People often ask me to tell them my story. Maybe that’s because they see the difference between where I am now and where I used to be.
Today I’m a professional artist, a father of four and a substance abuse counselor at a gang intervention program. Growing up? I was a gang member myself, a drug addict, a prison inmate. You might think it’s miraculous how I got here from there. I prefer to think of my story as evidence that there really are angels watching over us. Looking back, I see God guiding me every step of my way. Of course it sure didn’t feel like that at the time. But isn’t that always how it is? We see God only when we’re truly ready to find him.
I was raised in East L.A., which, if you’re not familiar with it, is one of Los Angeles’ oldest and poorest neighborhoods. There are lots of good things about my neighborhood. Great food, big families, strong churches. But East L.A. is also home to many of L.A.’s most violent street gangs.
My parents came to America from Mexico with high hopes for a better life. The only place they could afford to live was Aliso Village, a public housing project with L.A.’s highest gang-related murder rate. My dad started working in construction. Soon he was tempted to make more money selling drugs. He became a dealer then an addict. He took out his anger on my mom and my siblings and me. Our house became a place of fear.
My refuge was art. I loved to draw and people told me I was good at it. At Delores Mission Catholic School I was always asked to draw pictures of the Virgin Mary for school posters on her feast day. With a pencil in my hand all my troubles seemed to vanish. Until one day in eighth grade a teacher caught me drawing in class. He took my picture away and ripped it up. I flew into a rage and hurled my desk at him. I was expelled that day and sent to see the priest at Delores Mission Parish. Father Gregory Boyle told me he couldn’t do anything about my expulsion but he encouraged me to stick with art. “You have talent, Fabian,” he said. “Don’t waste it.”
Unfortunately I did waste it—at first. I transferred to the local junior high school and fell in with a bad crowd. I began spray painting graffiti and joined a gang. Soon I was in and out of juvenile hall. Father Boyle tried to help again. He convinced my probation officer to let me apprentice with a local artist named Wayne Healy.
Wayne was a famous muralist whose work has been exhibited all over the world. He agreed to take me on as a favor to Father Boyle. In his studio a new world opened up to me. Wayne taught me to paint and I met other artists and students my age who, instead of joining gangs, had gone to prestigious art schools. I won an art competition sponsored by a local congresswoman and attended a reception in Washington, D.C. I participated in another competition in Rome. I even helped Wayne paint a mural inside Eastlake Juvenile Hall, where I’d once done time. Soon I was getting mural commissions.
I couldn’t handle the pressure. I tried to leave the gang, but here’s the thing about gangs. They’re violent but they’re also like family for kids with nowhere else to go. Outside the gang I felt alone. I didn’t believe I could really become a successful artist. I was sure I would mess up one of my commissions and I started drinking and doing drugs.
Sure enough I fell behind on assignments and the jobs dried up. I was too embarrassed to go back to Wayne’s studio. I couldn’t beg another favor from Father Boyle. I moved back in with my mom, who lived on her own after the death of my father. I was in my early thirties. I felt like a total failure.
Mom told me she would kick me out if she ever caught me getting high in her house. That didn’t stop me. One day I was hiding in her attic smoking methamphetamine when Mom came home. My mind was distorted by drugs and I became paranoid. I bashed a hole in the floor of the attic and suddenly I fell into the living room, scaring Mom. Before she could stop me I fled from the house and began running blindly through the neighborhood. I was consumed by fear and shame. I found myself at a park alongside the freeway. A horrible idea began to form. My life was worthless. I’d blown every chance. Why not end it all?
I ran through the park, sloshed across a shallow lake and climbed an embankment leading to the freeway. I shimmied atop a retaining wall and dropped down onto the pavement. Cars whizzed past. In a strange trance I walked out into the traffic. I waited for a car to hit me. I crossed one lane, a second lane, a third lane. Just as I was about to reach the center divider I saw a turquoise Chevy Suburban racing toward me. I knew it would hit me. I closed my eyes. Everything became silent.
I opened my eyes. I was standing on the center divider. The Suburban whooshed past. I was alive! I looked around. I saw clouds in the sky. I heard birds. I felt a sense of total peace descend over me. What had happened? I had no idea. All I knew was that the despair that had driven me to run onto the freeway was suddenly gone. In its place was a realization that what I’d been calling missed chances throughout my life were actually moments when God was most encouraging me. Father Boyle, Wayne Healy, even my eighth grade teacher—each of these people, in their own way, had helped me to see who I was and what I was good at. My life wasn’t a waste. It was a journey and I was slowly getting closer to my goal. God was my guide. He wouldn’t let me down.
By this point the Highway Patrol had arrived and stopped traffic. Enough of my gang member instincts remained to make me want to avoid the police at all costs. I ran back across the freeway and disappeared into the neighborhood. I called my mom from a pay phone. “Mom, I almost got killed today!” I cried. “Where are you, my son?” she asked. I told her. “Stay right there,” she said. “I’m coming to get you.”
A few days later I enrolled in a Salvation Army drug rehab program. The program lasted six months. Many addicts come out of rehab and go straight back to drugs. Not me, not after what happened on that freeway. I went to Homeboy Industries, the gang intervention program Father Boyle had started. Father Boyle gave me a job answering phones. I worked my way up to become a substance abuse counselor. I returned to painting and soon had my first mural commission. An L.A. real estate developer who saw some of my work hanging in a cafe at Homeboy Industries offered me studio space at one of his downtown lofts.
These days I paint both murals and oil canvases. You can recognize my work by something I try to include in almost everything I paint: that moment in life when God’s presence becomes unexpectedly apparent. Many of my paintings depict gang members or scenes from my former life. But they’re not scenes of violence. They’re scenes of transformation, that moment when someone on the wrong path suddenly sees the right road and decides to take it. That’s what happened to me and I want to share the news that change is possible with as many people as I can.
Everyone has angels watching over them. Look closely and you’ll see exactly what I mean.
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