MODESTO -- Joe Whitson, 35, Joseph Cabral, 32, and Tony Grijalva, 44, have a lot in common. They began drinking booze or doing drugs when they were youngsters, joined neighborhood gangs, spent time in the juvenile justice system and graduated to prison stints once they reached age 18. That's where the hard-core gang life set in.
The Modesto residents say they thought nothing of using guns and boosting cars. They were the kind of guys who would give you nightmares, the kind you prayed would stay far from you and your family.
The three probably would be serving life sentences — or perhaps be dead — except for one thing: Each heard God's voice and eventually followed his invitation to change his life. Their transition from bad guys to Christians was not easy — it turned everything in their lives upside down.
They've been redeemed, and each former gang member has a ministry to others in danger of walking on the dark side.
Here are their stories of transformation, and their advice to parents and youth who are waffling about their choices and future.
Hard to break the cycle
Joe Whitson, 35, spends his days encouraging young gang guys to change their lives, working for Project Impact under the state Department of Juvenile Justice.
It's a far cry from his own upbringing.
"I never knew my dad," he said. "I had my mom's boyfriends, who were all mostly heroin addicts or gangsters. Those were my role models."
Born in Las Vegas, Whitson said the family moved to the Bay Area when he was 8.
"I was around drugs my whole life," he said. "My grandfather sold heroin. My mother, cousins, uncles and aunts were involved. It just had a trickle-down effect in my family."
His living situation was always fluid. He'd live with his grandmother sometimes; other times, cousins, aunts and uncles would crash with them. Sometimes, they were out in the streets.
"It was very dysfunctional," he said.
His real troubles began when he was 14 or 15. "I had been drinking for a while," he said. "I had just started experiencing weed. Within a year of smoking weed, I was smoking PCP. I started experiencing coke and speed myself and trying to sell it.
"I was seriously gang-banging and put out on the set."
That means he was initiated into the gang life. Sometimes, he said, several gang guys beat you so that you can prove you won't run away when trouble from other gangs come. Other times, he said, you're given a gun and told to shoot someone from a rival gang. For girls, "it would be sex," often with multiple guys to prove their submission. "Gangs are almost like fraternities," Whitson said. "It's almost like pledging."
In his case, Whitson said, "I got beat in by four guys. It wasn't too bad. My head was lopsided for a few days. I had shoe prints on my neck and my back."
He ended up in juvenile hall a couple of times. At age 17, "I was facing 20 years, and I pleaded down and they sent me to the Boys Camp in Morgan Hill." He ran away and "hit the streets. Hurting people, selling drugs, running around and messing around with fast money, women, stealing cars — everything on the other side of the law."
Moving from Washington to Oregon to Nevada and Lake Havasu, Ariz., Whitson said, "We were just hurting people, gang-banging, stealing cars, acting foolish. We didn't want to be like Michael Jordan or Mark McGwire. We wanted to be like Scarface or one of the homies in Pelican Bay (state prison).
"Our life expectancy wasn't that long. A lot of people (in gangs) don't live to 16, 18, 21. Then you get to be 25, 28, and start thinking, maybe I don't want to go to prison for the rest of my life. But at 16, we were sitting around talking about how it was going to be great, sitting in Pelican Bay running the yard together."
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