The Playaz

On a sunny Saturday morning in November, eighteen-year-old Frank Cruz is setting up chairs for a meeting at Oakland Aviation High School. He’s the president of the school’s chapter of United Playaz, a San Francisco-based organization that mentors youth and responds to gang-related violence around the city. A year ago, he went to a party with his pregnant girlfriend. She borrowed his jacket for the walk to a nearby store and was shot and killed on the way. The bullets were meant for Cruz.

After years of gang involvement and watching sixteen friends die violent deaths, Cruz is looking for some peace and a way to continue his education. As he finishes setting up, a van pulls into the school’s parking lot, stops, and sits with the engine running. A hip-hop song plays quietly on the stereo. The driver, Rudy Corpuz Jr., is dressed in a long black t-shirt and baggy jeans. His black hair, wrapped in two thin braids, hangs down to his waist, and a single chunk of gold gleams from his bottom row of teeth. He looks over his shoulder and tells his crew that it’s time to go to work.

“There’s a lot of hurt, a lot of pain.” Rudy says. He kills the engine and opens the door. “We’re here to drop an anchor, lend a helping hand.”

Rudy is an ex-gang leader and the founder of United Playaz. For the last fourteen years he’s been recruiting counselors and case managers by reaching out to gangs, felons and at-risk youth, guiding them toward education and empowerment, and deploying them in the streets and public schools. During last September’s rash of shootings in the Mission, while citizens wrung their hands and cops interrogated people who had no intention of talking to them, UP went to the neighborhood and helped defuse the situation by offering services and activities to kids who needed to get off the block for a while.

“Gangs are families,” says Rudy, who is in his early thirties. “Everyone wants to belong to something. These guys who we so call the corner block cats, the gangstas, the thugs, they have strength.” Rudy believes these kids who get written off are actually hungry for guidance. “Young bangers are warriors; they just need instructions.”

Like J.D. Tupuola, a twenty-two-year-old United Playa who was locked up in 2003 on a murder charge. His sister was president of UP at Balboa High School at the time and asked Rudy if he would pay J.D. a visit. “He said a young person like myself had too much knowledge to be doing negative stuff,” says J.D. After a year in juvenile detention and two years at California Youth Authority, J.D. went to work for United Playaz. “Now I’m all over the city, in the schools, wherever they need our support and safety, I’m there.”

The city’s public schools call UP whenever gang tensions flare up on campus. Some have even adopted official UP programs that offer counseling and leadership classes, but most don’t have the funding to provide full-time services After years of lobbying for the resources to build a youth center of their own, UP still runs its program out of a recreation center on Sixth Street that’s owned by the Department of Parks and Recreation. It’s a rough neighborhood, and while most people come to use the gym or basketball court, anyone can walk in off the street. For kids, it’s less than ideal.

Manny Villa Lobos, nineteen, coaches a basketball team at the rec center and does youth outreach all over the city. Rudy met Manny when he was still an angry kid in middle school, looking for a way to channel his energy. “My teachers thought I was going to drop out and be in the streets thugging, gangbanging and all that,” Manny told a group of high school students recently.. “I run into them now and they’re surprised what I’m doing, going to school for social work, working with kids. If you want to get at them, get at them like that.”

Two of UP’s senior operatives are Rico Riemedio and German Yambao. Both were convicted of murder before their twenty-first birthdays and spent the better part of three decades in prison, mostly in San Quentin. Now they’re case managers who work the schools and neighborhoods, often going where police won’t go without backup.

German earned a college degree in prison and became a case manager. “People think I’m institutionalized,” he says from behind a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, “but I always had hope that I’d be out and doing good for the community. You’re not going to save everybody, but everybody’s redeemable. To me the important thing is giving the youth some choices.”

Rudy knew Rico from the old neighborhood. Rico is forty-eight years old but looks ten years younger, his thick, close-cropped hair still waiting on its first touch of gray. He used to bang with Rudy’s big brother when Rudy was still a wide-eyed little kid who looked up to the older guys in the neighborhood.

The Past

We were drunk and high,” Rico says, remembering the night that changed his life. He and some friends were riding around in a car looking for one of their enemies. “We all had guns. We found the guy we were looking for. I was there, but I didn’t pull the trigger.” An insignificant technicality, as it turned out. A judge sentenced Rico to fifteen years to life. Rico did twenty-five years before his release in 2005. He says he’s free because of Rudy, who helped convince the parole board that Rico would be an asset to young people on the outside. “He wrote letters every year,” Rico says. “He’s consistent.”

Today, Rico walks the yard at Bessie Carmichael Elementary School instead of San Quentin. The school is just a few blocks away from the rec center in the same neighborhood where Rico grew up. He try’s to spend some time here every day, coaching sports and getting to know the students.

“We try to get to the kids when they’re young,” he says, standing in the play yard, a whistle around his neck. “When I was their age, when I saw someone I knew on the street, I felt safe. A lot of these of kids live in the neighborhood. By the time they’re old enough to be on the street, we have a relationship with them.”
Last week, Rico got a call from the distressed mother of a kid on Rico’s caseload. The kid, who is on probation, didn’t come home last night and his mom found drugs in his room, all bagged up for sale. When Rico went to talk to the kid and his parole officer, the kid said he hasn’t been coming home because he’s mad at his mom. “He reminds me of me, man,” Rico says. “I told him, ‘If you get shot in the street, who do you think is going to come see you in the hospital? Your mom. Not your friends. How can you say she doesn’t care about you?’”

Every afternoon UP picks up a group of neighborhood kids from Bessie Carmichael after school and walks them over to the rec center to do homework and play outside. “If we had our own rec center we’d have more structure, families would get involved,” Rico says. “We’re teaching kids to become organizers, but it’s hard to produce a kid like that when you’re working out of a place like this.”

While Rico is soft-spoken, Rudy’s voice is a booming, hard-edged instrument. He’s not a big guy, but he seems to grow about a foot taller whenever he opens his mouth. Along with public speaking, schmoozing is one of Rudy’s premiere talents. He’s on a first-name basis with the district attorney, the mayor, and most of the Board of Supervisors. He knows that to be an effective player in the game he has to infiltrate the system.

This morning, Rudy stands on Sixth Street, staring up at the refurbished façade of the Alder Hotel. “I used to live here in the late eighties,” he says. Back then the Alder was different. It wasn’t unusual to walk into the lobby and find people passing around a smoking crack pipe. Rudy stayed in the seedy hotel because even in the neighborhood where he grew up, he had burned enough bridges that he couldn’t find a couch to crash on. “Nobody trusted me,” he says.

Later that afternoon, the neighborhood middle school’s basketball team is playing a game at the rec center. Manny is coaching. A crowd of fifty or so occupies the bleachers and Rudy sits in the front row. Without taking his eyes off the game, he talks about his days as a criminal and a drug addict.

“I was never a gangsta, but I did a lot of gangsta shit. I wasn’t raised to be violent. Drugs made me violent.”

The basketball whizzes down court and Rudy hops to his feet. “Hands up, little man! Get in front of the ball!” When the action slows down, Rudy takes a seat again, clapping his hands.

“I started smoking weed in middle school,” he says. “First it was weed. Then coke in joints. Then snorting it. Then it was crack. And once you hit the pipe, Captain Kirk is a jerk and you’re out of work. I saw the dead come alive on that shit. After a while you start to isolate yourself.”

If he hadn’t isolated himself, the neighborhood might have done it for him. He lost more family and friends to violence and prison than he cared to count. Then he kept banging until they took him to jail.

The Game

In 1994, after laying down the pipe and serving his time, Rudy started counseling youth at Balboa High School. When violence erupted between black and Filipino gangs at a school dance, Rudy brought together the leaders of the gangs on campus and persuaded some of them to work toward one simple goal: no violence at school. The group called itself United Playaz and set out to offer alternatives to kids who believed that gang affiliation was their only chance at power.

Today there are fifty-three identified gangs in San Francisco. There were ninety-eight murders in the city last year and most of the killing happened in a few low-income neighborhoods where gang ties are strong, but only a small fraction of the city’s $60 million budget goes to combat gang violence. Jeff Adachi, San Francisco’s elected public defender, says that while most gang-intervention groups are funded by the city, the money usually has the duration of a political term, after which resources are allocated elsewhere, so it’s tough for community-based organizations to produce measurable results and gain traction.

“The challenge to UP is to focus on which outcomes are being sought and how outcomes are measured,” Adachi says. “How do you measure a lack of retaliation? How many UP kids are in school showing academic improvement? How many no longer belong to gangs? There isn’t a model that clearly defines what success is.”

One thing is clear, though. UP can do what cops, lawyers, and city officials can’t. “They can talk to the kids,” Adachi says. “They’re associated with the hip-hop culture. When Rudy goes into a room, it’s like Obama, it’s electrifying.”

San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris agrees with this approach. “There’s no doubt we need a holistic response. A lot of these people are sources of wisdom and authority in their communities. We know it’s a design that works. It’s a matter of resources.”

At the recent opening of the new Sixth Street Help Center, Rudy spoke with city supervisor Chris Daly about building a youth center next. Daly, who’s known Rudy for almost ten years, wants to do it, but says it won’t be easy. “UP is organized. You see them everywhere. But it’s a tough step to go from providing services to having facilities.”

“They have the reputation,” says Adachi. “What they don’t have is the funding. UP has transformed from being a mom-and-pop, almost clubhouse operation to being a 50c3 and having a board. They created this model of going into the schools and empowering kids. But they’re also experiencing growing pains.”

The Job

Today UP gets a call from a high school that’s about to lose control over a large group of students—the word riot is used—and needs help. Rudy, Rico, German and Manny drop what they’re doing and head straight over. When they get there, the faculty are at their wits’ end. A female ringleader has pitted two groups of students against one another. Now, administrators say kids are roaming the halls during class time, threatening each other, and cussing out teachers who try to intervene. Today, the kids faced off in a hallway and the scene turned chaotic. Fearing a full-on riot, one female administrator went into fight mode.
“I yelled, ‘Get the fuck back up to your classrooms before I fuck one of y’all up.’ I felt bad about it, but I didn’t know what to do.” Shaking her head, she looks at the dean and says that the other day a kid brought a knife to school. The dean’s face drops and she covers her ears and closes her eyes. “Don’t tell me that,” she says. “If you tell me that I have to do something about it.”

“Can I get a word with her?” Rudy says, referring to the ringleader. “Let me get a one-on-one.”
Before leaving the school, Rudy locates the student and persuades her to attend a sit-down the next day between the rival groups, mediated by United Playaz. Standing by their cars outside, German looks at Rudy: “We should start a leadership group. It’s needed here.” Rudy looks back toward the school and contemplates his place in the system. “They’re just using us right now. Every time there’s a fire, they call us to put it out.”

After fourteen years, the United Playaz are still outsiders looking in. When D.A. Harris spoke at a violence prevention seminar at Burton High School a few weeks ago, she and Rudy joked around in the hall and posed for pictures together. But just a week earlier, Rudy was walking home down Sixth Street when the cops stopped him and jacked him up. They put Rudy up against the wall and searched him. Rudy asked what was up but the cops told him to pipe down. Then one of the officers found Police Chief Heather Fong’s card in Rudy’s wallet and changed his tone. “Who are you?” the cop asked. “I’m a taxpayer,” said Rudy. “I pay your salary to protect and serve me.”

But Rudy’s outsider status does have some advantages. He has close ties to people and places that the average person does not. This allows him to show kids the future, which, if they aren’t careful, could be bleak.

The Future

On a gloriously bright Marin County day, twenty teenagers enter an old building, step out of their shoes and slide their belts out of their pants. They each pass through a metal detector before re-dressing, exiting the building and lining up along a concrete walkway that overlooks the northwestern shore of the San Francisco Bay. Gulls fly overhead as the kids walk two hundred sun-bathed yards and enter another old building that has two gates inside. Uniformed men and women hover around, stun guns, clubs, and spray canisters dangling from their belts. After a short wait, the kids pass through both gates and out the back door into a large courtyard where they find crisscrossing walkways, manicured flower beds, and more than a dozen men dressed in blue, who are currently serving fifteen years to life for various offenses—but mostly for murder.

The kids, who had been moving at a good clip, slow up and consider their situation. The men are big, with the kind of muscles you only see in prison. More importantly, they aren’t cuffed, shackled or locked in cages. Some of the kids look back to toward the entrance but the guards are nowhere to be seen. For most of the next four hours, these men will be the only nearby protection the kids will have from the general population of San Quentin State Penitentiary.

One of the kids considers his surroundings and says, “That’s it. As soon as I turn eighteen, I’m joining the army.”

The kids are here today because adults in their lives see them walking a dangerous path. UP facilitates regular trips to San Quentin so that kids can see where their choices could lead them. Rudy has been coming to this prison for years, but today he’s not allowed in. A cell phone was smuggled in recently and the last number called from it was Rudy’s. Rudy says he’s a service provider who gives his number out all the time, but if that’s their trip, he’s not tripping—as long as the kids can still go in.

The program is not Scared Straight. The incarcerated men who lead the kids don’t scream at them or offer heavy-handed threats of prison rape. They’ve all taken counseling classes and gone years without any behavioral infractions. Still, a walk through San Quentin does not feel safe.

As soon as the kids are inside, the men approach them and lay down the safety guidelines. Then line the kids up single file and lead them into a dark cell block. After waiting a moment for the eyes to adjust, cages appear—several levels of them. Each six-by-nine cell contains two bunks, a toilet and two men, who look absolutely huge pressed up against the doors, like they’ve been stuffed inside. They call out to their visitors and their voices echo off the walls. Their statements are beyond profane. The kids stand just a few feet away, unsure of where to look. Their hosts stand with them and don’t rush the moment; they let it hang in the air.

Finally, they lead the kids out a nearby door, where a blast of sunshine illuminates a sea of bright orange shirts along the edge of a blacktop. Only a chain link fence separates the kids and a hundred prisoners who taunt them, clawing at the fence and announcing their willingness to slit throats and take virginity. It’s now been twenty minutes since the kids have had the slightest idea what to do with their eyes. Their hosts lead them off to the cafeteria where the kids listen, undisturbed, to several of the men’s stories of how wasted youth left them trapped behind concrete and steel, perhaps forever.

After the presentations, the kids are led further through the prison to another yard and more orange shirts. This time, though, there is no fence. The kids move closer to their keepers as the line snakes through a menacing human corridor and finally across a basketball court where just a moment ago a game was in progress. Dozens of prisoners are just ten feet away, and all eyes are on the kids. A lone guard walks toward a gate in the distance and the basketball court feels like the smallest place in the world. The men in orange step toward the kids and utter threats, but stop short of the men wearing blue, whose steely glances and steadfast posture help the kids feel safer than they actually are.

Once inside the next building, the men sit and talk one-on-one with the kids, asking questions and offering advice. The kids start to open up and talk about what they’re up against in their neighborhoods. One kid stares at a man’s face where a thick scar runs from his eye to his jawbone.

“Did you get that in here?” the kid asks.

“Yes, I did,” says the man.

“Why?”

“Because I’m white.”

The man, now twenty-nine years old, came to San Quentin when he was sixteen. He smiles and talks to the kids the way he wishes someone had talked to him, hoping they heed the advice that he never did. “You don’t want to end up in here.”

After a walk back up to the courtyard, the kids form a line. The men shake hands with each of them, smiling, thanking them for coming and telling them to make the right choices. As they leave, the kids are a much quieter group than when they arrived this morning, and probably wondering how they’ll explain the day to the people back at home. The men watch them walk out the gates of San Quentin, knowing they might never be allowed to do the same. Then they head off to be searched, and walk back into their cells.

“My success is through them,” Rudy says of his friends in prison. “They’re my heroes. The solution to violence is on the corners, behind walls.”

The Hood

There’s a slogan on the back of UP’s shirts and hoodies: it takes the hood to save the hood.

Rudy went to New Orleans about a year after Katrina to help out, and what he saw there cauterized his feelings about community. “The only people who took care of people were people. Dope fiends, people you wouldn’t think of, were saving lives. People who were counted out went to work. Relationships are crucial in your hood. When the power goes off, the first person when you walk out your house is going to be your neighbor. It ain’t going to be the mayor, it ain’t going to be the governor, it ain’t going to be Obama. It’s going to be that person who lives next to you.”

As it turns out, last week’s conflict mediation at the school was a success. The students have agreed to hold weekly peace and leadership meetings and the school has approved UP to run them. As for San Quentin, Rudy thinks he’ll be able to visit again one day, but as long as the kids can still go, it’s not his first priority. San Francisco is a big, violent city and Rudy has lots of other places to be. Like the Palace of Fine Arts Theater, where he stands at the side of the stage, waiting to go on and explain to nine hundred kids why using drugs is tantamount to buying a one-way ticket to prison, the hospital or the morgue. The lights go down and his face turns serious. He shifts his weight back and forth between his feet and rolls his neck. He peers out at the audience and speaks in a hushed voice: “These kids at this age right here, they’re so vulnerable. But they’re also intelligent and they just need guidance. Whoever controls the minds of these kids controls the future. I don’t believe this generation is lost. They’re misled—the misled generation.”