Barrio to Boardroom : Anti-Gang Youth Group Samples World of Commerce
Eighteen-year-old Sonia Munoz of San Fernando entered the Beverly Hilton Hotel, rushed past the valets, the bellboys and the simulated waterfall in the marble foyer, and went straight to the pay phones. Her boyfriend had paged her while she was en route to the hotel from the headquarters of her anti-gang youth group, Salud, and she needed to return his call.
Her mission that night was to mingle in the world of commerce, but, for a moment at least, itwould have to wait. Her boyfriend beckoned.
Munoz’s rush to the phones captured the contrasting experiences of six members of Salud, who were invited by telecommunications giant MCI to a Latino business conference this week at the posh hotel. The aim was to give these young people--two of them former high school dropouts, two of them former gang members--practice maneuvering in a high-powered, corporate social setting.
“What this is about is, let’s not be intimidated in different atmospheres,” Salud’s founder and director, Augie Maldonado, said as he drove one of two vans carrying the Salud members from San Fernando to the Wilshire Boulevard hotel.
Although they were mingling and chatting by the evening’s end, there were times when it was clear they still had one foot in adolescence, one in adulthood. From barrio to boardroom is also a big jump, but Maldonado hopes they can make it--and at times they gave him good reason to think they will.
Munoz may have been sidetracked by her boyfriend, but her sister, Norma, 19, brought her back to the business at hand. “Let’s go, Sonia!” Norma said. So off they went down the carpeted hallway to the Grand Ballroom, but not before Norma noticed some telephone numbers scribbled on the walls near the phones. She clucked her tongue disapprovingly and pulled out a pencil to erase the numbers.
“People will write on anything,” she muttered.
Inside the Grand Ballroom, a dozen blue booths containing high-tech computer telecommunications equipment lined the walls. Next to the booths, MCI product managers dressed in dark suits explained how the new technology could increase profit margins for the companies of the 150 or so businessmen and businesswomen in attendance.
For some of the youths, the experience was a strange but welcome diversion from the sometimes gritty streets of San Fernando. The six Salud members were the only students invited by MCI. For the most part, they were smooth.
The Munoz sisters, who wore pink and blue floral dresses, took their mission seriously, mingling and politely questioning the product managers behind the booths. Both sisters stopped to greet Kyra D. Storojev, president and founder of Futureworld, a Sherman Oaks technology and education firm that has been working with Salud on the goal of setting up a computer learning project.
There was a time when the sisters skipped school regularly. Now they were chatting with a computer educator who has a background in building large, closed-circuit television systems. “We like learning by doing, not sitting in the class with a teacher staring at you with a blank face,” Norma said. “We like talking to people, and going out and seeing, you know, how things work in the real world.” Both sisters now attend a continuing education program for high school students in Granada Hills.
Maldonado also used the evening to thank MCI for its recent $10,000 grant. During an impromptu presentation of a photo collage Salud had put together as a thank you, 16-year-old Ernie (Tito) Rodriguez was supposed to make a few comments on behalf of Salud, but was nowhere to be found.
Clearing his throat behind a microphone on a stage in the ballroom and chuckling nervously, Augie Maldonado explained that “Tito must have gotten cold feet. I hope you can forgive him.” Maldonado presented the collage to MCI with the help of Norma and Julio Martinez.
Just then, Tito entered the rear of the room, waved and smiled at Maldonado. Later, Tito, a sheepish grin on his face, confided he missed the ceremony “because I was on the phone with my homegirl. I forgot about my speech.”
Despite the slight mishap, Tito, a member of a gang since the age of 10, clearly enjoyed the evening. For the occasion, Tito had belted his slender frame into a clean pair of size 44 waist baggies (with stapled cuffs) and donned a chambray shirt. He relished the chandeliered ballroom and the fajita buffet, but it was a teleconferencing video display--where Tito chatted via televideo with Jackie, a smiling MCI executive seated behind her desk in an office in San Francisco--that most clearly moved him.
“I’m trippin’, they got some trippin’ stuff in here,” he said, shaking his head, downing his fourth Coke and giving the empty glass to a passing waiter.
Martinez, at 20 the oldest of the group, adopted a corporate look for the night, wearing a charcoal suit, dark tie, suspenders and black wingtips. His shirt collar barely covered the bubbled, pocked scars on his neck, where tattoos once advertised his affiliation with his old gang.
“It’s a whole different world,” he said, looking around the ballroom and playing with the knot in his tie. “I want to be somebody. Somebody.”
On the way out, he picked up a scholarship application at a booth sponsored by the Hispanic Business College Fund, and tucked it inside his jacket.
