Once upon a life

Eighteen years ago today, I made one of the most important phone calls of my life. I was sitting in front of my parents' house, high as I had ever been. I don't know what possessed me to pull up and ask to use their phone, but I did. I asked my dad for Richard K.'s phone number. The conversation lasted less than a minute. Me: "Hey, Richard." Richard: "Are you done?" Me: "Yes." Richard: "I got a place for you." Me: "I'll see you tomorrow." That was it. That was the last day I ever used. Looking back, I know that phone call changed everything. It was the beginning of a new life—one I couldn't even imagine that day. Eighteen years later, I'm still grateful that I made that call, and even more grateful that Richard answered. Love you, Richard. Thank you for believing in me when I couldn't believe in myself. Tomorrow WE celebrate 18 years clean. I'm finally legal. 

Do you ever get burned out? Yeah. Of course I do. This work is hard. Sometimes it’s thankless. Sometimes it’s heartbreaking. There are days when you pour everything you have into somebody and wonder if any of it made a difference. And there’s a quiet scorecard in your head. The people you couldn’t reach. The doors that stayed closed. The setbacks. The losses. The times you gave everything you had and nobody said thank you. But somewhere along the way, I made peace with the lack of thank-yous. Because that was never the point. The point is the heart behind the work. Sometimes the victory looks like someone finding a home. Sometimes it’s someone making it through another night. Sometimes it’s watching someone come back and try again. And sometimes, the victory is something quieter. A beautiful soul recently went to heaven from the comfort of their own home, surrounded by the people who loved them. They didn’t die alone on a sidewalk. They didn’t die in an alley. They didn’t die in a jail...

Chapter: The Long Fight I’ve been fighting for as long as I can remember. Not the kind of fighting you see in movies where someone throws a punch and the music swells. I’m talking about the kind of fight that starts before you even know you’re in one. The kind where the neighborhood itself feels like a test you have to pass just to walk down the street. I was born into that world. In East Los Angeles, respect wasn’t some abstract idea. It was currency. It was armor. It was survival. Every block had its own gravity, pulling people into loyalties, rivalries, and lines that you didn’t cross unless you were ready for consequences. There were other neighborhoods, other football players, jocks, Tigers, gang members—people watching, measuring you, waiting to see what you were made of. You learned early that reputation traveled faster than you did. If someone heard your name, it meant something. Maybe good, maybe bad, but it meant something. And if you didn’t stand up for yourself, that ...

The years didn’t change the country as much as they revealed it. When Donald Trump first ran for office, I remember the feeling more than the headlines. It wasn’t shock. It was exposure. Like someone turned on a blacklight in a room I thought I knew well. Things that had always been whispered got spoken plainly. Jokes that used to hide behind smirks came out with applause. Some people said, “He just says what everyone is thinking.” That was exactly what scared me. I watched timelines shift. Friends I had barbecued with, prayed with, laughed with — suddenly they were reposting speeches and cheering rhetoric that felt cruel to me. They called it strength. I heard contempt. They called it truth. I heard grievance. Then came the second wave, louder and less disguised. The culture hardened. People stopped debating policy and started defending personalities. It became less about ideas and more about loyalty. The flag wasn’t enough. The Bible wasn’t enough. You had to pledge allegiance to a m...

There’s something about a West Texas sunset that makes a man tell the truth. February 16th, 2026. I was driving through Abilene, watching the sky catch fire the way only West Texas knows how. Out here the sunsets don’t fade politely. They testify. Orange like a burning bush. Purple like bruised velvet. Gold spilling across the flat earth as if God tipped over a paint bucket and said, “Look at this.” And just like that, I thought of Ruby Mesta. When I was homeless. When I was strung out. When I was the version of myself that even I didn’t believe in. Ruby did. She would let me sleep in her yard. In her car. In Eddie’s car. No speeches. No lectures. Just, “Mijo, you hungry?” She’d feed me like I belonged at the table. Let me shower in their house so I could wash the street off my skin. Her grandbabies, Cassandra and Carlos, loved me without hesitation. Kids have a radar for authenticity. They saw me before I could see myself. Ruby would hear gunshots in the neighborhood and go looking fo...

I carry three sets of people in my heart who are already waiting for me in heaven: my blood family, my gang family, and my recovery family. Each group holds pieces of my story—pieces that made me who I am. When I imagine the moment I finally see them again, it isn’t a quiet walk through pearly gates. It feels more like baseball under the lights. It’s the ninth inning, two outs, the crowd holding its breath. Then—crack—the bat connects, and the ball soars. I’m rounding third after a walk-off home run, the way Kirk Gibson limped and pumped his fist or the way Freddie Freeman grins when he knows the game is over. The stadium erupts. Joy hits you so hard it almost knocks you over. November of ’95 is burned into me. That was the first time I was shot and then run over by a car. I woke up sprawled behind my homie’s truck with Wicked gripping my hand. When my eyes opened, he slammed his fist on the window and screamed, “He’s alive! Big Mike’s alive! Drive faster!” But before that moment, I wa...