Buried Past Threatens O.C. Man’s Future in Teaching

When you grow up in the barrio, have a long gang history that reads like a bad resume with a few thefts, drug use and juvey violence, it’s heavy baggage.

Still, Natividad “Junior” Alvarado Jr. had thought his past was far behind him.

Alvarado, 36, long ago tossed aside the thug life and paid his debt to society, including stints in the County Jail. He got married and evolved into a model citizen. He became a part-time minister.

But now the past has returned to threaten him.

Six months ago, Alvarado landed a job teaching carpentry at Los Pinos Conservation Camp, as a vocational education teacher with the regional occupational program in San Juan Capistrano.

He was living large until a notice from the state Commission on Teacher Credentialing arrived in the mail late last year.

“They stopped my application because of my past. I got fingerprinted and my application for a credential to teach vocational ed fell through,” Alvarado said.

His fingerprints were needed for a teaching credential under a state law enacted last year, after a school janitor with a felony record committed a crime on a campus. When Alvarado’s application was entered into the state’s Justice Department computer, all his old convictions popped up. The state halted his application.

Alvarado has lost his teaching job. He is appealing that action. And he’s learning who his friends are.

Among those writing recommendations to the credentialing commission are Santa Ana City Councilman Brett Franklin, Police Capt. Dan McCoy and David Wheeler, the ROP superintendent who urged the commission to grant a teaching credential because Alvarado has the ability “to talk with these young men on their own terms and discuss the consequences and mistakes that he endured as a result of his actions.”

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Alvarado has faced adversity before and admits he had a troubled past, including heroin use. His arrest record shows 14 misdemeanor convictions that included drug possession, burglary and theft. His last arrest was in 1989, for drunk driving. He has no felonies.

“Sure, I have a past,” Alvarado said. “I have a dope background. But I have a lot of people who know me and know how I’ve turned my life around. And, there’s nothing that I got by not having to work for it. I’ve had to fight for this.”

For the last nine years, he has ministered to youths at the New Life Family Fellowship, the Santa Ana church he and his wife, Teresa, co-founded. He serves on the city’s Human Relations Commission.

“I’ve worked with ex-offenders in the past,” said Peter J. Espinosa, a counselor at Saddleback Community College in Mission Viejo, “and usually, the success rate is really limited. They come and go. They can’t make the adjustment with the discipline you need in college. But Junior made it through his first semester with us, and that was an indication that he had the ability and commitment.”

While attending Saddleback, Alvarado endured two-hour bus rides to and from the Mission Viejo campus because he knew he needed a change of environment, Espinosa said. With Espinosa as his mentor, Alvarado blossomed academically, earning a 3.0 grade-point average and several scholarships.

He transferred to Orange Coast College, where he earned an associate of arts degree, and then was recommended for the job at Los Pinos by Espinosa, who is also a Capistrano Unified School District trustee.

City Councilman Franklin describes Alvarado as a “charismatic person.”

“I was the one who suggested his appointment to the Human Relations Commission because I’ve known him ever since we were youngsters growing up together,” Franklin said. “He was a star athlete and a leader even when he got involved in the gangs.”

Cal State Long Beach serves as a clearinghouse for the state’s credentialing process for vocational education instructors. That’s where Alvarado filed his application for a credential. He disclosed his arrest record on the application, said Jo Ann Aguirre, an assistant professor of occupational studies.

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Despite the criminal record, Aguirre said Alvarado was initially approved to teach with a preliminary credential pending further examination of his application by the Commission on Teacher Credentialing.

“We cleared him because they were misdemeanors and they happened so long ago,” Aguirre said, noting that some arrests date back 17 years.

Paul Bott, coordinator of the Designated Subjects Credentials Program at Cal State Long Beach, said his office has filed a recommendation to the commission supporting Alvarado. “He’s the example of the type of people you want teaching,” Bott said.

No date has been set for the commission’s hearing on Alvarado’s appeal, said Richard Fisher, staff counsel to the state Division of Professional Practices. His office provides legal services to the commission.

Alvarado’s case first goes before a seven-member committee, which makes a recommendation to the full 19-member commission. The committee is seeking certified copies of Alvarado’s record, and Fisher said that Alvarado is “working with us to get those documents.”

Both the committee and commission can weigh outside recommendations.

“Typically, with this many convictions,” Fisher said, the committee “will send it to the next stage and hold a meeting to decide if probable cause exists to deny the application for credential.”

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Meanwhile, Alvarado is in limbo.

“It’s a good thing I have my wife, because she’s been so supportive of me. She works in a [regional occupational program] in Santa Ana, so we have some money coming in,” Alvarado said. “If I don’t get my job back, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

He is simultaneously hopeful and discouraged.

“I understand why the state has to do this. . . . But I’ve done everything that society asked me and this can be very discouraging to me.”

Now, he said, “I’m back to point one.”