Ex-Boxer Who Lost Son to Gang Violence Helps Boys Counterpunch Life

Manuel Avitea, once a middleweight fighter, thought he would never return to the boxing ring. Then one night 10 years ago on Avitea’s birthday, his son Albert was killed in a gang-related drive-by shooting in East Los Angeles. Albert was 16.

Avitea took a close look at his community and realized that children couldn’t escape being recruited into gangs unless they could become involved in alternative activities such as sports.

Avitea decided to offer youths an alternative to gang violence and drugs, and he formed the Pico Rivera Boxing Club.

“I saw a blood bath up ahead if nothing was done,” Avitea said. He organized the boxing program to keep children active. It was aimed at boys who lived in the barrios and would more than likely end up in gangs. Avitea began by walking door-to-door and talking to youths.

Today, the boxing club meets in a small room at the Rivera Park gym. Aspiring fighters, ages 8 to 29, come to the club regularly. They learn their skills in a ring squeezed into a small room with barely enough space left for a few punching bags and a jump-rope area.

The 35 members of the boxing club train in shifts. They are split into two groups to train on alternate days, Monday through Friday, Avitea said.

“You have to have a constant program for these kids. Eight-week-long programs that the city has don’t work. What happens when the program is over with? These kids go back on the streets and back into the gangs. I work with these kids to keep them out of trouble 12 months out of the year,” Avitea said firmly.

During a training session recently, Avitea ordered two young fighters into the ring. Their faces almost lost beneath their headgear, Richard Ortiz, 12, and Rafael Gutierrez, 12, sparred in preparation for a tournament the next weekend. The two were friends from Pico Rivera, but when Richard punched Rafael in the face, it seemed as if they were longtime enemies.

Al Galindo, 23, an ex-boxer at the Pico Rivera club, shouted, “Jab him! Jab him!”

Galindo started boxing at age 10. He joined the Army right after high school and boxed full time in the service. He admitted that the Army was much tougher than the community boxing club, but Avitea taught him the basic moves and kept him out of gangs.

“The 14 or 15 guys that are in the gym tonight are 14 or 15 fewer guys out on the streets. You can’t gang-bang and be a boxer at the same time. That’s what Avitea is teaching here,” Galindo said.

Although Galindo is no longer a member of the club, he continues to drop by the gym to help and talk to the young boxers, he said.

Galindo wants to be a doctor and plans to attend UC Davis in September. “I would’ve never had these goals if I hadn’t come here,” he said.

The club was chartered in 1979. Before then, the boys had no place to work out, Avitea said, and had to train outside, sometimes in the rain.

Avitea pointed to Roger Martinez, who was working out in a corner, as an example of one of his successful students. Martinez, 29, came into the program 10 years ago while a member of a gang, Avitea said. Today, instead of gang activities and drugs, Martinez trains five days a week and hopes to be a professional boxer.

“There is a phrase that we seem to forget, which is the understanding of one another. We need to give that understanding to our youths. You need to take the time out and listen to these kids,” Avitea said.

Avitea, 59, proudly wears a baseball cap with the Pico Rivera Boxing Club logo.

The city provides the facility and most of the equipment. Avitea said the club has a hard time raising additional funds, because the city will not allow it to sponsor a tournament. Some of the boxers Avitea trains come into the program without tennis shoes or shorts to wear and most, he said, are on welfare. Avitea supplies some of the athletic gear with his own money.

In 1986, Avitea became ill and stopped working. His illness was diagnosed as cancer, and he senses that there is not much time to live. In a somber voice, Avitea said: “I say all the time, ‘Lord, give me time to work with these kids.’ ”

Shaping character and building self-esteem in young people is far more important, Avitea said, than making money. As soon as a boxer turns professional, Avitea lets him go. Two of his boxers made it to the Olympics: Jesse Flores in 1984 and Chris Carillo in 1988. Avitea helped the two boxers succeed in the Olympic tryouts and then put them in the hands of other trainers.

“I want to help these kids get off the streets and do something positive with their lives,” he said. “I just don’t want them to wind up like my son.”

Avitea tells the young boxers to leave their bad attitudes outside the gym doors. “I say, ‘Do you want in? Then understand that nobody around here is better than anyone else. I don’t care where you come from.’ And they know I am not messing around.

“These kids in the program are good. They deserve more. They deserve the best the city can offer. Yet here we are stuck in this small room. The kids work so hard to be good and competitive. It’s their strength that keeps me alive.”