For 36-year-old Joel Garcia, life has gone much differently than he thought it would. “I didn’t think I would make it to 21,” he said.
After seeing friends die throughout a past riddled with gang involvement, drug dealing and violence, the outcome was likely to be grim. But Garcia has been out of prison since November 2009 and is optimistic about his new life.
Living with a friend in Goleta and working at a local thrift store have given Garcia the structure many former prisoners miss when they’re released. He also has become involved at South Coast Church in Goleta. But it has taken years for him to get there.
Growing up in a poor neighborhood in San Diego’s Sherman Heights, Garcia turned to gang life early. When his older brother got involved in a street gang, Garcia said it made sense for him to join one, too. By age 12, he was actively involved in a gang, and by 13 he was carrying a pistol.
The second oldest of six siblings, Garcia recalls his painful past with his stepfather. His biological father wasn’t in the picture, and the children’s stepfather was an alcoholic prone to violence. Garcia didn’t want to be at home to deal with his abusive situation, but the anger kept building toward his stepfather, and Garcia’s mother made him promise not to hurt him. Meanwhile, Garcia slept with his gun under his pillow. The gun was the reason he was first arrested, when he was taken in for unlawful possession of a firearm.
Throughout his high school years, Garcia was in and out of juvenile hall for crimes, including armed robbery.
“You think you’re making a name for yourself,” he said. “You feel like you’re a man.”
Garcia was sent to a group home after being arrested for grand theft auto when he was 15. Of the arrests, he says, “I didn’t see it as a big thing.”
There are many stories of gang life that could have had much different endings for Garcia. A car approached him and a friend as they walked in their neighborhood, and the occupants opened fire. Just feet away from them was a man with a handgun, but instead of a spray of bullets hitting the pair, a round of dry fire went off.
Another time, Garcia was shot in the back by another gang member, with the bullet lodging an inch from his spinal cord. Two other scars line his skin — one on his abdomen and one on his arm — from being stabbed in a different incident.
At age 21, he began working a steady job at an electronics store, but Garcia noticed that his brother was making a hefty sum of cash selling drugs. Garcia began selling drugs on the side, but he eventually dumped his day job because the drug money was so plentiful. Demand for the crystal meth he was selling ran high. Despite the deteriorating condition of his customers, Garcia said he never thought about that.
“I wasn’t sympathetic. I didn’t care. To me, it was about the money,” he said, adding that he sold methamphetamine for seven years, and “I was never broke.”
Alcohol was Garcia’s drug of choice, and it left him with literal scars. Just underneath his close-shaven hair, scars line his scalp where bottles were smashed during parties in Tijuana, Mexico. But Garcia’s drug dealing was what landed him and his brother in federal prison. After being stung by an undercover officer posing as a drug dealer, Garcia and his brother were sentenced and convicted of drug sales, conspiracy, and aiding and abetting, which meant Garcia would spend nearly a decade in prison.
Soon after he was arrested, he picked up a Bible.
“I didn’t understand a word, but when I came across the term ‘sinner,’ I knew that was me,” Garcia said. “I remember feeling very broken.”
Depressed and hopeless, Garcia said he began to wonder what he had done to deserve such a severe sentence. When a cellmate noticed how downtrodden Garcia was, he offered encouragement.
“He said, ‘God loves you, bro, and he wants to help you,’” Garcia recalled. “That reassured me that God did want to change my life.”
After spending the first year with his brother in prison, Garcia was shuffled to a long series of prisons across California and the country. All the while, Garcia was searching for answers. After he and his brother broke into a fight in the jail’s visiting room, he was sentenced to five days in solitary confinement and moved to a different floor in the prison.
But Garcia sees the move as divine intervention. More Christians were on that floor, and it even had its own Bible study. That group was key to Garcia exploring his new faith.
“I was being taught what grace and mercy was,” he said.
Now that he has been given a chance to turn his life around, Garcia said he wants to help other youths avoid his former lifestyle.
“I’ve been asking God to guide me,” he said, adding that he is still developing what to tell people. But he does know one thing: “I can tell them I’ve walked in their shoes.”
The biblical mandate to be all things to all people is something he takes seriously.
“There are times you have to talk to them them like a homie,” he said, adding that he keeps his hair short to fit in with the kids he tries to reach out to. And there’s another message he wants to leave with youths. “Whatever you think (the gang life) is going to give you, it’s an illusion. The two sure things that will come out of it are death or a prison sentence.”
Garcia stressed that there are plenty of opportunities for youths facing the obstacles he did, and people who love them. He knows he has been called to work with troubled youths, and he would like to work with gang members in particular. He has started with street evangelism in the Milpas Street area and on Santa Barbara’s Westside.
Garcia said he is striving to be a mentor. Small things, such as giving someone a ride who is in a bad situation, are things Garcia said he didn’t have but that might have helped him avoid gang life.
“I didn’t have anyone to call to say, ‘Come pick me up,’” he said. “I know where these guys are coming from. They’ll listen because I have walked in their shoes.”
— Noozhawk staff writer Lara Cooper can be reached at lcooper@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk or @NoozhawkNews.
