Erasing Traces of the Past

There are times when it’s painful to wipe away the mistakes of the past.

For Jeremy Howard, gripping his chair, the color draining from his young face and groaning loudly, it was excruciating. He pleaded for a break. But the nurse held tight to the laser pen until it had crossed every inch of the dragon tattoo inked across his chest.

His skin red and swollen, Howard will have to endure the laser at least half a dozen more times before the tattoos he earned as a Simi Valley gang member are completely gone. Still, he managed a smile.

“It’s worth it,” said Howard, 23. “This is giving me a new life.”

That’s the whole point, said Sharon Troll, who runs a new Ventura-based tattoo-removal program. For the past three months, volunteers have provided the free service to Ventura, Oxnard and Port Hueneme residents struggling to cut gang ties or eager to make a fresh start.

“It’s a way to build confidence, to build self-esteem,” said Troll as she helped 25 people lined up outside a downtown health clinic on a recent Sunday morning. “They’ll tell you [that] with the tattoos they can’t get jobs, people look at them differently. So this becomes an important step on the way to a new life.”

There are a handful of similar programs throughout the county. But unlike those, the new Ventura program does not require payment or community service, which can be up to 40 hours per session.

If someone is willing to reach out for help, Troll said, why make it any harder?

“We ask for nothing but a willingness to change,” said the 59-year-old Ventura mother of three, whose position is funded through a Gang Violence Suppression Grant. “And to do something kind for someone else someday.”

Troll, an employee at the Boys & Girls Club of Ventura, took over the program from an Oxnard-based foundation earlier this year.

For several years, the Chuck Muncie Foundation, created by the former National Football League star to help at-risk teens, offered the service to Oxnard and Ventura residents. But when Muncie got a job in San Francisco, he moved his operation north, leaving Ventura with no tattoo-removal service.

Troll offered to step in. The $180,000 laser machine belonged to the Sheriff’s Department and was used in a now-defunct program that removed tattoos from jail inmates.

The department loaned the machine to Muncie, and now it’s in Troll’s hands.

She works once a month out of donated office space at a county medical clinic on Santa Clara Street. And joining her is Dee Mick, a registered nurse with the Ventura County Medical Clinic, who also helped out with the Oxnard program. It was Mick who paid out of her own pocket to learn how to work the laser machine.

Together, they see gangbangers, ex-cons and sobered-up businesspeople. Then there are the chagrined spouses anxious to remove the names of former lovers.

Susan Simoes, 26, stood outside the clinic for more than an hour waiting for a chance to have the elbow-to-shoulder tattoo of King Tut and Aphrodite removed, a procedure a doctor recently told her would cost about $10,000.

But she wants to join the Marines and go to officer training school. The tattoos would not be tolerated, and certainly couldn’t be hidden beneath short-sleeved shirts.

There are other reasons, Simoes said, recalling a time last summer when a group of female gang members started throwing gang signs at her and challenging her to a fight.

“They were all asking me where I’m from, who I claim,” Simoes said. “I told them I wasn’t in a gang. They just automatically judged me.”

She knew the laser would hurt. But she used the moment to teach her 6-year-old son a lesson as he waited patiently beside her.

“I want him to see his Mom’s arm getting burned,” she said. “Then he won’t ever want one of his own.”

They weren’t the only mother-and-child team. Rachel Mendoza stood by her 17-year-old daughter as she had the words “Trust No Man”--a phrase she had branded on her following a bad breakup--zapped from her abdomen. Her mom offered her hand as the laser began to crackle.

When it was over, Mendoza traded places with her daughter to have a design removed from her hand and the word “Saticoy” erased from her ankle. It was Mom’s second date with the laser. “It hurts even worse than the first time,” Mendoza said, taking a moment to take deep breaths.

“But,” she added later, “no matter how much it hurts, you feel better about yourself when it’s done. I’ve been in the grocery store and you get that look from people. They put you in a category--the gang-member category.”

After the laser, patients move to another room where the burned skin is slathered with antibiotic cream and covered with gauze. For most people, it takes a few weeks to heal, then they have to return for another treatment. The number of treatments depends on the amount of ink used on the tattoo, the age of the design and the pigment of a patient’s skin--the lighter the skin, the more treatments.

But it does work, says volunteer Jose Becerra. After offering the antibiotic cream, the 35-year-old Oxnard resident opened his arms to display the faint markings of several gang tattoos on his biceps and forearms. He’s been under the laser about 12 times, he guesses. Almost done.

“I was just young and dumb at the time,” Becerra said. “But eventually, we all end up growing up.”

Most people, such as Howard, are referred to the program through probation or police officers. After serving a year in Los Angeles County Jail for assault, followed by a few months in Ventura County Jail for outstanding traffic tickets, Howard was tired of his lifestyle. A guard in Ventura slipped the tattoo removal information into Howard’s mailbox. He called the day he was released.

Many customers learn of the program through word of mouth. Troll gets random calls at her office in the Ventura Police Department’s storefront along Ventura Avenue. People ask for information, and Troll opens the appointment book. That’s because she’s seen what a difference the gesture can make in someone’s life.

“They come in here to find me after,” Troll said. “And they say thank you. They say they got the raise they needed, the job, their marriage is happier, they feel better about themselves. It changes the way they walk, talk, act, everything. And I can’t put into words how that feels.”