Grads Say Goodbye to Troubled Pasts

Three childhood friends who overcame troubled pasts will celebrate their graduation today from Capistrano Valley High School.

For seniors Alfonso Ramirez, 18, Omar Rivera, 17, and Eliseo Maldonado, 18, the commencement ceremony marks the laying to rest of a former life as gang members. And for Ramirez and Maldonado, that past includes arrests, probation or Juvenile Hall.

The students, who grew up in San Juan Capistrano, have Jesse Gutierrez to thank in part for their high school diplomas and the opportunity for higher education. Gutierrez worked with the trio every two weeks for the past year as a gang counselor with Community Service Programs Inc., a nonprofit organization that works to promote gang prevention in South County.

Ramirez and Maldonado were assigned to the program as part of their probation. They later recruited Rivera to join the group. Gutierrez said that of 20 students, the three were the only ones to successfully complete the yearlong counseling program.

“They are terrific students,” Gutierrez said. “They just have something inside them that makes them want to succeed.”

Ramirez has been arrested eight times since he joined a gang at age 13. He said the program helped him turn his life around at the same time some of his friends quit school or got into drugs.

“I was heading in that direction, but I just wanted to [change] for my mom,” he said. “Just because I’m known as a gang member doesn’t mean that I can’t go on to do better things.”

Maldonado, who started the school year in Juvenile Hall, said Gutierrez and the program helped him confront his past problems and concentrate on his future.

“The program enhances your social skills and broadens your horizons,” Maldonado said. “It prepares you for the real world.”

Rivera agreed that the program helped him avoid a bleak future.

“Most of our friends go to Juvenile Hall, to Mexico or quit school,” he said.

In the fall, Ramirez will attend an auto trade school in Arizona on scholarship, and Rivera plans to study psychology at Saddleback College. Maldonado said he also will enroll at Saddleback and will work to help support his mother.

“I think they will all succeed,” Gutierrez said.