Jim Miranda, Anti-Gang Activist, Real Estate Salesman : Youngsters on Edge Told, ‘Yes You Can’

Jim Miranda was returning to his San Clemente home after a vacation earlier this year when an article in a community newspaper grabbed his attention.

“It was about a drive-by shooting,” said Miranda, 41, a real estate salesman. “Then, a few months later, there was a story about a gang homicide and I said, ‘That’s it. I’ve got to do something.’ ”

He began contacting Little League volunteers, neighbors and other people in town. Within a few months, Miranda had a core leadership group that cut across ethnic lines to include Esther Harris, chairwoman of San Clemente’s Human Resources Committee, Brad Wright, publisher of South Coast Magazine, and Ben Villa, a city engineer, among others.

“I wanted to have a panel of Hispanic professionals like Ben Villa, people who had come from similar neighborhoods but had gone on to college and found successful careers,” Miranda said. “We needed them as positive role models to help Hispanic kids who are on the edge, (to show them) that they could do it too.”

The idea was to help motivate low-income youngsters, particularly Latinos, through talks by local leaders at area schools. Because the message is a positive one, Miranda has dubbed the program “Yes You Can.”

Miranda’s group has received praise from the Irvine-based Community Service Program Inc., which contracts with the city to operate a gang-prevention program, and the Police Department.

“I like what he says about education, because education is going to help you get out. All of his key people are educated, like Ben Villa, who grew up in a gang neighborhood but went to college,” said Bil Aulenbach, who heads San Clemente’s gang-prevention program.

Miranda, born in the Los Angeles County city of Huntington Park, said his parents, including his father, a Mexican-born tailor, had raised five children to believe they “were equal to anyone.”

As a Latino businessman, Miranda does not hide his cultural roots or his Spanish-speaking ability. Rather than take a back seat and see a potential sale slip away, Miranda has learned to become the aggressor, able to compete in predominantly white South County. That is part of his message to Latino youth.

“I tell them I’m Mexican and proud of it. I list and sell million-dollar properties all the time,” Miranda said. “I go up against the blond-haired, blue-eyed individual and I walk away with the contract. That’s because I’m good at what I do. And these kids need to hear about that, (so that) they too can be just as successful.”

Now, Miranda wants to have the “Yes You Can” project help form a soccer league based at La Palma Elementary School, which is near the Max Berg Plaza Park neighborhood where many drive-by shootings and other gang-related incidents have occurred.

And while many view his anti-gang crusade as important only to Latinos, he and his group disagree. When gang graffiti go up, when people start shooting at each other, “the entire community is affected,” Miranda said. “It goes beyond just worrying about property values.”