CHAPTER SIX
Ifinished my sophomore year with a 3.46 grade point average. Want to know what I did on my summer vacation? I stole a car.
And went to jail.
This is the way it went down. My friends and I used to go up and down streets and if the cars were open, we’d get in there and take the change, stereos, speakers—anything in the car we could get something out of or sell. This one time I had been drinking with some friends and we hit this car. I pulled the visor down and the keys dropped right into my lap. I decided to take it for a cruise.
I started the car and drove it around for a while. It was a stick shift and I didn’t know how to drive stick shift, so I was grinding the shit out of it but driving well enough to get around. After a while I pulled into Eric’s driveway, but I couldn’t stop and ended up slamming into one of his aunt’s cars. Instead of calling my parents, Eric’s family called the cops. The cops came and arrested me for grand theft auto.
I went to court, was found guilty, and was sentenced to juvenile hall for a total of thirty-nine days.
The biggest thing I had to get used to in being institutionalized was having to live by a strict schedule. You were up at six in the morning. You had your breakfast pushed through a slot in your cell door. Then you’d go to school for four hours, come back to your cell for lunch, and then go back to school for another hour and a half. Then it was dinner, shower after dinner, and, for me, a lot of push-ups and triceps workouts.
I avoided having problems with other inmates by just keeping my nose out of other people’s business. But there was this one kid who tried to give me a hard time. I just turned around, punched him in the stomach, and knocked the wind out of him. I turned and walked away. No one ever bothered me after that.
Once summer vacation was over, I was back at school. And once the wrestling season started, I was the same good student. When it came to wrestling I was suddenly real goal-oriented. I wanted to get the most pins. I wanted to be a CIF (California Interscholastic Federation) champion. I wanted to be a state champion. By that time I had grown to six foot one and weighed around one hundred eighty-five pounds.
Paul Herrera took over as wrestling coach my junior year. He was like a big brother to me. He was like the dad I never had. He’d wake me up for school in the morning. He made sure I kept my grades up and stayed eligible. That year we were first in league and second in CIF.
But once wrestling season was over, I went back to being a hood.
My friends and I would stake out houses. We’d see when people would go off to work and when they would come back. We’d watch a house for three or four days, then watch for another week, and then that third week we would wait for them to go to work, bust out a side window, unlock the house, back a car in, fill the car up with stuff, and take off. We did that for a good four months. It was going along fine for a while, and then we nearly got caught a couple of times and we finally decided to stop doing it.
I turned seventeen that year. I loved wrestling. But when I wasn’t on the mat I always seemed to be looking for trouble. Or, as it sometimes happened, trouble came looking for me.
One day I was standing in the hallway at school with my girlfriend Heather and this guy walked by and said, “Hey, you fucking cunt!” I turned around and said, “What did you say?” He got right up in my face and said, “I called her a fucking cunt. What are you going to do about it?”
I said, “Are you serious? I’m going to beat your fucking ass!”
He was standing there with all his buddies and I was by myself so he was acting real brave. He said, “We’ll see.” And then he turned around and walked away. The next day I came to school and he was standing by himself in the cafeteria. I came up behind him and shoved him super hard. He turned around and his eyes were all wide.
“Remember you talking your fucking shit?” I yelled at him. “What are you going to do about it now?”
I punched him once, dislocating his collarbone and breaking his shoulder. I looked at him real hard for a second, then turned around and went off to class. Two periods rolled by and I was sitting at my desk when all of a sudden the door opened and John Ortiz, the campus cop, walked in and told me to get up. He said that I was under arrest for assault, handcuffed me, and took me out of the classroom.
I went to trial, was found guilty, and was sentenced to juvenile hall for twenty-three days.
It was pretty much the same situation as the summer before. I was really cool and because of that nobody really messed with me. One day one of the teachers in juvenile hall came up to me and said he had heard I had wrestled in county. I told him I did and that I wished that I had some way to train in here. He asked if I had ever thought about running. It turns out that there was a five-K run coming up and if I wanted, he would make sure that I could do it. There was an incentive, of course. If I did it, I would be able to get sodas and candy (which were a luxury in that place) and I would be able to work out in the weight room. So I went ahead and did the five K and actually ended up taking fifth place. But I couldn’t walk for two days afterward because I was so damned sore.
A week before I was set to get out, this kid came up to me and said, “Listen, homes, you’re not going anywhere. We’re going to fight, you’re going to be extended, and you’re going to be here just as long as I am.” I told him that wasn’t happening.
I hit him right in the gut, he dropped, and I turned around and walked away. He didn’t even touch me.
I got out and went back to school. It was time for wrestling and I had to declare an official weight for the CIF. I weighed 174 at the time and the coach wanted me to fight at 160, which meant that I had nine days to cut fourteen pounds before the official weigh-in. Fourteen pounds is not a lot of weight to lose in nine days, but for me cutting that weight was very difficult. So for the next nine days I was spending time in the sauna, doing jumping jacks, and riding the stationary bike. Finally it was the day of the official weigh-ins and I stepped on the scale.
I weighed 160.8. I was less than a pound over the limit.
I started crying and begging the CIF people to give me another chance. I went to the locker room and made myself gag so I could get more water out of me. After about a half hour of doing that, I walked back out and said, “Let’s try it again.” My weight was 160 on the dot. The athletic commission passed me and let me go. That season we went to the CIF and took third.
By my senior year I had been put in remedial classes. A lot of it had to do with problems I was having at home. I was still doing a lot of shit, staying out late and doing drugs with my friends Nacho and Ricky, who were in a gang on the south side of Huntington Beach. But I wasn’t into banging and all that crazy stuff by that time. If anything like that came up, I would just steer away.
I got into trouble when I wasn’t wrestling, but during the season I was really solid and gung ho. And being that way might just have saved my life. Nacho called me one day and said that his gang was going to do a couple of drop-offs. They were getting paid money for it, and he said that I should come out with them. I said, “Man, I’ve got wrestling practice tomorrow. I can’t do it.”
Nacho kept at me, saying, “You’ll be cool and we’ll be back real quick.” I kept saying I couldn’t do it and finally he said, “All right, whatever,” and hung up. I went to wrestling practice the next day and didn’t think anything of it. When I came home, the phone rang and it was Nacho’s mom.
Nacho had gotten arrested. At the time he was in possession of a million dollars’ worth of speed, five assault rifles, and five bulletproof vests that he was taking from one gang to another.
Nacho ended up getting twenty-five years to life. He’s still in prison to this day. I could have been right there with him.
I’d like to think I have a kind of intuition about these things, that I know enough not to get involved in situations that don’t sound right. But that thing with Nacho? I mean, who knows? Not being in the middle of that could have just as easily been plain luck.
I had a great senior year. I was CIF champion, I was number one in the league and number one in the county. My record was 56–3, with 36 pins. I got my name on the wall of the wrestling room. I was doing well.
And not too long after I turned eighteen, I graduated from high school. But even that didn’t go off without a hitch.
June 14, 1993. I had my cap and gown and was all ready to go to the graduation ceremony when I was told that I couldn’t cross the stage to accept my diploma in jeans and tennis shoes. I said, “What do you mean? I’ve done so much.” They said sorry.
So I ran home and got my brother’s khaki pants that were too big for me, put on some black shoes, and ran back to the school just in time to graduate with the rest of my class. It had been a long, hard struggle, but I had finally made it. I graduated. My next question was, “Okay, what do I do now?” I didn’t have any money from my parents to go to college. I really didn’t have any expectations of what I wanted to do with my life. I was just happy that I graduated from high school.
I went through the summer not doing much of anything. Just hanging out. Partying. Doing drugs. As usual, I really did not have a clue what to do next. I sensed that I might be going down the wrong road and that I could very easily end up in prison or dead and that nobody would even remember me at all.
I was still living at home, but things were getting tense in the house.
JOYCE ROBLES
For a long time, Mike had problems with Tito’s brother Marty. Marty was still living at home and would rather surf than work, so he and Mike were always getting into it. Tito saw what was going on between them and he hated Mike for it.
I thought everything was okay between Mike and me. But then my mother came up to me one day, handed me $800, and said, “Your stepfather wants you to leave.”
And just like that, I was out.