New Battle for <i> Veterano</i> : Barrio Native, 58, Counsels Teens Against Drugs and Gangs

An Estancia High School sophomore named Beatriz explains to the counselor and a roomful of classmates how she was beaten up by girl gangbangers.

“This girl and I were throwing punches . . .,” the round-faced 16-year-old says, fighting back tears. “Then someone from behind pulls my hair and they were all over me. It just wasn’t fair.”

Counselor Roy Alvarado, a 58-year-old veterano of Orange County’s barrios who spent a third of his life behind bars for drug and gun offenses, nods knowingly. He has seen it all.

Once an altar boy, he has overcome drug addiction and been inand out of prison. But for the past four years, he has been Newport-Mesa Unified School District’s gang prevention counselor who works primarily for the Costa Mesa high schools. There, teachers and administrators welcome him to counsel their hard-core gang members and those at risk to the problems of drugs, alcohol and gang warfare.

On this particular day, Alvarado asks the students what they would have done if they had been in Beatriz’s place.

“I would go back and fight her again,” says Jessica, a junior at Estancia.

“Find someone else to kick their butt,” says another junior, named George.

Looking for an answer to his liking, Alvarado tells them of the beatings he took in his own past. He asks them what they would do if there was a mean dog that always bit people who passed by a particular house.

One boy, with a short haircut, says almost to himself: “I would avoid that house.” He quickly hid his face by staring at the ground.

“Exactly!” exclaims Alvarado. “If it was me I would avoid that house. . . . That’s his territory. You have to respect that, or bring him a big piece of meat.”

When the bell rings, most of the students leave with a new level of understanding. Says one student about Alvarado: “He knows more than anyone. He knows about the streets. He’s one of us.”

Growing up in Stanton, Alvarado planned to enter the priesthood, but his scholarship to a local Catholic school was taken away when he hit another boy over the head with a baseball bat.

“It was over a girl,” he said. “She became my girlfriend after that and I started going bad.”

By the time he was 10 years old he had been arrested for “messing with government checks during World War II”--forging--and sent to Juvenile Hall, he said.

“I always tried to be more radical, more crazy than the other guys,” he said. “When I first came back from Juvenile Hall I realized that things had changed. The guys I used to hang around with had girlfriends and cars. I couldn’t relate to them, so I found others like me who were hard core. We did speed and heroin, and pretty soon we had the main drug connection in Orange County.”

At age 18 he was sent to Chino State Prison for forgery and burglary, and soon after spent time at Tehachapi State Prison. Eventually he ended up in San Quentin State Prison for dealing in narcotics.

While in prison he said he was “lucky enough to be jailed with older inmates” who encouraged him to get his high school diploma. He also became an accomplished hairstylist.

“I had cut hair as a kid,” he recalled. “One day I tried it out on my classmates and gave them all mohawks. I got kicked out of school for that.”

When he was paroled from prison in 1961, he enrolled in a beauty school and gained top honors. He soon opened his own salon and operated a lucrative business in Newport Beach, but was sidetracked by drugs and alcohol.

“I was partying continually and drugging all kinds of things,” he said. “I also started hanging out with outlaw bikers such as the Hessians, Verdugos and Hell’s Angels. I partied and rode with them.”

He was also dealing in drugs and had an assortment of weapons, including hand grenades, he said. In 1984 he was arrested by Costa Mesa police, who caught him with an Uzi machine gun. He returned to prison for two years.

“Inside prison I began thinking about getting my life together and staying clean,” Alvarado said.

Told by a friend that there was a need for bilingual counselors who could relate to drug users, Alvarado enrolled in a Saddleback College course to become a certified counselor. After his third attempt, he passed the counselor’s certification course and was accredited.

He has worked for various programs since 1988--including Care Unit, Supportive Teen Outreach program and the Migrant Workers program--before joining the Drugs, Alcohol and Tobacco Education (DATE) program run by the school district, where he is now. The program is funded by the state and federal governments.

And despite--or maybe because of--his colorful past, Alvarado has become a well-known and respected figure around town.

Lynn Bloomberg, coordinator for DATE, said she never had any doubts that Alvarado could succeed with the high school students in Costa Mesa. She also said she knows why he is so good at his job.

“I think that he had to pay back society for the damage he did,” Bloomberg said. “Here was a man who was a troubled kid. As an adult he dealt drugs, he went to jail, and when he came out he felt he should be giving, not taking. And he has been giving ever since.”

Frank Infusino, the principal at Estancia High School, said he realizes Alvarado may come on “a little strong” for some students, but he realizes that credibility is needed when dealing with troubled youths.

“He has a storied history,” Infusino said. “He has been there and relates real well to the kids.”

Alvarado said he has not used drugs since his last prison term and plans to stay that way. But now he is battling recurring liver cancer and is undergoing chemotherapy. Despite his illness, Alvarado--with his salt-and-pepper goatee--looks younger than his years.

And he considers himself lucky.

“I feel blessed,” said Alvarado, who lives with his 20-year-old daughter, Dominique. He also has three other children.

Alvarado said he has been threatened by gang members who felt he should side with them. He counters this by telling them that he is “not their friend and not their enemy,” that he is merely trying to counsel them to make the right choices.

As an indication of the trust Alvarado has earned from the kids, last year one student turned over to him a gun that had been used in a shooting. “The kids feel they can talk to me before they get caught. They know I have been there before.”

After spending so much of his life fighting law enforcement, Alvarado now finds it ironic that among his best friends are judges and city officials.

“I am finally accepted after being on the other side of the system,” Alvarado said. “It proves that there isn’t anything you can’t do if you put your heart into it.”