Becoming A Criminal.

In my last article, I began telling the story called How Did It All Start, I looked at some of the first times I was caught stealing. My hope in writing these stories is to better understand the progression in my life of criminal activity. What steps led me from robbing the candy aisle one day to long-term youth incarceration by the age of 13?

Today, I will continue to look at my life in fourth grade and try to paint a picture of my world during that time. Just a few months after I was almost arrested at 7–11, I decided to start ditching school. I was getting in so much trouble in class, most of my fourth grade was spent outside the Principal's office copying the dictionary. I even had my own desk outside his office in the hallway where the office receptionist would keep a constant eye on me. I didn’t mind too much, and honestly I preferred the work as a scribe reproducing the dictionary everyday, over the stuff my teacher taught in class. But after a while, with a couple friends, Marvin and Hector, we decided to start skipping school.

The first time we ditched school, it was perfect and nobody had a clue! We all three rode our bikes to meet at the school a little early, then we left the school and hit a few stores (not 7–11) for some morning snacks, using the five-finger-discount of course. We would then go kill some time riding our bikes in a field for an hour or two so not to run into any cops, but long enough for Marvin’s dad to go to work. After 9am, we had his house to ourselves, and anything was possible. The first few times, we were content drinking a few of his dad’s beers and smoking whatever cigarettes we could steal. We had Hector’s older sister write notes for the school, signing as our mothers, and we never got caught.

After a couple times of doing this, staying inside his house all day, only to emerge into daylight after school let out, we got bored, and wanted to have more fun. I recently got into a huge brawl with one of the rich kids in our school so I came up with an idea for something new to keep us entertained, and to get revenge on my enemy. Don’t take the term enemy lightly just because we were fourth graders. Me and this kid fist-fought until we were both bloody for what felt like 15 minutes! I think I need to take a second and tell this side story so you get a picture of life back then.

You see, when I grew up, we fought all the time, and if you had a problem with someone during school, you would say, “I call you out!” This meant you were challenging that person to a one-on-one fight in front of the whole school after school, usually in the playground. At that point, you either accepted the challenge and were expected to show up at the playground right after the bell rang. Or you did not accept the challenge and you were forever seen as a coward.

I participated in these after school activities often and soon became known for two things: going crazy in fights, and never losing. So this rich kid named John Parker was making fun of me because I had big holes in the knees of my jeans. This was before holes in your jeans were cool, and it was only the poor kids who had tattered clothes. So rather than whale on this kid in front of everyone like I wanted to for making fun of my pants, I called him out! The thing is, this kid also had a reputation of never losing a fight and soon everyone was talking about the fight that was going to happen after school.

Finally the bell rang, and school was out and the fight was on. I made my way out to the playground with my two friends, just in case it got ugly. These one-on-ones could turn into two or three-on-ones real quick if things got ugly. Several other kids began to make a large circle and I waited in the middle for my opponent. Normally I would come out strong and try to take the other person out with the first punch, but I knew that would not work on him. I had known him for a long time, and when we were in second grade we were even good friends. But as money came to matter more we grew apart, him with the rich white kids, me with the minorities and the poor kids. So when he finally came into the circle to scrap, I knew it was going to be a hard fight.

We exchanged blows for a few minutes, circling around, but not really hurting each other. Every time I would try to lung at him with my famous crazy-eyed hay-maker, he would dodge it as he knew how I fought. We used to play football together, and I did the same thing to him when he was quarterback. Finally he connected with me and knocked me down with one hit to the right eye/cheek. He dazed me badly, and I think it was the hardest I had ever been hit! But it made something in me come alive, and I came off the ground like a cobra. With one leap I took him down to the ground and wrestled with him until I was on top of him. He was punching like crazy and I could not seem to hit him, but finally I caught him in the mouth and he shouted a cry! This gave me a second to stand up and examine myself, and besides my eye, I was fine. My opponent on the other hand was spitting the blood from his lip, and looked to be hurting.

At that point, someone yelled “Run!” and I saw the fifth grade teacher running out onto the playground to stop the fight. We all immediately took off running around the school and down the street. We ran together until we got out of sight of the school and then the herd of kids, maybe 20–25 kids total, decided on the back of an auto parts store to finish the fight. Just like before, the kids made a big circle, with his friends on one side, and my few friends on the other side. Everyone shouted for us to finish the fight, and although I think we were both exhausted and weary, we got back into fighting position in the middle of the crowd.

This time he came out strong and surprised me with a quick jab that exploded my nose into a bloody mess. Something about that hit made me blackout and I went ballistic on him. I started throwing punches uncontrollably, while screaming at the top of my lungs. We ended up on the ground, exchanging face punches, both in a total fit of endless rage. Between the blood from his lip and from my nose, and the many cuts and bruises up and down our bodies, we soon looked like we took part in a massacre. Blood was everywhere, and we were both beat up to the point of quitting. Our friends soon called off the fight, and everyone scattered until it was just the three of us behind the store; Marvin, Hector, and me. I tried to act like everything was cool, but we all knew it wasn’t. I lost it for a minute there and it scared me as much as it scared them. This was the first time I had ever blacked out in a fight that I can remember. But it was a recurring problem that would later get me into a lot of trouble.

So a week or so after the fight, my two friends and I were ditching school and looking for a way to get back at kids we didn’t like and have some fun. I came up with the plan to go back to the school and steal the kids bike that I just fought over. He had been bragging about his cool new bike for the last few weeks, and I knew he rode it to school everyday, because I rode my bike to school everyday and saw his nice new bike locked at the bike rack. All we had to do was go down there and cut the lock and ride away!

So we found some heavy duty bolt cutters in Marvin’s dad’s tools as he was a mechanic and had everything a few entry-level crooks could dream of! We rode our bikes down to the school at about 9:30 in the morning when we were sure nobody would be outside on recess or lunch. It took us a long while to get the massive bolt-cutters to work through his bike lock, but after enough teamwork we heard a “snap!” and we all smiled ear to ear.

Immediately thereafter, I realized we forgot something.. how would we ride four bikes back when there were only three of us? It was hard enough carrying the big bolt-cutters while riding, and none of us were yet skilled in the art of riding two bikes. So we did the only thing we could think of and I locked my bike up to the rack and rode the stolen bike, figuring we would come pick my bike up later.

So we rode quickly back to Marvin’s house, and hid the bike in the backyard. We were jumping up and down and shouting and hooting “We did it!” and going on about how easy it was and lots of colorful language about what we thought of all the rich white kids. Then we started taking the bike apart, piece by piece, and getting ready to strip the paint. All of us had taken their bikes apart and put it back together a hundred times before, sometimes just for fun to see how it worked, so this was no sweat. We also stripped, sanded and repainted our bikes all the time because we didn’t get new bikes like the rich kids. Our bikes were all different brands pieced together like Frankenstein’s monster and then usually we chromed out everything to make it match. Our bikes looked so cool, the rich kids would try to do the same thing to their new bikes, but it usually just looked lame.

So we got the stolen bike down to the frame, and threw all the parts in a bucket of solvent to sit for a few hours. We sprayed the bike with strippers and watched the shiny neon paint drip off the frame. After it was just about bare metal, we sanded all the crevices and corners to completely remove the old color. Then before we went to put on some primer with a rattle can, Marvin had an idea. “Hey!” he said, looking up at the bike frame, “We should file off the serial number before we repaint it! That way nobody will be able to know what bike it is!” I didn’t even know bicycles had serial numbers until that very moment, and I don’t think Hector did either by the equally surprised look he gave me. I said “Cool. Yeah, let's do it.” and tried to act like I was planning the same thing, although we all knew I was full of it.

As we got to work using Marvin’s dad’s grinder to remove the serial number from below the crank on the bike, it became clear that Marvin had some experience with this, and had probably learned how to do this stuff from his older brothers. He was a Native American kid raised by his father with lots of older brothers. I never really saw much of his family but his brothers had a reputation in town for being crazy and being good fighters, and Marvin was proving to turn out the same.

After spending all day working on the bike, I realized I still had to go get my bike from the school. If we got down there quickly we should be able to pick up my bike way before school lets out and everyone sees the missing bike. So we get back on our bikes, me on Hector’s handlebars, and make our way to the school. As we turned the corner and started down the road towards the school, something felt weird and then I saw it. There was a police car outside the school! My stomach immediately turned inside out and we turned the bikes around, and took off in the other direction.

We were busted and we knew it! We rode as fast as we could back to the house and tried to hide everything the best we could. The bike was still in pieces and the frame was primed and drying before we planned to paint it with chrome. I don’t know what we were going to do with the bike initially, but now we knew we had to get rid of it. We rushed to get the rest of the bike parts stripped of paint and then went to spray painting everything with chrome. We stole several cans of paint from the store and swapped out a few parts with stuff Marvin had laying around in his backyard spare parts/junk pile.

As soon as the paint was dry enough, we reassembled the bike and it looked just like one of our bikes, besides the paint job looked rushed. We decided to take the bike down to Mill’s Park and lock it up at the bike rack next to the pool, along with dozens of other bikes. We planned to leave it there for a few days until things cooled down then trade it for a different bike.

So after we ditched the bike, Hector gave me a ride on his handlebars back to my house, since my bike was still stuck at the school. I got home and tried to wash the paint off my hands, and cover up the smell of cigarettes before my mom got home. I sat in the living room just waiting for the police to come pounding on the door at any moment and arrest me, as I was sure they figured out it was me who stole John’s bike. Every time the phone rang, I ran across the house to get to the kitchen and answer it before my mom. This way if it was the school or the cops, I could lie and say my mom wasn’t home. But every time the phone rang, it was only Hector calling to see if I heard anything. He was just as scared as I was and you could hear it in his voice.

The next morning, I walked to school early to see if my bike was there. It was locked up just the way I left it! I unlocked it and rode over to Hector’s to tell him we were in the clear. His mother fed me some breakfast as she always would as I would wake up early and ride my bike over almost every morning before school. That is, if I wasn’t staying the night or Hector staying at my house. We were together a lot back then.

So we rode our bikes to school as usual, but with a little extra caution since we didn’t know what to expect. We got to the bike rack, locked up our bikes and started to make our way to class. We found Marvin, asked him if he heard anything, and told him what we knew. As far as we could tell, nobody even missed us. Maybe the whole thing worked after all? We pulled it off!

As I got settled into my seat in my fourth grade class, the bell rang and the morning announcements began, following the Pledge of Allegiance. After the announcements were finished, there was a pause, and then I heard the intercom announce: “Will Chris Joy, Hector Lopez, and Marvin Hinto please report to the Principal's office.” It felt like my heart stopped, and I nearly passed out, but I somehow gathered the ability to stand and walked out of the class like everything was fine.

On my way to the office, my mind was running a million miles a minute! I was debating taking off running but knew I would just get in more trouble if I did. How much did they have on me anyway? I didn’t know what was going to happen when I got to the office exactly, but I knew for sure it wasn’t going to be good. I was busted and there was nothing I could do to get out of this one.

I accepted my fate and just decided to go to the Principal's office and take whatever came at me…

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