Red

Red knows how to fight. Being called Carrot Top as a kid set him off. As the only fair-skinned white kid growing up in South Central LA’s Bell Gardens, he slipped right into a gang culture and never left it.
He’d be the one to do the craziest stuff, “like jump through someone’s window to grab their jewelry box,” he said. “I hung out with the Bell Garden White Boys. We were always fighting and doing crazy stuff.”
His father was a machinist with a good reputation. However, even though he worked hard to feed his family of wife and five kids, it wasn’t always enough. He’d come home exhausted, eat dinner, drink a beer and go to sleep so he could get up the next day and do it again. The bills would pile up. Finally he had to do something desperate and stole from a local Dairy Mart to feed the kids. He got caught and was sent to prison. His wife, also a machinist, had to step up and work at that point, juggling care for young kids at home.

Red developed a great respect for his father after realizing the sacrifices he made, doing whatever it took to feed the family. But that doesn’t mean he had a respect for legitimate work. Red was always in and out of prison. He spent time in three different CYA camps before he was 18. After that, one day he decided to borrow his mother’s car while she was sleeping. On that evening, he saw one of his friends racing down the street in a souped up hot rod. As he watched the action, Red rolled through a stop sign, the “California rolling stop” he said, and hit the police car that was in a high speed chase after his homie. The rookie cop in the police car got out and told him to freeze. Red was more afraid of what his mother would say about what he just did to her car, so he climbed up on the hood of her car, and pleaded his case with the cop. It didn’t work: he took a bullet through the hip and was charged with assaulting a cop with a deadly weapon (his mom’s car). According to Red, the cop quit the force and became a fire fighter.
Red spent 10 years in prison. When he got out, he went back to his gang life.

On a whim, he drove with a friend to Canada, eating LSD all along the way. Their car broke down in British Columbia, so they hitchhiked the rest of the way to Ontario where Red’s friend had several girlfriends. One of those girlfriends, Becky, liked Red better, and Red decided to stay in Canada. They have a daughter, Kayla, who’s 26 now. Becky’s mother, however, didn’t like Red, his long red hair and tattoos. Since she worked for the customs authority in Canada, she alerted the authorities about her daughter’s boyfriend’s illegal status: having overstayed his visa and working in Canada without the right permit. Red was unceremoniously ushered back across the U.S. border.
“I know what it feels like to be an undocumented immigrant!” he said, a serious expression taking over his freckled face.

Since then,Red found his way back to California. He has been on the streets of San Diego 20 years. He doesn’t stay downtown “because people steal your stuff down there.”

He has seen a lot of friends die here due to bad or tainted drugs, or unsanitary conditions causing wounds to get out of control. When he sees young people on the street, he chases them back home. “They’re just puppies. They shouldn’t be out here.”

He says he’s starting to feel the street in his bones. “It’s time to go inside,” he said.