyone else from Teens On Target. The phone number is (562) 401-8166.