Getting the Word Out : Ex-Gang Member Hits Streets to Tell Youths About Better Life

When Santos Chavez was 19, his brother, a gang member, was shot to death by a rival gang.

That, Chavez said, was the turning point of his life.

“I realized that gangs weren’t the answer, that it’s not the way to go,” said Chavez, 24, who was then also a gang member. “It brought so much pain to me and to my family and really made me think. I saw how precious life is and I decided to change my life.”

Chavez, who was addicted to PCP for four years and spent much of his early life in and out of jail and Juvenile Hall, has devoted himself since his brother’s death to convincing young people that there is an alternative to gang life. A lay member of the Victory Outreach church in Santa Ana, he has been its youth coordinator for the last year. Each Tuesday evening and on weekends, he and members of his church visit gang hangouts and jails, offering gang members something to think about.

“I show people there’s a better life,” he said.

Danny Gonsales, 23, now works with Chavez to reform gang members, but the two men used to belong to rival gangs.

Three months ago, Gonsales--whose knee still aches from a gunshot wound and whose lip has a deep scar from a gang fight--was approached by a member of Victory Outreach, a nationwide church organization that works to get people off drugs and alcohol and out of gangs. Since then, he has been living in a Victory Outreach drug rehabilitation house.

“I was kicking back with the homeboys one day, and someone started talking to us. They said there was a way I could change my life, and I wanted it. I wanted to be free,” said Gonsales, who had been smoking marijuana and PCP since he was 10 years old and taking cocaine and heroin since he was 16. Gonsales said he has spent most of his life in Juvenile Hall and County Jail.

“This is the first time I’ve felt good,” said Gonsales, who said he hopes to stay in the halfway house as long as possible. “I want to get strong. It scares me to think I can go back to what I was doing. I used to (inject drugs) every day. But I want to go back to the homeboys and help them.”

Victory Outreach runs four rehabilitation homes in Orange County. The homes are free to those who need them, although residents must do some work to help pay the rent. The Victory Outreach approach of recovery is a religious one, and although some question its tactics, it seems to work, counselors say.

“Not the same shoe fits everybody, but their approach has done well,” said Roy Alvarado, a certified addiction counselor who has a private practice and works in schools throughout the county. “I applaud their work. They deal with a difficult population--people who are addicted to heavy drugs. They do a lot in terms of gang prevention and intervention.”

On a recent Tuesday evening, Chavez, Gonsales and a dozen other young men and women gathered at the First Christian Church in Santa Ana. The group included Chavez’s wife, Alana, 22, also a former gang member, and their 3-year-old daughter, Priscilla.

With Bibles under their arms, the group prayed and then piled into Chavez’s truck, heading for Hard Times, a gang neighborhood at 17th and Clinton streets in Garden Grove.

There they formed groups of three or four and began walking through the neighborhood, distributing bright red flyers and encouraging everyone to come to their church programs. Chavez offered transportation to anyone who needed it.

Chavez soon began talking to three boys about 13 years old. He could tell by their baggy clothes and their hand signals that they were gang members.

“My brother was killed right here on this corner, and I can’t bring him back to life,” he told the group. “That’s what’s gonna happen to you, man. See where my teeth are broken? I had a shotgun in my mouth, and the only reason they didn’t kill me is they ran outta bullets. You don’t have to die like that. But show me who you hang around with and I’ll show you who you are. Hang out with gang members and you’ll be part of that life.”

The small group grew to six or seven, with a few older boys stopping to listen. They seemed interested, and agreed to meet Chavez the next night.

The boys said they would like to get out of gangs, but said it would be hard.

“It’s too much trouble,” said De Lester, 17. “Your friends want you to stay, and you’re more popular if you’re in a gang. And even if you get out, you still have to come back home, go to school, go to the liquor store. To get out you’d have to move.”

But Lester said he would get out if he could.

“Yesterday my friend was stabbed five times. My friend’s brother was shot in the back. The gangsters threaten you a lot.”

Chavez knows about gang pressure.

Members “all start out nice, but they get corrupted. You end up with peer pressure doing stuff you don’t want. I saw one of the guys who shot my brother in jail. He was crying, he said he was sorry. I know how it is.”

Chavez said he realizes that many of the youths have nowhere else to go aside from their gang hangouts, which is why he hopes to soon open a youth center in Westminster through Victory Outreach. He said he hopes that the center, which would be at the old firehouse near Westminster High School, will provide counseling, tutoring and recreation.

“We’ll keep them busy,” he said.

Chavez, a maintenance worker, is trying to scrape up money through family and friends for a deposit and insurance for the building, which owner Jan Scheid has agreed to rent to his group.

Chavez acknowledged that out of the youths who show up for his programs, maybe only one in 100 stays. But it’s worth it, he said.

“My main goal for all of this is to reach out to the youth, to show them there’s a better way of life besides drugs and gangs,” he said. “They don’t find attention and love at home, so they find it in gangs.