A Fighting Chance : Gang Members Learn the Art of Discipline at Van Nuys Gym

Hector Lopez is making the gang boys sweat.

Not in some airless room down at headquarters, but in a Van Nuys gym heavy with the sound of fists on pads.

Lopez, one of the world’s top-ranked super-lightweight fighters, tells a dozen young men to jog in place until their shorts are wet around the midsection and a fine wet sheen covers the tattoos that identify the neighborhood allegiances for which so many like them have died. A young man with “SANFER” emblazoned on his chest and a nasty vertical scar crawling up his ankle shifts into a fighting pose, making sharp exhaling noises through his nose as he boxes the air.

A half-smile softens Lopez’s hard-eyed fighter’s countenance. “There you go, there you go,” he says to another gang member, who has just mastered a three-punch combination.

Most people couldn’t afford to buy the kind of training Lopez doles out to these young men for free. It is Lopez’s belief that society can’t afford not to give it to them.

Twice a week, anywhere from 10 to 35 gang members attend these grueling training sessions at the Jet Center gym, which is owned and operated by champion kick boxers Benny (The Jet) Urquidez and William (Blinky) Rodriguez, along with Rodriguez’s wife, Lilly, herself a champion fighter.

Rodriguez, the principal instructor in the training classes, is one of the architects of the peace treaty between Latino gangs in the Valley that has so far lasted seven months. Though the truce has not been without problems--isolated shootings and beatings have flared up between the neighborhoods--there have been no killings of gang members in that time.

Some might find it odd to train gangbangers to fight. Isn’t that like shipping arms to Krupp? For one thing, the gang members already know how to fight. What they don’t know, and what they are learning from Lopez and Rodriguez, is how to fight fair and respect the combat they have chosen.

Every time they begin their sessions, they bow to each other. When they leave, they bow to the gym.

Raul Rodriguez, 23, is a big kid with a shaved head and a soft, muscled body that he has hardened up considerably over the past three months.

“Before, you had one thing in mind: getting in fights,” says Rodriguez, who has spent 16 months in jail for carrying a weapon and still carries a scar from being stabbed in the head. “Here they’re teaching us discipline.”

The discipline keeps him focused on his responsibilities. He has a wife and two young children. For the past two years he has worked for a telecommunications company in the fraud division.

“I give a lot to Hector and Blinky,” he says. “They’re not getting paid for this.”

For Lopez, his work with the gang members is a kind of pay-back. He still bears his own neighborhood identifier, a tattoo on his back that says “Toonerville,” which is in Atwater. Once Southern California’s greatest young fighter, Lopez was a silver medalist in the 1984 Olympics and seemed a certainty for ring immortality when his career was sidetracked by a three-year prison sentence.

He had stayed away from the neighborhood while he was training for the Olympics. After the games, he built an impressive record as a featherweight, gaining the No. 1 ranking in the world. “But I couldn’t get a title shot,” he says. “I let frustration get in.”

On Oct. 9, 1988, he was arrested on suspicion of kidnaping his girlfriend at gunpoint. That charge was dropped, but Lopez was convicted of two assault charges.

“I had a real bad temper,” Lopez confesses simply.

Since getting out of prison two years ago, he has re-established his career, married the woman he was accused of kidnaping and become involved in Rodriguez’s church, Victory Outreach. When Rodriguez told him he had started a training class for gang members and asked him to help, he quickly agreed, even though his own training schedule leaves him exhausted by the time the evening classes at the Jet Center roll around.

“I felt like Blinky and my pastor were there to help me,” Lopez says. “If I can pass it on, so much the better. I’m glad I’m out here.”

He has an obvious and immediate rapport with the young men he teaches. When he goes up on his toes to demonstrate a move, his fluid self-control is obvious. When he tells them to give him 50 pushups, there is barely a groan of complaint.

“I’ve been there sitting in the same holding tank they’re sitting in,” Lopez says, explaining the unquestioned respect he receives.

He knows people would pay him a lot for the training he is donating. He shrugs.

“I’m making treasures in heaven,” he says.

The real payoff is in the words of people like Raul Rodriguez. He is thankful for the truce, and it has shown him a wondrous new world without invisible borders of danger.

“It feels safer,” he says. “Now I’m able to go to my grandma’s house and not get shot by a rival gang.”