By Emily Randall
Northeast News
Oct. 20, 2010

Northeast children face the pressures of gangs and drugs on the streets of their neighborhood. Although they may feel safe inside their schools, when that final bell rings for the day and 3 p.m. rolls around, many Northeast kids face a whole different world.

Holy Cross Catholic School Principal Jean Ferrara, like any teacher or principal would, doesn’t want to see her pupils tempted by what looks like a fast, easy dollar of drug dealing or the allure of gang acceptance. Thus, her school and Rockhurst University partnered this past week to bring in two men from Los Angeles — who were in town exhibiting their art at the college — to offer an anti-gang message to the Holy Cross fifth- through eighth-graders.

The men, Fabian Debora and Juan Carlos Munoz Hernandez, are artists and former gang members now associated with Homeboy Industries, a gang intervention program in LA. They spoke to the Holy Cross children with candor about the drug and gang involvement of their youth and with passion about their art and the future.

Debora moved to LA from El Paso, Texas, at age 5. His home life changed significantly when his father became addicted to drugs and violent. His home life, Debora said, was too big of a distraction at school. He was hearing, “Stay in school,” but he was thinking, “Is mom safe?”

His mistake, he said, was not confiding in any of his school mentors about what was happening at home. Instead, he lost interest in school.

“They can’t stop the domestic violence,” Debora said he was thinking. “They can’t stop the drug use my father’s doing.”

Throughout it all, however, he had a passion for drawing. Two weeks before eighth grade graduation from his Catholic school, a teacher told Debora to stop drawing during class. He didn’t, and the teacher tore up the drawing, humiliating him. In response, Debora threw his desk at the teacher, which got him kicked out of the school.

In his new school, he encountered older kids who were involved with gangs. He got into alcohol, then marijuana, then crack cocaine and worse. Between ages 12 and 17, he had been in and out of juvenile detention and foster homes. By his early 20s he was addicted to meth.

“The drugs were taking over my life so bad I gave up on myself,” Debora said.

His life-changing moment was four years ago when his drug-induced, suicidal thoughts led him to run into an LA freeway. Running through the roadway, a truck had nearly hit him when, in the moment before impact, his children came into mind. He made it into the median and lived.

“That truck did take me — it took the old me,” he said.

He credits art and his mother for turning his life around. He got into rehabilitation and began working for Homeboy Industries. He went back to school and is now a drug counselor. His goal is to get a master’s of fine art and become an animator.

“Whatever that gift is, you have to embrace it,” he told the Holy Cross students. “For me, it was art. It saved my life.”

Hernandez also grew up poor in LA surrounded by drug dealers, gangs and liquor stores. He similarly got into drugs and eventually drug dealing. It was also art and his mother that helped him out. He turned to a sketchbook.

“Instead of doing something destructive, I did something creative,” he said.

Hernandez wowed the youngsters with photos of his artwork — large-scale paintings done with spray paint — which is on display through Dec. 4 at Rockhurst’s Greenlease Gallery, along with Debora’s works.

Principal Ferrara said she had never seen her middle school-aged students listen so well before the two men spoke to them this past Wednesday. The children were all quiet and attentive during the half-hour the men spoke.

“For them to know they’re from LA — and all our street gangs here know LA is like Mecca — is [significant],” Ferrara said. “When you give [kids] hope for a better life and they see people have made better lives out of despair, they have a tendency to move above it.”

Greenlease Gallery is open from noon-5 p.m. Thursday through Saturday or by appointment. Call (816) 501-4407.