Barrio Station : Youth Center Curbs Crime and Puts Youngsters on the Right Track

Gang violence and drug crimes have declined in the Barrio Logan area, and police and community leaders give much of the credit to the Barrio Station youth center and its director, Rachael Ortiz, a woman who fought and won a personal battle against crime and drugs.

Barrio Station is housed in two unimposing Newton Avenue buildings, with 35,000 square feet of space, that once were home to a trade school.

The Barrio Logan-Logan Heights neighborhood the youth center serves is one of the biggest gang territories in the city, according to Sgt. John Madigan, head of the San Diego Police Department’s street gang unit. “Barrio Station has helped in curbing gang activity,” Madigan said.

The station is used by about 500 youngsters a week, Ortiz said. The center also operates a counseling service for troubled youths and a day care center at different locations.

Barrio Station offers youngsters the opportunity to engage in various activities, ranging from karate to folk dancing.

Ortiz, 44, knows all about the drug and gang problems in Barrio Logan. She grew up there and attended Lowell Elementary, Memorial Junior High and San Diego High schools, “where everyone from Logan Heights goes.” Now she’s trying to steer youngsters away from the pitfalls she once experienced.

“I had a serious juvenile record and a serious heroin addiction as a teen-ager and young adult,” Ortiz said. “And I was a young con artist and manipulator just like them,” she said of the youngsters she deals with.

“This gives me the sixth sense that I need to effectively work with them because they can’t lie to me. I grew up just like them, and I’ve done everything they’ve done.”

Ortiz won her battle against drugs after a long struggle that included eight years spent in four prisons. The turning point came when she was released from prison for the last time.

“I was tired; I wanted a change . . . something good in my life.”

The change came when she joined “La Causa,” Cesar Chavez’s movement that brought improved pay and working conditions to farm laborers in the 1960s and early ‘70s.

Later, she returned to Barrio Logan to fight for a cause of her own.

“She gives a lot to the community,” said George Varella, special assistant to the San Diego police chief. “She has been very effective in leading them (youngsters) into a better style of life.

“When she has dances (at the center) she frisks kids as they come through the doors. No drugs, guns, booze or knives are allowed. The dances are heavily chaperoned, and she doesn’t allow lingering on the sidewalk outside,” he said.

The youth center “helps me not to hang out with people who use drugs,” said 12-year-old Claudia Barron, who studies karate there.

In addition to offering recreational programs, Barrio Station also takes care of the cost of textbooks, eye glasses and clothes for needy youngsters. It even arranges for youths to have tattoos removed and for surgery to eliminate disfiguring scars. “People would be surprised how many kids have tattoos in this community,” Ortiz said.

Much of the hostile energy that otherwise might be spent on the street is directed to the boxing ring at Barrio Station. “Someone always makes it to the Golden Gloves in Las Vegas,” Ortiz said.

The main building of Barrio Station contains administrative offices, a conference room, a gym with boxing ring, weight room, steam room and showers, an arts and crafts room and a small print shop where an anniversary publication for the station was printed last year. There also is an outdoor swimming pool.

The building next door houses an auditorium where dances and other events are held.

One of Ortiz’s innovations at the center was to create the United Homeboys, a boys’ club born of her efforts to stem gang warfare.

Ortiz brought members of youth gangs together and made Barrio Station the place where they could talk peacefully. At the first of what has become an annual unity meeting, the youngsters themselves developed and named a new club--the United Homeboys--and elected a leader.

The Homeboys meet weekly and discuss ways to improve the neighborhood. They also engage in cleanup projects such as removing debris, cleaning up graffiti and tidying up yards.

There is a girls’ counterpart to the Homeboys, called Thee Loganettes, which helps in neighborhood cleanup projects and is responsible for decorating Barrio Station for special events.

Barrio Station and its related youth counseling service and child day care center are nonprofit organizations financed by funds from the state, county, city, United Way and private donations.

It began 15 years ago in a small building at 28th and Marcy streets and then moved to another site on Logan Avenue. The move to the abandoned trade school buildings, which had become a focal point of delinquency and crime, came when Ortiz persuaded local residents and the City Council to turn the buildings over to Barrio Station.

Since then, “there has been a marked improvement” in the neighborhood, according to Sgt. Madigan.

Maria Elena Molina, 54, who lives across the street from the station, is one of those happy with the changes it has brought to the neighborhood.

“People who don’t understand ask me, ‘How can you live across the street from there?’ I say I’m happy to. I think we would be alone and afraid if Barrio Station weren’t here,” she said.

“I really can’t complain about the neighborhood anymore, because there’s nothing bad about it,” said Angelita Marshall, 54, another area resident. “And I can’t say enough good things about that lady (Ortiz), because she has done a tremendous job here.”

Part of Ortiz’s success stems from her relationship with youngsters.

“The kids respect her,” Varella said. “In other parts of the neighborhood and in the park there is graffiti, but there is no graffiti on walls at the center. They know if they write on walls, they’ve had it. She’ll tear into them. It’s a sacred area in the neighborhood.”

Antonio Surposa, 22, remembers how the center and Ortiz helped him.

“I was getting into trouble in school. I got into fights and ended up in jail once. Rachael bailed me out. I didn’t know her that well, but I came to (the center) to say thank you. After that I kept coming. It helped me a lot.”

Today Surposa is a teacher’s aide at the child care center connected with Barrio Station.

“Barrio Station has had an impact on the community,” said Ernie Salgado, a police community relations officer. “Rachael . . . tries to keep kids straight, have them take pride in their neighborhood.”

Eighteen-year-old Hector Rodriguez summed up what Barrio Station means to him this way:

“If I wasn’t here, I would be doing other things . . . looking for trouble.”