Six years ago, Rigoberto Ortega was waxing the floor at 3 a.m. at the Rohnert Park Wal-Mart when he was called to the phone.
He heard his 12-year-old son Alejandro sobbing, begging him to come and get him from his ex-wife's home where he shared a bedroom with his mother, younger sister and younger brother. Ortega didn't go. An extremely difficult divorce had made the home off limits.
"I've never told anyone this," Ortega said in Spanish. "My boy was crying and he said, &‘Please come for me,' because he didn't want to be there."
It was an episode that should have been lost amid a lifetime of good and bad memories. But now the 49-year-old father can't get it out of his mind. He has come to realize that it was the last time his son reached out to him for help.
On Wednesday, Ortega buried 18-year-old Alejandro in a Santa Rosa grave, the latest fatality of North Coast gang violence. Ortega cannot help but wonder if things could have been different.
"When they're with you, you tell yourself that you're doing everything you can for them," he said as a backhoe crept toward his son's plot at Santa Rosa Memorial Park, a slab of concrete swinging slightly on a chain-link cable.
"But it's never enough, there's always more you can do," said the 25-year resident of Sonoma County. "We have to do something. We can't continue to let our kids end up laying dead on the streets."
Alejandro Ortega's body was found just before 3:30 a.m. Nov. 28 near the end of Neville Way, off Moorland Avenue in Santa Rosa's Bellevue neighborhood.
It's a street of modest single-story homes and drab two-story apartment buildings. Dirt and scruffy lawns extend to the curb.
Many hours after Ortega took his last breath, his body remained on the asphalt as Sonoma County sheriff's investigators documented the crime scene, combing the gang-troubled neighborhood for clues. A young woman, jolted from sleep by gunshots, said she first saw the body in the street at 4 a.m. Hours later, she took a digital photo. In it, Ortega is on his back, shirtless. The young woman, who asked not to be identified, said she doesn't know why she took the photo.
The county Coroner's Office said the teenager, who was officially pronounced dead at 3:42 a.m., sustained a single gunshot wound to his "right lateral chest." Sheriff's Lt. Chris Spallino described it as a gang-related shooting over turf, though he would not reveal any details, nor what gangs were involved.
He said that Ortega was not armed with a gun when he was found. "It was a dynamic incident," Spallino said. "I can't give any details about exactly where he was shot or where he came to rest. It's an ongoing investigation and we're still making progress, still actively working it and working leads."
Alejandro Ortega's demise on the cold pavement, though not a common occurrence in Santa Rosa's gang-plagued neighborhoods, is a brutal reminder of high stakes of the dangerous behavior. Years of family turmoil, personal conflict and poor decisions made him a ripe target for the gang milieu.
Three years ago, the elder Ortega moved to Oregon to take a job as a maintenance worker at a cabin lodge. It was shortly after that that Alejandro began having trouble at school, beginning with an incident that got him kicked out of Piner High when he was 16.
School officials, family members said, found a knife on Alejandro, though he told his family he was only holding it for a friend. He soon was enrolled in a Santa Rosa continuation school, but didn't last more than a day, they said. He was jumped by gang members, fought and was bounced from the school.
Family members said Alejandro was always quiet and that in recent years became increasingly withdrawn. His deepening association with gang members created a rift in the family.
"He told me he didn't like to be around the family," said his younger sister Brenda. She often would invite him to visit, but he would refuse because he would only be criticized.
"They would say &‘here he comes with his cap' or &‘here he comes with his jacket,'" she said. "Instead of asking, &‘How are you?' They would say, &‘When are you going to leave this or that behind?'"
Father Ramon Pons, the St. Rose Church priest who conducted Alejandro's funeral Mass, said one thing has become clear to him in his years of talking to young people who end up in gangs.
"They will say it's because they wanted to have a family," he said. "Gangs are not disorganized, they are wholly hierarchical in structure, and that's what young people are looking for in their lives."
The problem, he said, is that these are families of delinquency and crime.
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