Former gang member Pati Gutierrez (right) and Alex Vila, her advisor from the Columbia Park BGC.
Back From the Brink
Escaping gang life
By Bard Lindeman
Why do they do it? Why do they put it on the line every day, working with at-risk kids, the kind who, in the words of one Boys & Girls Club veteran, "get off the bus mad"?

Why do dedicated Club staff cast their lot with street-talking gang kids who dare you to say a civil word to them? And how do these youth-serving professionals struggle, day after day, against all odds, to rescue lives so many others have run from?

The 10th Annual Symposium on Youth Gangs and Delinquency, which took place in Atlanta April 22-24, offered compelling answers. The theme for the symposium, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, couldn't have been more appropriate: "A New Realm of Possibilities."

Among the participating holders of doctoral and master's degrees, law enforcement officers and Club leaders from across the country, walked a 17-year-old from San Francisco's Mission District where, for at least 50 years, gang youth have claimed city turf. Patricia (Pati) Gutierrez, born to Mexican immigrants, lived unhappily in the middle of an often-violent gang culture.

Given her environment, Pati was almost predestined to become a gang member, and today wears 15 tattoo-removal scars to prove it. Small in stature and soft-spoken, there is nothing large about her except a big heart. Pati shared details of her life story during the symposium's Youth Speak-Out session.

Escaping History

Violence often visited the Gutierrez home, where three brothers and two sisters shared space with their parents, who were involved in gangs. Pati's mother was a teen when she became pregnant with her first child, and her father fell victim to drugs.

Given this background, it wasn't surprising when Pati chose life on the streets as a gang member. She was so used to seeing violence at home that gang life was like a natural extension of her hostile family existence. Pati became a heavy drug user, consuming marijuana, ecstasy, crystal meth, amphetamines, cocaine, beer, hard liquor and tobacco.

We are left then with a textbook definition of "at-risk behavior," for a 5'1" teenage girl running hard from a home marked by misery.

"I spent my 16th birthday in detox," Pati said at the Youth Speak-Out event, and received a round of celebratory applause from an audience that, in the language of the street, "has been there."

Where and how does this story turn around? Perhaps the always-bumpy journey back started when Pati's father disappeared into Mexico. Money to live became Pati's imperative. In pursuit of a job, she found work at the Columbia Park Boys & Girls Club, a unit of the Boys & Girls Clubs of San Francisco.

"I hired her to play with the kids, clean pool tables and like that," remembers Senior Unit Director Alejandra "Alex" Vila, who minored in psychology but holds a Ph.D. in street smarts.

To know Alex is to understand that she cares and is without prejudice. She also has a fierce desire to pry kids away from the bleakness of the streets, and so became a major player in Pati's life story.

Alex describes, for example, her home telephone ringing late one night. Alex listened as Club workers reported they had a teen drunk on their hands. What should they do?

Alex was in her pajamas, she recalls. No matter, she dressed and took charge. Alex got hot food into her backsliding problem child and kept Pati safe in the Club until sobriety returned. Pati was just 13 at the time. She couldn't admit it to herself – not yet – but the Columbia Park Clubhouse was becoming her safe haven, the place to run when trouble showed up.

Alex and Pati both remember another disappointing time, even as they wish to forget it. Frustrated and out of patience, Alex banished her fledgling from the Club following a relapse into drug use. Her heart, Alex recalls, died a little that night.

"That's it! I cannot help you; my Club cannot help you," she told Pati, biting her lip all the while. "You cannot come here any more."

Pati was asked if she recalls that evening. She nods yes: "September 18, 2002." How does she remember it? "I was mad," she says, smiling.

Challenge to Succeed

Because she is so small, almost childlike, Pati seems vulnerable. She does not match the gang member stereotype. "Could you really fight?" a symposium-goer asked. "I can’t see you in some street brawl."

Again, the thin smile and her quiet response: "Sometimes you have to fight."

Pati told of still one more lost night when a girl, a stranger to her, got out of a car and walked directly into her space. Without any warning, this turf invader thrust a broken bottle into Pati's abdomen. "I didn’t know it," Pati said, "not until I got into the shower." Once sober, she saw where she had been bleeding. Luckily, the rival gang member's thrust was wide of the most vulnerable areas.

You do not tell gang members they must give up their lifestyle. Instead, you shepherd them to realize that such allegiance places them on an expressway leading nowhere. At best, it will end in ignorance, unemployment and dependency. At worst, in imprisonment and violent death.

Pati reached her epiphany over time. She drew quietly upon the environment and people at her Club. She was always safe there and never felt demeaned. Rather, she was encouraged, told she could paint upon a fresh canvas there.

She withdrew from the streets, moving ever closer to the staff and young people at the Columbia Park Club. In the arts workroom Pati found instruction, comfort and a positive challenge to succeed that she had never known.

With unquestioned talent and new purpose, Pati today is on her way, thanks to a scholarship to a San Francisco arts academy. That's after becoming the first person in her family to graduate from high school.

Alex Vila encouraged Pati to write an essay about her struggles and entered her in the citywide Boys & Girls Club Youth of the Year competition. Pati went on to become San Francisco's Youth of the Year, representing eight Club units.

Stories of Hope

We return now to our original question: Why do they do it? Why do Club professionals put it on the line every day? Perhaps the best answer lies in this reaffirming tale.

At the San Francisco Youth of the Year banquet, Pati was asked to introduce her family members. The dark-eyed girl with the jet-black ponytail, a onetime gang member who grew to womanhood in 17 turbulent years, stood to name Columbia Park Club staff members as her surrogate father, mother, aunts, cousins and nephews. And Pati continued until she had named everyone at the staff table. It was a "thank you" straight from her outsized heart.

It is moments such as these, fraught with emotion and unforgettable, that allow Boys & Girls Club professionals to push through the doors each day, ready to deal with formidable realities.

"Stories of hope," says Alex Vila, putting her benediction upon this chapter of the Pati Gutierrez saga. One that closes, for now, with Pati declaring at the Youth Speak-Out, "Now I feel I have to give back."

Pati issued a challenge to the audience of youth development professionals and their community partners; one that prompted, at first, a moment of stunned silence – followed by a standing ovation.

"You have to look inside yourself and decide if this is the job for you," she said. "If you’re going to open the door for [at-risk youth], either step through or move aside and let someone else do the job."

Bard Lindeman is a syndicated columnist.

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