A mother refused to give up on a son who decided to change his life
Luis Rodriguez is congratulated by his mother Nina Chombo, left, father Alfredo Rodriguez, center, and sister Guadalupe Rodriguez, 6, after receiving his senior ring during service at Our Lady of Fatima Chapel at Hanna Boys Center Sunday.
CRISTA JEREMIASON PHOTOS/THE PRESS DEMOCRATPublished: Sunday, May 22, 2011 at 4:33 p.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, May 22, 2011 at 5:37 p.m.
It took 10 minutes for Luis Rodriguez to get his first gang tattoo at the age of 14 — three little dots on the webby flesh between the index finger and thumb of his left hand, engraved with a homemade tattoo machine and permanent ink from a Sharpie pen.
Removal of the tattoo, which once proclaimed his allegiance to the Sureños gang, has not been easy. Since 2008, Rodriguez, 18, has undergone six painstaking laser treatments.
“You can feel it and you can smell it,” he said one morning last week as he sat in the lobby of the administration building at Hanna Boys Center in Sonoma.
Four years ago, Rodriguez was a middle-school student and a “recruiter” for his local Sureño clique, drawing young people into the gang and participating in the 30-second barrage of brutal punches and kicks that must be endured before a young recruit can “represent.”
His world was a secretive one, of street fights, false pride, school suspensions, theft and ultimately drugs. The dots on his hand, though greatly faded, are still visible proof that nothing or no one changes overnight.
But there can be change.
Now, two weeks before his graduation from Hanna Boys Center, Rodriguez is nearing the end of the first stage of his transformation and preparing for the next. In the fall, the former gang member is scheduled to attend Sonoma State University on a four-year, $50,000 scholarship.
“It's a chance of a lifetime, and he knows it,” said Michael Niland, an English teacher at Hanna Boys Center. “I'd like to see him come back and be a teacher here. I think he's seen both sides of the fence.”
In a way, Rodriguez has returned to the days of promise when he and his mother and younger brother first came to California in 2002.
They lived in Healdsburg with his mother's parents, who owned a local Mexican eatery. Rodriguez, who grew up on the eastern region of the Mexico City megalopolis, said he thought Healdsburg was “much cleaner and peaceful.”
He would become a legal permanent resident through his grandfather, who was a citizen.
Rodriguez said that soon his fellow fourth-graders, mostly white students, began teasing him because he didn't speak English. After a relatively peaceful period during the fifth grade, the teasing gave way to bullying by mostly Mexican-American kids and would-be Norteños gang members.
When he told an older family member, a Sureño gang member, about the bullying, everything changed, he said. His association with the Sureños deepened during the sixth grade, a year spent tagging, breaking into school lockers and stealing iPods and cell phones.
By the seventh grade he was fully immersed in gang life.
“He didn't want to study, he became disobedient and did the opposite of everything I told him,” said Rodriguez's mother, Nina Chombo, speaking in Spanish.
“I would ask him, are you in gangs and he would say no. He hid everything from me. The people at school would say he was doing gang-related things and I would say, ‘No, my son is not like that.'”
Just prior to beginning middle school Rodriguez met Rebekah Rocha, a Windsor schools outreach coordinator who headed a “newcomers class” for Windsor School district students.
Rocha, who is now assistant principal of Cali Calmecac Language Academy in Windsor, said she started hearing stories about Rodriguez before she met him.
“I knew who he was,” said Rocha. “I remember being told that he was getting into trouble and was thought to be a Sureño. I would sometime call his mom and explain what happened.”
Chombo said that her son became so troubled with one suspension after another, that one school staffer told her her son was too far gone.
“He said I shouldn't waste my time trying to save my son,” she said. “That really hurt me. I told him, ‘I am going to help my son.'”
Chombo, the mother, started personally seeking help from Rocha, the educator, who at first thought that Rodriguez was a Sureño wannabe, merely “dressing the part.”
“He had drawings in his books and notebooks that were showing signs of being interested in Sureños,” said Rocha. But a real gang affiliation became apparent when it was revealed that a family member was influencing the young teenager.
Rocha took action.
She started bringing in speakers to do presentations to the newcomers class about gang violence, including Elvia Bautista, whose younger brother Rogelio Bautista was shot to death on New Year's eve 2004, after an exchange of gang slurs.
But nothing appeared to reach Rodriguez, who was quickly becoming the ringleader in her class, said Rocha. At one point, she confronted him.
“I said come on, are you just a wannabe or are you really a Sureño? He had this chip on his shoulder like, Yeah that's what I am. That was surprising to me,” Rocha said.
“To just have him look me in the face and say, yeah I'm in it, what are you going to do about it? And to be so confident about it, it was kind of eerie.”
Intervention didn't seem to help:
“I remember thinking this is going downhill and he was on his way to Juvenile Hall. I remember having those conversations with him and his mom, telling him you're putting your family at risk, your little brother and sister. Nothing mattered to him and that's what was so scary. He didn't care.”
Rocha recruited the help of her father, Gerald Cox, a former priest who helped found Resurrection Church in west Santa Rosa. Cox took Chombo and her son on a tour of Hanna Boys Center in Sonoma Valley, a residential school for at-risk boys.
The idea of sending her son away was hard for Chombo to swallow, and Rodriguez was hesitant. Many people, including members of her own family advised her against it. Did she really want to send her son away? Would he not be better off under his mother's care?
Even after he was accepted into Hanna for the fall 2006, Rodriguez resisted and decided not to attend.
But soon after, his parents' car was vandalized and it became clear he and his family were becoming the targets of rival gang members.
“I wasn't feeling safe back at home,” Rodriguez recalled. “I felt like my family was going to get hurt if I continued on that path, so I decided to come here and to change.”
Chombo remembers that day when her son came to her in a moment of clarity and finally said: “‘Mother, help me. I don't want to live this life anymore. ‘It's too ugly,' ” she recalls him saying.
Even after he entered Hanna in November 2006, Rodriguez, who would often come home for weekends, maintained his gang ties. He got the tattoo only a couple of months into his first year at Hanna, he said.
Change would come slowly.
“This place is kind of boring, so you have a lot of time to think,” he said.
Each additional year at Hanna gave Rodriguez the opportunity to set his sights a little higher. During his second year, he asked Rocha to become his godmother at his confirmation, which he celebrated at Hanna.
At first he talked about going to Universal Technical Institute of Northern California to become a mechanic, Rocha said.
“The stories just kept getting better and better,” she said. “I thought he'd graduate from high school and go to technical school,” she said. But then he was succeeding in the classes that qualify for a four-year college.
Rodriguez was accepted to both Sonoma State and Holy Names University in Oakland. But could he get there?
Financial need is the primary criterion for awarding the L.E. and Eileen Castner Scholarship, but the recipient must also be involved in the high school community and the community at large. Academic excellence is also a part of the consideration and Luis, the former gang member, qualified in all categories.
He received word earlier this month that he was the winner of the scholarship, a $50,000 award that is given each year to a single Sonoma County student.
The scholarship was established by the estate of the late L.E. “Bud” Castner, a Sonoma Valley business and political leader and strong supporter of Hanna Boys Center.
The scholarship, which pays out $12,500 a year, will essentially pay his entire college education, Rodriguez said. He plans to get a degree in business or social work.
And there are still other dreams. Rodriguez is an accomplished break dancer and harbors hopes of doing it professionally. He said he gives it about a 20 percent chance of coming true. More of a surety is using his new found drive and well-earned education to help his community.
“If I can connect with some people, I can really help people out and give them advice,” he said.
Sunday he received his senior ring in ceremonies at the Hanna Boys Center, with his mother and family members there to celebrate. He will graduate June 3.
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