Straight outta el barrio

LOS ANGELES—David Trujillo was a skinny 12-year-old when he witnessed his first murder scene.

He had just joined the Harpys “Dead End” gang, a violent Hispanic street “brotherhood” in South Central Los Angeles. Then he heard the gunshots. By the time Trujillo ran over, a friend was lying on the ground, feet and fingers twitching. A rival gang member had shot him twice with a shotgun—once in the leg, and then close-range into his face.

This can’t be real, Trujillo thought, as older gang members screamed, “No, no, he was just a kid!” At his friend’s funeral, a sudden thought chilled Trujillo: “He’s dead! This guy went to hell!” But he shoved that thought aside and planned revenge. Soon, he built a reputation as a fearless, impulsive homeboy ready to stab, shoot, or club anyone foolish enough to disrespect his gang.

That’s life in the barrio. For Trujillo, the Spanish word—translated as “neighborhood”—doesn’t elicit fond memories of toddlers giggling on manicured lawns or neighbors pushing strollers. It triggers memories of a guy on the 12th floor molesting him and his brothers. It means being the wayward nephew of well-respected “original gangster” Uncle Choco. It means friends with half their heads blown off during senseless gang wars—and knowing that could be him at any moment. Eventually, he came to a new realization: The security, belonging, and respect the streets had promised? Lies, all lies.

LOS ANGELES IS THE GANG CAPITAL OF CALIFORNIA, producer of 3 out of 4 gang-related homicides in the state. In the 1970s, Crips and Bloods—two black gangs that quickly splintered into bloody factions—terrorized communities with feuds and criminal activities. As the Latino population swelled, new Hispanic and Chicano gangs popped up across the city to claim and protect their turf, mostly low-income neighborhoods that continued decaying as the middle class streamed out and the crime rate crawled up.

Some LA street gangs named themselves after streets and neighborhoods: 18th Street, Hoover Street, Varrio Pico, Avenues 43. As the underground crack market boomed, others—like the infamous MS-13—franchised across borders all the way to suburban Virginia and Central America. Fear bred violence; insecurity spurred abuse; prey became predator.

But something incredible is happening within these barrios. Now 41 years old, Trujillo is the senior pastor of Calvary Chapel of South Los Angeles (CCSOLA). His once-hard eyes crinkle with tears when he describes how God delivered him from a cycle of abuse and hate into a new life of hope and redemption. On a Wednesday night service in CCSOLA, teenagers and heavily tattooed men filled up the pews to sing, “Lord, I need you, oh I need you.” The borrowed church building, one block away from a county probation office, can barely fit all the worshipping bodies on Sundays. Most of the congregants are gang members or know someone who’s one.

In 1993, Trujillo—then 19 years old—answered an altar call and professed faith in Christ. He had attended a Wednesday night service to get rid of an annoying friend who wouldn’t stop telling him about Jesus. But when he heard the pastor preach about the passion of Jesus Christ, somehow he found himself walking up front and asking God to change his heart. And from then on, “it was a radical heart change,” Trujillo said, eyes tearing at the memory.

That night, he pounded on the door of his parents’ house, kissed his alarmed mother, and woke up his father, exclaiming, “Dad, I gave my life to Christ!” His father, who’d suffered much of Trujillo’s terrible rage, didn’t believe him. Trujillo promised, “Just look at my life from now on.”

The next day, Trujillo was preaching on the streets, in the mall, anywhere. The hat he wore, printed “John 3:16,” prompted a fellow gang member to ask, “What’s John three-sixteen, bro? You join another gang now?” Trujillo practically clapped his hands: “No, bro, but I’m glad you asked! Let me tell you what John 3:16 is all about.” In his elation, he expected his friends to accept Jesus immediately. Instead, they shut him down.

Trujillo found a new family at Calvary Chapel Chino Valley and did whatever he could to serve and learn. In 1999, six years after his conversion and after graduating from Calvary Chapel Bible College, he planted a church in South LA that grew from five to 80 people within two months. He had to open the windows so that people sitting outside could hear him preach.

Trujillo jumped from hardcore gangster to hardcore Christian, but he was still dealing with anger, shame, and trauma from his past: sexual abuse, a mother with schizophrenia, all the gore and brutality he’d witnessed at a young age. Violence was ingrained in him, so violence spurted out. His life at home was chaotic: His marriage was crumbling, and he blew up frequently at his three kids. The church congregation dwindled to nearly nobody. “God completely humbled me,” Trujillo said.

But that wasn’t the end of the story. He learned to love his wife and be a gracious father to his children through counseling. One day, he repented in front of his family. He and his wife Sonia (also an ex-gang member) now counsel other struggling couples by testifying how God healed their marriage. At a recent speaking event with other ex-gang pastors, Trujillo could barely lift up his head. The first thing he said to the audience was “Look, I’m nobody. I don’t deserve to be up here if not for the grace of God.”

One example of his change: After Jerry, a local gang member, allegedly shot Trujillo’s twin brother Angel, almost killing him, Trujillo went after Jerry with a sharpened screwdriver but couldn’t find him. Two years later, Trujillo saw Jerry on a basketball court and approached him aggressively, but then started weeping: “Bro, all I gotta say is, God loves you. He died on the cross for you. He gave up His life to forgive you of all your sins, but if you die without Christ, you’re going to go to hell.”

With that, Trujillo walked away, and Jerry hurled insults at his back. But two years later, Jerry saw Trujillo and told him that he couldn’t stop thinking about what Trujillo had said on the basketball court, so he visited a church, heard the gospel, and now planned to become a missionary in El Salvador. Trujillo shouted, “Praise God!” and the two men hugged.

A VIGOROUS BIKE RIDE AWAY from CCSOLA, the 109th Street Recreation Center in Watts transforms into Hope Central Watts Calvary Chapel on Sunday mornings, with about 60 people singing with uplifted hands. On Friday nights, a group of young men gather at the park to study the Bible. The aroma of grilled meat and the tinkle of laughter and music frequently permeate the South LA neighborhood known for the 1965 Watts Riots.

Since its hotbed days for gang and drug activities, the 109th Street Recreation Center has transformed, partly due to increased LAPD presence and extended hours for “at-risk” public parks. But Hope Central Watts Pastor Jose Hernandez believes it’s also the gospel at work.

Hernandez grew up across the park on 108th Street and knows every corner of Watts: Here’s where he used to play, there’s where he got into trouble, and there’s where someone robbed him of the brand-new Converse All Stars he bought with his hard-earned wages from a hardware store. He also remembers daily walking by a dozen churches in Watts—“but nobody ever shared the gospel with me,” he recalls.

Hernandez remembers a father who ruled the house with a Machiavellian fist. If he came home late from school, his father pummeled him like a piñata. Whenever his father entered the house, he scrambled to take his father’s shoes off, and then stood by the ancient TV set to turn the channel dial at command. His father spent a lot of money on alcohol and women: He had a second wife and family somewhere, Hernandez says, and later bore three children with his niece.

Extreme insecurity loomed over Hernandez’s childhood. He never knew when his family might lose the house over backlogged rent. His mother, whose education stopped at second grade in Mexico, stretched out meals with food stamps, coupons, and concrete blocks of processed cheese stamped “Government cheese.” Hernandez hated feeling needy, and loathed the demons his father brought into the house.

So he joined the Colonia Watts gang when he was 13. Those cool older boys gave him money to buy ice cream, and soon enough, they called back the favor. And Hernandez wanted to be called. He noticed that gangbangers had the swaggiest clothes, prettiest girls, and swankiest cars. With all the chaos at home, gang life offered him an organized hierarchy, a system of honor and prestige—until a rival gang put a price on his head. After hiding for a year in Mexico, Hernandez was ready for a different kind of life.

But his father’s demons—women and authority issues—lingered. One night, a drunk Hernandez marched into the house of his then 3-year-old son’s mother, pointed an assault rifle to her head, and said, “You better do what I tell you, or I’m going to kill you, then kill myself.” Then he drank himself into a stupor until the phone woke him up: It was the police—they had the place surrounded. As Hernandez walked out with hands up and wet socks, he knew he had hit rock bottom. That was 1994, the year he first heard the gospel in jail.

After his release from jail, Hernandez outwardly seemed to turn his life around in dramatic fashion. He swiftly worked his way up from low-paid employee to operations manager at a law firm and amassed a plump savings account. But he was still chasing his biggest idol, security. He cheated on his wife—then lost his wife, lost his nice suburban house, and found himself standing desperate and broken as a single father of three at a sunrise service in 2004. There, Hernandez rededicated his life to Christ: “Lord, I’m all in.”

One morning, while visiting his old school in Watts, Hernandez noticed a team of Jehovah’s Witnesses evangelizing and felt a prick: “Here I am with the truth of God. What am I going to do with that?” At first, he resisted. After all, he had worked hard to escape Watts, which symbolized his biggest fears and broken past. But after a mission trip to Haiti, Hernandez finally declared, “God, I’ll go wherever you want me to go.”

He started by volunteering at the 109th Street Recreation Center every Friday night. There, he passed out water to local teenagers, listened to their problems, even taught them table manners. Hernandez knew from experience that inner-city communities harbor deep distrust toward outsiders, particularly come-and-go fixer-uppers. So he showed up, consistently. Then on Sept. 11, 2011, Hernandez led Hope Central Watts’ first official Sunday service at the park’s basketball court with rented chairs and a borrowed sound system.

Hernandez describes Watts as “one of those places where Satan dwells.” Unpredictable street violence is still a problem in Watts: A minor traffic accident can escalate into a fistfight and even murder. Alcohol and substance abuse, domestic violence, prostitution, poverty, and chronic unemployment remain rampant. Hernandez knows local kids who have already been shot or incarcerated.

But hearts are changing. People are professing Christ at their Friday Youth Nights and frequent outdoor outreach events. The crime rate and the historical tension between the Hispanic and black communities are abating. Because the locals see Hernandez as “one of us,” even the crack-slinging gangbanger with a pistol sticking out of his pants listens when Hernandez tells him to repent and turn to Christ. One of Hernandez’s most faithful deacons is a born-and-raised-in-Watts crack baby, an ex-gangbanging former inmate who met Hernandez on his way to the liquor store.

“People here are so open to the gospel,” Hernandez said. “I think it’s because the evil here is so obvious, and people deal with it on a daily basis, and they’re just tired. … At least here, people know they’re doing wrong, they know that they need something. And I just want to lead that ‘something’ to Jesus Christ.”