Requiem for a Dream From Colonia’s Streets

Imagine for a minute you have more than one life. Men do it everyday . . .They don’t make it on t.v., but yet they’re heroes to me.

--Dino Zarate at 16

*

It was early September, and like so many other teenagers, Dino Zarate had packed his bags to head back to college. It was the start of his sophomore year at St. Mary’s, an upscale Catholic university in the foothills eight miles east of Berkeley.

Zarate, 19, didn’t have much in common with most college students. He was a hard-core gang member from Oxnard who once seemed destined for prison. No one would have guessed he was headed to study calculus and chemistry at an expensive university.

But people had reached out to help Zarate. People like Tim Mayworm, who ran a home in Pasadena for gang members eager for another life. It was there that Zarate had been working to turn his world around.

Now, as Zarate packed his bags at the Pasadena center, Mayworm had one piece of advice.

“Don’t stop in Oxnard [on the way back to St. Mary’s],” Mayworm said. “Don’t. If you make it to Santa Barbara, it means you’ll make it to college. And then you’re on your way out.”

Unfortunately, Dino Zarate wasn’t listening.

*

...From the roots of his sole he learned to be a gangster who is proper . . .

*

His grandfather was a gang member. So was his father.

Back then, joining the gang wasn’t a decision. If you lived in Colonia, you hung out with Colonia boys, and that made you a Colonia Chique. Dino Zarate Sr. was a Colonia Chique.

People in the neighborhood still remember the glory days of Zarate Sr., dressed down in high-gloss shoes, wide-brimmed hats and flashy zoot suits. A low-rider magazine named the elder Zarate, then 16, best dressed, earning him a layout on the magazine’s cover. His girlfriend, Roberta Rodriguez, was his opposite--a shy honors student at Channel Islands High School.

When Rodriguez became pregnant at 15, Zarate Sr. worked construction jobs to support his new family. But in his off time he hung out with La Colonia friends and had run-ins with the police: fights, burglary, breaking into cars.

It took three years before Rodriguez decided she’d had enough. Days after her high school graduation, she moved to Arizona, leaving little Dino behind with an uncle.

At 5, Dino joined his mom, who drifted into a series of relationships that brought four little brothers. Money was tight. The family moved between Phoenix, Riverside and San Bernardino, making Dino the perpetual new kid at school. A chubby boy, he was sometimes the target for schoolyard bullies.

By 11, he was bouncing back and forth between his father in Oxnard and his mother in San Bernardino. But he was itching to stay with his father, relatives said. He idolized him, clinging to pictures of his zoot-suited dad and reveling in stories about his early gang days. Rodriguez relented and finally sent him home for good. To Colonia.

*

Cuz we all know there’s no giving up on the hood. When we tat it on our bodies, it’s because we know we should . . .

*

Dino Zarate savored the days with his father, spending time camping and fishing in nearby Ojai. They talked about cars, about girls, about the old days in the gang.

Zarate soon took to wearing baggy black slacks, baseball jerseys and a tattoo with the letters “CO” on his arm--for Colonia Oxnard. He was a Colonia Chique. Police picked him up for a series of offenses: fighting, breaking the city’s 10 p.m. curfew, riding in a stolen car, drinking in public. Zarate Sr. saw a rerun of himself.

“I would tell him, ‘I know this neighborhood. I know what it can do to you,’ ” Zarate Sr. said. “People become victims of this neighborhood. Once it gets ahold of you, it’s hard to get away from. I know. It’s not something I’ve read about. I lived it.”

Zarate Jr. suffered an emotional blow in 1996 when his mother was sentenced to nearly two years in prison for stabbing an abusive boyfriend during a heated argument. While in prison, Rodriguez gave birth to her seventh child, a daughter.

Zarate’s siblings scattered, living with relatives in Oxnard and Arizona.

Back in La Colonia, Zarate, now 15, fought with his father’s live-in girlfriend, prompting the uncle who had taken him in earlier to do so once again.

“But by then,” Victor Rodriguez said of his nephew, “he already seemed lost. I was trying to save the boy from the streets. But he wouldn’t listen. It was a hard thing to see because I knew what potential the boy had.”

Zarate followed in his parents’ footsteps, spending several months in custody for stealing clothes from a warehouse in Oxnard. Not long after his release, he violated probation by blackening the eyes and breaking the nose of a teenager he met at the Police Activity League’s recreation room.

The courts dubbed Zarate, 17, a habitual troublemaker and sent him to live in a series of group homes. Each time, he ran away, landing back in Oxnard.

“He just said he missed home,” said Victor Rodriguez, remembering the last time his runaway nephew landed on his doorstep. “He said this was his home and he missed it.”

Fed up, a judge sent the teenager as far from Oxnard as possible, putting him in a Nevada “boot camp.” Miserable, Zarate called his uncle in tears, begging to be picked up.

“It’s too late,” Roberta Rodriguez told him. “It’s too late.”

*

There’s no longer just one course, thanks to pioneers we see . . . And I believe every homie in the barrio can achieve--

*

Ventura County probation officer Cosette Reiner was impressed. Holding a four-page handwritten letter from Dino Zarate in June 1998, she was touched by his desperate plea for help.

Nearly five months into the Rite of Passage program in Nevada, far from the makeshift family he had created on the streets in Oxnard, Zarate reconsidered his life. He wrote letters to his mom in prison apologizing for letting her down. He took high school courses and enrolled in an emergency medical technician (EMT) class.

He toyed with the idea of becoming a paramedic. But to do that, he needed college, which meant high school college prep classes, something not offered through his program. He wanted a transfer, and he needed Reiner’s help.

“I wouldn’t mind being transferred to a more suitable placement to finish my commitment, or even to start my commitment time over,” Zarate wrote to Reiner. “I’m not as much concerned with time as I am with learning life skills in order to become a better man and be able to support my family. That way I can gain as much knowledge as I possibly can so when I get back into society I won’t make the same mistakes I made in the past.”

Reiner faxed the letter to Tim Mayworm, founder of Journey House, a Pasadena home for boys with a reputation for getting hardened gang members off the street and into college. Mayworm read the letter and agreed: Zarate belonged at Journey House.

Zarate arrived at Journey House in November 1998. Wearing his boot camp uniform, jeans and a polo shirt, and gripping the plastic grocery bag holding his belongings, Zarate looked at Mayworm with skepticism. Defenses were up. He wouldn’t be pushed around easily.

Only a few months into the program, Zarate took a baseball bat to a supervisor’s car after an argument one evening.

But Mayworm, a former high school teacher and chaplain, had boundless patience. He helped Zarate get a part-time job as a security guard to pay for the damages, and told him to remember the goal: college.

Zarate responded to Mayworm’s kindness and threw himself into school, taking on after-school classes and going to Saturday school, and pulled his grades from Ds and Fs to straight A’s. He took the SAT and ACT exams, and filled out college applications.

He managed to graduate on time, in June 1999. Standing in his cap and gown, Zarate scanned the crowd for his parents. Neither showed up.

In letters Roberta Rodriguez once exchanged with her son, she apologized for not being more active in his life, for landing in prison during the years he needed her most.

“I told him I was sorry because I was his mother and I wasn’t there,” she said. “I couldn’t be.”

With a high school diploma, Zarate’s confidence soared. Now, becoming an EMT or a paramedic wasn’t enough.

“A doctor,” he told admissions counselors with St. Mary’s University. “I want to be a doctor and go home to help people like me.”

College administrators didn’t share Zarate’s confidence. They made notes on his college application: “Dysfunctional family, poor parenting, lack of positive role models, gang affiliation.”

Mayworm stepped in, determined to see Zarate at a school beyond the reach of Oxnard ties.

“You guys talk about helping troubled kids,” Mayworm told them. “Well, here’s a real-life case. He needs a break. So put your money where your mouth is.”

They did, handing Zarate a financial aid package and scholarship totaling $26,000 annually to cover tuition and living expenses.

St. Mary’s University was unlike any world Zarate had ever known.

His peers wore Gap jeans and Abercrombie & Fitch shirts, drove BMWs, and had a steady stream of disposable cash, thanks to their parents.

Zarate stood out among the 3,000 students, but loved the attention. He joined the Latino activist organization MEChA, got a job at a campus food stand, and volunteered to play host to a stream of high school seniors visiting the campus.

Classmates said Zarate often sat outside with a book in his hands, usually Homer’s “Iliad,” required reading that became one of his favorite tales. He took on calculus and chemistry, required for premed students. He struggled, but passed his science and math classes with Cs.

He made no secret of his gang ties, telling friends about the time he ran away from one group at home and was picked up by fellow gang members in L.A., only to be pulled over by cops for riding in a stolen car. Zarate laughed about those days, even boasted about them, said friend Patricia Iniquez.

“He was having a hard time letting go of the gangs,” said Iniquez, 18, who developed a close friendship with Zarate. “Sometimes he’d try to justify them. He would say, ‘People sometimes join gangs out of a need for love. That keeps them going back.’ ”

Zarate embraced his new life, but friends sensed he never stopped glancing over his shoulder, looking back to Oxnard.

At times, the pain of being different from his fellow students was razor sharp. Outside a party one weekend, a student told Zarate he wasn’t welcome, remembered friend Mustafa Qarshi.

“You aren’t one of us,” the student said matter-of-factly. Zarate and his friends left. “Patty, I have so many friends,” Zarate told Iniquez. “But sometimes, I just feel disconnected. It’s just not home.”

*

Listen after all, it’s the homies who got us by. When you were confronted by killers, who was by your side? Without support who knows if you would have lived or died.

*

Zarate survived his first year in college and prepared to leave for the summer. With the money he earned from his part-time campus job, he bought a light blue 1969 Mustang from Qarshi and headed to Oxnard.

He hung out for a time with his dad, who teased him about his tailored shirts and fitted khaki pants, and told him he was turning into a “white boy.”

But it was only a matter of weeks before Zarate was in trouble again.

He drove his Mustang through rival gang territory, and when bullets rang out, one narrowly missed him as it sliced through the headrest of the driver’s seat. He landed in jail that summer, too, on suspicion of assault, though charges were never filed.

Outside of jail, he picked up the phone and called Mayworm.

“This isn’t going to work,” he said. “I can’t stay here. Can I come back?”

As he arrived back at Journey House, Mayworm noticed bullet holes in the Mustang.

“What is going on in your head?” Mayworm asked. “What has to happen to you before you stay away from Oxnard?”

Zarate smiled, and Mayworm realized he was up against the impossible.

“It was obvious to him the gang life in Oxnard was a fatal attraction,” Mayworm said. “Still, he couldn’t break away from it.”

Christopher, a self-admitted gang member out of Simi Valley, said he understood Zarate’s ties to La Colonia.

“Those are his people,” said Christopher, whose last name was withheld because he is a minor. “No matter where he went in life, that wouldn’t change. Even if you just go home to see your parents, everyone knows who you are, who you belong to. That’s for life.”

On Sept. 1, Zarate was ready to return to school. But along the way, he stopped to pick up a group of friends in Oxnard and drove to the city’s south end, rival gang territory. An argument broke out between Zarate’s friends and a neighbor, who police allege was gang member Anthony Frank Vasquez, 18.

Vasquez reached for a gun and fired as Zarate’s friends piled into the Mustang. Two bullets struck Zarate in the head, police said. He slumped over the steering wheel while his friends jumped from the car and ran. Police are still looking for them.

Within hours, police took Vasquez into custody. He has entered a not-guilty plea and is awaiting trial.

Two services were held for Dino Zarate Jr.

College friends wept for the loss from a chapel at St. Mary’s. After a formal Mass, a procession of 350 students piled into a meeting room to share stories about Zarate.

Childhood friends dressed in baggy pants, some in dark shades, lined the back of a church in Ventura to pay their respects.

Mayworm attended both services.

At the hometown gathering, he stood before the crowd of mourners and offered a challenge.

“Dino reached one goal,” Mayworm said. “He made it to college. Now, I’m willing to pay for any gang member in Oxnard who will come forward and finish where Dino left off.”

A young man did come forward after the funeral, and Mayworm is laying the groundwork to get him into Loyola Marymount.

Days after the slaying, Zarate’s relatives found a poem written by the boy before moving to Journey House. He spoke of gangs, about fierce loyalty to members who stood by him in times of life and death, and of knowing there are choices in life.

Mayworm said it took several days before he could shed tears over Zarate’s death. He was too angry. Angry at Zarate’s father for being a gang member. Angry at his mother for not being there more often. Angry at Dino for wasting his promise.

“He wanted to get out, but this is all he knew,” Mayworm said. “He was a gang member. He did things knowingly.

“Dino,” he added, looking down and shaking his head with regret. “I told you, I told you, ‘Don’t go.’ He wouldn’t listen.”