Latino Seeks to Instill Vision in Youths Without Hope

All his life Dan Casas wondered what it would be like to have the kind of father he saw on television--the kind who went camping and played ball with his son.

Instead he grew up in a home where he, his sister and brother were beaten regularly and where he was told so often that he was no good that he came to believe it.

He also grew up in neighborhoods where pimps, hustlers, ex-convicts and murderers were the heroes, and big cars and nice clothes were the symbols of success. Casas and his three best friends admired what they perceived as the glamorous violence of the streets.

Today, two of Casas’ friends are dead and the third is paralyzed from the waist down, all the victims of violence.

Casas, however, is in his third year at the UCLA School of Law. In May, he and his wife, Eva Gill Casas, will graduate. The couple, who met as law students, have been married a year and live in West Los Angeles.

Because a few people had faith in him, Dan Casas says, he escaped the fate of his friends. But he has never forgotten his boyhood and says he sees himself in young Latinos who have lost hope and who believe they have no future.

He wants to give them a different message. “They are my family. I love these kids. I will never be alone because of them.”

Casas, 30, who speaks to youth groups and counsels young Latinos whenever he can, says he tells them his own story.

“I was involved in some burglaries, minor offenses, but I had never been caught,” the former Fresno resident said. “I was always the person able to escape.”

Then, when he was 16, an incident occurred that would eventually lead him to the Green Berets, the Fresno Police Department, UCLA and its law school where he is an executive board member of the Moot Court Honors Program, a staff member of the Federal Communications Law Journal and vice president of La Raza, an organization of Latino law students.

One day the teen-aged Casas was with three young men who recently had been released from the California Youth Authority. They invited Casas to join them for a ride in a stolen car.

The ride turned into a high-speed chase with police that ended when the car went out of control and plowed into a ditch. Casas said he ran but froze when he heard gunfire. He was apprehended.

“I was a scrawny kid, full of mud and cold,” he said. “They locked me in a cell . . . for about seven hours. I shivered until they put me in a car and turned on the heat while they drove me to a juvenile facility in Fresno.

“I had time to do a lot of thinking,” he said.

Casas spent a week in juvenile hall, after which he got a reprieve. The district attorney became convinced that Casas hadn’t participated in the theft of the car. A judge released him with a warning.

Casas said he might have drifted back to his old friends and habits if it hadn’t been for Robert Halliburton, a former Green Beret, who had opened a karate studio in Fresno.

“I liked to fight anyway,” Casas said. “He took me under his wing, and I started fighting with him. When he wasn’t fighting, I listened to Bob talking about the Green Berets. With his guidance, I finished high school.”

Joined Green Berets

After completing high school and making an unsuccessful first attempt at college, Casas joined the Army and was assigned to the Green Berets. He said he graduated at the top of his class.

Casas served three years in the Green Berets as an undewater demolition expert. He was sent to Central and South America to train others in scuba diving. For a time, he thought he might make the Army his career.

“I realized I had given up on society. I went through a period where I was depressed a lot of the time.” But an experience in Honduras changed him.

He said he saw groups of children that traveled like packs of dogs. “One pack would be 5- and 7-year-olds. Another would be 8-year-olds. Their clothes were rags. If a 6-year-old had shoes, somebody else would take them away.”

He said he was horrified when poisoned meat, put out to control packs of wild dogs, was picked up and eaten by the starving street children. Casas saw them lying dead in doorways, on the streets and in the fields, he said.

“I came to believe I hadn’t had it so bad. When my time came for discharge, they gave me an opportunity to go to officers’ candidate school. But I got out and went back to Fresno.

“I knew I wanted to go to law school. I always associated law with success.”

College, however, posed another set of hurdles.

“I didn’t know how to read or write,” Casas said. “I got into Fresno State, under special admissions, through the Equal Opportunity Program. I took every bonehead course there was and at the end of the first semester I made the dean’s list. I just studied and studied and studied.”

Casas joined the Fresno Police Department after placing second among 500 applicants. He used his salary to get through college.

Casas said he spent many hours--both on duty and off-- in his old neighborhoods, talking to young people. He encouraged them to change the Police Department by “getting into law, as probation officers, police officers.”

Though no longer a police officer, Casas still responds when police departments in Fresno and other cities ask him to counsel young delinquents.

Each year, he said, he speaks at a conference in Fresno that draws about 3,000 Latino youths.

“I am candid about my own background. By showing them that someone from the streets can achieve something other than what they are so often told.

“You would be surprised at the skills you develop in the streets. If you can re-direct that energy to something constructive, they can learn to conform to society and maintain their individuality.

“Our key phrase is ‘Se puede,’ which means, ‘You can, it is possible.’ ”

After his graduation in May, he said he will join the Los Angeles law firm of Overton, Lyman and Prince. He also plans to become involved in organizations that help youngsters.

“It brings me joy when I find kids on the street and can talk to them and identify with them. That’s something I can never lose. You can take the kid out of the street but not the street out of the kid.”