Gang Members Get a Street-Wise Alternative : ‘Project Restore’ Shows That Life Without Crime Can Pay

It began like many other spring nights that Jose and his friend had spent in Balboa Park. They did some drugs, drank some liquor and sat in their car with a loaded 12-gauge shotgun they kept handy in case rival gang members happened by.

Although only 17, Jose (not his real name) was certainly no newcomer to the streets. He had already robbed sailors, civilians and stores, he says. And he talks about at least five times when he went “gang banging” --the street term used to describe gun battles between rival gangs. Just three days prior to this particular night in the park, he says, he and his friend raped a woman.

The gang life, Jose now reflects, was the only one he and his friends knew. Until, that is, the night last spring when Richard Mendez arrived at the park to offer them a new one.

“This guy came to the car saying ‘God bless you, God bless you,’ ” Jose said, recalling that first encounter with Mendez. “We were ready to shoot him. I just freaked out, wondering what is this guy talking about?

“He started talking about ‘You can have a new life . . . you can change,’ Then I started to listen.”

That night, Mendez, himself a former gang member, invited the youths to join Project Restore, a program that pays San Diego gang members to do good works, such as paint over graffiti, clean up alleys or perform other tasks around the city. The youths work for minimum wages and receive job referrals when they complete the program.

The program is the inspiration of Mendez, who knows firsthand what gang life is like and has dedicated his life to getting as many youths off the streets as possible.

A slender, relaxed man, Mendez, 28, tells harrowing tales of his own youth, of being in and out of gangs since the age of 13, of selling and using drugs, of increasingly violent gang confrontations. During those years, he says, he and his fellow gang members stabbed more people than he wishes to count.

“We fought every neighborhood just to make war, leaving the guys half dead,” he said. “I was stabbing guys close to 10 and 15 times. I had no remorse.”

Once, during a visit to his family in Stockton, Mendez

was seriously wounded and hospitalized after a knife fight.

He recalls that when he balked at signing the operation release form, “They (the doctors) said, ‘You’ve got 15 minutes before you die.’ When I couldn’t breathe any more, I signed.”

Even the brush with death didn’t faze him. Later, Mendez faced attempted murder charges after a knife fight.

Still later, however, while serving time in the San Diego County jail, Mendez severed forever his gang membership. He met a fellow inmate who told him there was a better life. The inmate told Mendez about God.

“I felt something. I said to myself, you have met your match . . . the Lord. . . . He gave me my mentality and my health back.

“He shot me back out into the streets, and now I want to work with these people. I don’t instill the Lord in them . . . What I try to instill within them is that they can make it. There is hope, and there is a life out here besides the street life.”

Mendez was doing research for the Black Federation when he conceived the idea for Project Restore, which operates on $12,000 given by the city’s Regional Youth Employment Program (REGY), and $2,000 in private donations. Mendez continues to work for the Black Federation and receives no pay for recruiting gang members for the program.

The program has two objectives, REGY director Gilbert Brown said. By hiring gang members, it brings them into the work force and takes them off the streets. Of equal importance, it provides them with social and vocational counseling.

The project began in the summer of 1983 and now employs about 15 gang members. Brown estimates that more than 50 gang members participate in the counseling part of the program.

Brown and Mendez say they hope to keep the jobs program going until summer, when the federal government allocates more money to provide summer jobs for youths. Then they have plans to hire an additional 110 gang members, Brown said.

Brown said he is convinced the program has saved the lives of several gang members and may have kept many more out of jail. When they go to work and learn responsibility, he said, they have less time to get into trouble.

Jose, for instance, says he has not robbed anyone or gone “gang banging” in more than a year. His primary vice, he said, is occasional use of marijuana.

The program cannot be totally credited for the changes in Jose’s life. Jose said he wanted to quit the gang before he was recruited into the program. But, he said, it was Project Restore that provided the opportunity and counseling he needed to make the change.

Mendez does not work miracles, Jose says. What Mendez tries to do is recognize the gang members who are willing to change and work hardest with them.

“It’s up to the individual,” Jose said. “I was ready for a change. I don’t rob any more. Since I met Richard (Mendez), he taught me how to work for my money.”

Mendez says that although the job program is important to keep the youths out of trouble, perhaps even more critical is the social, vocational and financial counseling they receive.

“The job could lead to his death if he doesn’t know how to use the money,” Mendez said. “I want to change his character, then start opening up his vision.”

To achieve this, Mendez invites San Diego businessmen to teach the youths how to open bank accounts and manage money, how to fill out job applications and interview for jobs. They are also given crash courses on grooming and speaking properly.

In return for what the youths get from the program, they are asked to give up their gang slogans and attire and are required to refrain from smoking, cursing or doing anything to show disrespect.

Enforcing such rules on people who have served time in state prisons at Soledad, Vacaville and Chino might seem an impossible task. Among the program’s members are convicted armed robbers, even murderers.

Mendez, however, disciplines the youths with quick, efficient authority, chastising them when they disobey, and even suspending them from the program if he finds them using drugs.

While an observer might wonder what keeps the gang members coming back to the program, Brown said he is sure Mendez is the reason they return.

“I’ve been in the social services for over 10 years and I’ve seen projects come and go,” Brown said. “I think this one that Richard is involved in makes a difference because I think he is really sincere.

“He goes out at midnight. He has his Bible in one hand and he goes out in the parks right where they are, and he’s recruiting and telling them there is a different way of life. Sometimes his own life is in danger.”

Mendez does indeed go from one street corner to another in search of gang members. His quest for new Project Restore members often brings him into direct confrontation with gang leaders who resent his work.

Mendez has even been ordered by gang members to stop recruiting in certain neighborhoods. However, he always goes back.

He remembers one night--the most fearful of his life, he says --when a gang surrounded a building where he was holding a meeting. They wanted their members out of the meeting, he recalls. Mendez and the group were able to escape by running to a waiting car when the meeting adjourned.

Mendez says he refused to stop his recruiting, and several weeks later many of the members who had surrounded the building signed up for Project Restore.

He refused to stop recruiting, Mendez says, because he knows that despite the tough front gang members put on for each other and the public, inside they’re experiencing pain and frustration.

“They portray a front in front of each other,” he said. “They build an image and identity to cover up the inner parts of their hearts that are really hurting . . . the sorrow, the pain and the loneliness. They go home, sit back, take their caps off and take a deep breath.”

Most of the gang members interviewed said they had been in other programs but that Mendez adds a personal touch to Project Restore that keeps them coming back.

“I look up to him,” one member said. “Richard is the first person (administering a gang program) I know who came from a gang himself. He comes to your house, and he brings you food when you don’t have food at home.”

Mendez classifies his relationship with the youths as “tough love,” a kind of love that understands what the youths are going through yet is firm enough to push them toward changing. It may be the only kind of love they understand.

The youths, many of them from rival gangs, seem to share a hope that they can stop some of the ongoing wars among themselves. For whatever reason, gang members who once shot at each other with no remorse now openly embrace one another at the opening and closing of each counseling session.

Getting them to this point was no easy task, Mendez says. At first they were very suspicious and did not want even to talk to each other. Now they provide moral support for one another when they are pressured by other gang members.

Mendez and other project officials readily acknowledge that Project Restore does not have a 100% success rate. One gang member who had just finished describing how the program had changed his life forever was overheard discussing the need to buy bullets.

But Brown said the project is worth the money if only a few youths are changed. It would be much easier to hire bright youths with job experience, he said. They would make the program look good, but society would still pay for the gang members in the long run.

“We can pay now and try to save some lives or we can pay when they go to prison,” Brown said. “We can pay when we hold the murder trials. We can pay when our sons or daughters go to parties and innocently get shot during gang confrontations. But one way or another, we are going to pay.”