A week without worries
When Jerry Munoz describes the way he walks home, it’s almost as if he’s using sign language. His hands form into intricate shapes, crisscrossing through the air to demonstrate the route he takes to avoid being confronted by gang members.
“They’ll just bang on you,” he says of the “cholos.” “Like, ‘You with 18th Street or Crips?’ It’s not cool.”
Today, Jerry, 15, is hanging out at his usual after-school stomping ground, the Salvation Army’s Red Shield Youth and Community Center in downtown Los Angeles. As he gulps down Skittles by the handful, the rubber bracelet around his wrist carries the slogan: “Once I get the ball, you’re at my mercy.”
Jerry loves sports -- basketball, soccer, football -- and he spends much of his time at Red Shield playing some kind of game.
His single mother, Maria, a certified nurse assistant from El Salvador, drives him here every day despite the arduous 30 minutes it takes to get away from the family’s two-bedroom apartment in South Los Angeles.
But it took a few hundred more miles for Jerry to really clear his head last summer, when he was bused to the Salvation Army’s Wilderness Camp in Malibu Canyon with 20 other kids ages 13 to 16.
“When you’re out of the city, you just feel more free,” says Mark Lewis, camper services director for the Salvation Army camps. “Being in nature gives these kids an opportunity to stretch their arms and feel like all of their troubles have been left at home.”
Jerry and other low-income teens spent five days immersed in the outdoors, backpacking, sleeping in tents and learning about the environment.
At camp, he learned about cheetahs becoming endangered. “And man, that’s really sad,” Jerry says, “because that animal is beautiful and has so much strength and speed.”
Jerry, who admits he used to litter “like alllll the time” before the trip, is now more conscientious about his environmental footprint. “I’ll pick up empty bags of chips in the lunch yard just ‘cause,” he says.
The high school junior hopes to gain a full scholarship to either UC Berkeley or USC, where he wants to study to become a doctor or an architect.
“I don’t want to be some drunk lowlife living in my parents’ garage with kids who I can’t support,” he says, commenting on the fate of many of those in his neighborhood. “I want that feeling of helping to save a life.”
The Salvation Army is one of 60 organizations receiving financial support this year through the Los Angeles Times Summer Camp Campaign. More than 8,000 underprivileged children will go to camp this summer, thanks to $1.5 million raised last year. The annual fundraising campaign is part of the Los Angeles Times Family Fund of the McCormick Tribune Foundation, which this year will match the first $1.1 million in contributions at 50 cents on the dollar.
Donations are tax-deductible. For more information, call (213) 237-5771. To make donations by credit card, go tolatimes.com/summercamp. To send checks, use the attached coupon. Do not send cash. Unless requested otherwise, gifts of $50 or more will be acknowledged in The Times.
