Changing Their Images : Volunteers Help Juvenile Inmates Remove Tattoos

Katie, 17, held one arm, trembling, red and swollen, across her lap. She waited with plastic wrap over her brow for another treatment that promised to further liberate her from what Dr. Adrianna Scheivner says imprisons kids like Katie in their own skin--tattoos.

Scheivner, president and founder of Brave Hearts, a nonprofit foundation providing medical cosmetic services to needy youth, is a laser dermatology specialist with a practice in Beverly Hills.

Katie is a young convict, an ex-gang member, and is now incarcerated at Camp Scott, a lockup for young women in the Santa Clarita Valley.

On Friday, Katie and about 40 of her peers waited anxiously, excitedly and nervously in one of the camp’s makeshift outbuildings to be anesthetized, zapped with a laser and then slathered with fruit acid by Scheivner’s cheerful crew of assistants and volunteers.

Scheivner had already slowly guided the laser over a series of flowers and spider webs on Katie’s arm. As the acid helped draw the ink from her skin, Katie waited for the anesthetic to numb her forehead, where “Suis,” a gang name, and “Love” were written in script, each above an eyebrow.

Though Brave Hearts makes regular visits to the California Youth Authority’s Oxnard facility, Friday marked its first visit to this minimum-security juvenile facility, and most of the young women here were anxious to erase as much of their past as they could. Some had gone to tattoo shops, others applied the gang names, roses and marijuana leaves themselves, using India ink and homemade contraptions adapted from Walkmans and guitar strings.

Nancy, an 18-year-old resident at the camp, has been trying to get rid of her tattoos--which start at her face and trickle down the rest of her body--for a few years now.

“After I got out the last time,” explained Nancy, who has a rap sheet 18 arrests long, “I tried to be good. I wanted to be straight . . . But people could just look at me and know I’ve lived a gang life.”

Nancy, who has been on probation or in lockup since she was 11, with only a four-month break, has never held a job. She uncomfortably remembers the pain of “applying and applying”--sometimes even interviewing--for jobs, only to be told “we’ll call you” by people she never heard from again.

About a year ago, she resolved to take the tattoos off. She began saving money to have a doctor remove them, but became discouraged when the savings grew slowly.

“I have a son to take care of,” she explains--a son who constantly asks “What’s that, Mom? What is that?” So Nancy held a kitchen spoon over a flame, heating the spoon “for a long time.” Then she pressed it against her cheekbone, just below her left eye.

“I thought I could burn them off,” she says of the teardrops and three dots at the corner of her eye, a design that, in gang parlance, signifies mi vida loca, or my crazy life. Instead, she says, the side of her face swelled up and “got pretty infected.” But at least she could cover the scars with makeup.

Nancy’s story illustrates, Scheivner said, why she volunteers her services at facilities like Camp Scott.

A petite brunette, Scheivner speaks in an almost-dainty, Australian-tinged English, emotion, affection and exhaustion all on the edge of her voice. “These kids--if they want to get their lives turned around--these marks all over their bodies are constant reminders of where their lives have been and what other people see when they look at them,” she said.

“And the minute they shake your hand,” she said, “there’s the gang symbol.”

Meanwhile, the girls at Camp Scott were served lunch on plastic trays in the narrow hallway outside the room where the laser sparks flew, the stench of laser-burned hair mixing with the smell of their tuna salad. Most of the young women will need six or eight more sessions for Scheivner to erase their tattoos, although some faint scars may remain.

Once they are released from Camp Scott, Scheivner promised to continue treating them free of charge. The process is painful and tedious.

“I just can’t even believe this is happening,” Nancy said stoically, trying to ignore the pain on her face, neck and back. She carefully turned up the corners of her mouth to give a half-smile. “I am going to be able to go to PTA meetings someday.”