A gangster is made
Like many gangsters, Jesus didn’t start out bad. In fact, he really liked school and tried to do well in his classes. His mom and dad encouraged Jesus to get good grades and to succeed in life and until the 6th grade this is exactly what Jesus was doing. Then everything changed.

In middle school he started hanging out with his older cousins from L.A. They were into drinking, ditching school, and doing drugs. Pretty soon Jesus started doing worse in school. By 7th grade he was high all the time and in danger of failing all his classes. From this point, things got worse.

In 9th grade Jesus and his friends got a hold of a new drug called GHB, a drug so dangerous it can kill people the first time they use it. Jesus and his friends thought they could make a lot of money by selling this drug to kids at school. In no time, Jesus and his crew were bringing in dollars and they felt like the new gangsters in town. The next step of course was to join a real gang.

Sureño 13
Sureño 13 is a street gang that became very popular in California prisons. One goal was to provide protection from attacks by other prison gangs. The gang is strictly made up of Latinos.

Most of his friends were in the gang so it seemed like the cool thing to do. Jesus then got “jumped-in” as part of his initiation.

“It was crazy getting beat up by my best friends…they beat me for one minute and 13 seconds. It was the longest minute of my life,” Jesus said.

By now Jesus wasn’t going to school anymore. He spent his days selling drugs, ditching, getting high and partying with his friends. But all this would soon come to an end. The trouble began when he was caught high on drugs at school. The principal also found a knife and drugs hidden in Jesus’ sock. He was expelled from school and sentenced to prison for 30 days. At 14, Jesus now found himself in jail.

When he got out, Jesus tried to clean up his life; quitting drugs and taking classes for his GED. He wanted to go to college but couldn’t because he didn’t have a social security number. Jesus took this rejection very badly. Now believing he could do nothing with his life, Jesus went back to his old ways of partying and doing drugs.