It was Rodrigo Garcia’s last chance. That’s what the judge said.
“Young man, I’m looking at a record of criminal activity dating back to your eleventh birthday! Vandalism, theft, burglary. You’re almost eighteen years old now. You could be looking at a long stretch of hard time. But I’m giving you this last chance to straighten up and fly right. That’s mostly because of a few people who wrote me to say they believe in you. They think you’re worth taking a chance on—one more time.”
With that, the judge sent Rodrigo to the Chaparral Corral, a youth camp amid the massive tan rocks north of Los Angeles. Across the courtroom, Rodrigo glanced at his parents. His mom was silently crying. Rodrigo knew he’d brought her a lot of grief, and he was sorry about that. She and Dad had raised four good boys and girls—and Rodrigo, the only troublemaker.
“He’s the black sheep,” Aunt Carla had said often and bitterly.
Dad sat stone-faced, not able to understand how this had happened to his youngest son. Rodrigo didn’t understand it himself. Ever since he could remember he had gotten into fights. He had a hairtrigger temper. Another guy might insult a kid who took cuts in the school cafeteria line, but Rodrigo would send him flying across the room. If someone darted in front of him on the freeway, Rodrigo would take off after him. It was like he had a volcano bubbling up inside him, always ready to spew hot lava.
But there was another Rodrigo, too. The other Rodrigo was smart. He got good grades and could do math like a genius. In his math class Mr. Bruno let him tutor the slower kids, and Rodrigo was amazingly patient with them. Rodrigo never blew up when he was tutoring kids. He did a good job, an exceptionally good job. One of the letters urging another chance for Rodrigo had come from Mr. Bruno.
Mrs. Vasquez, Rodrigo’s next-door neighbor, wrote a letter, too. She said Rodrigo was the only kid in the barrio who helped her grandson when some gang members beat him for mistakenly wearing the wrong colors.
But most of the people who knew Rodrigo wanted him to go to jail. They could only see him as a hothead, a troublemaker, and a thief.
The man in charge of the Chaparral Corral was Henry Montrose. In his long career, he’d been a fighter pilot, a sheriff, and lately, the head honcho of this tough program for boys on the edge of disaster. The boys who came there roughed it in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, hacking out trails for hikers. While chasing a killer a few years ago, Montrose had taken a bullet in the stomach and another one that had left a bad scar on his chin. Montrose had gotten his man, all right, but he had almost died of his injuries. He survived with scars and an even deeper hatred of crime.
“You guys,” Montrose addressed the newcomers on the morning they arrived at Chaparral Corral, “had better be ready to work hard, take orders, and get along with the other people here. If you do that, maybe you’ll have a shot at a decent life. If you screw up here, you’re dead meat. Might as well send for the vultures. Get kicked out of here and you’re heading for hard time and a downward spiral into a hell you’ve only smelled so far.”
Rodrigo didn’t like the man from the start. Montrose was tall and lean with a leathery face. He looked like a beat-up old dude who liked to lord it over people. Rodrigo had seen his type before. Montrose was a typical cop, a guy who got his kicks from playing the big man.
But Rodrigo was determined to put on a good act at this stupid camp. If he messed up, Montrose would throw him back into the criminal justice system. Then Rodrigo would be looking at a couple of years in serious prison.
“Please, mi niño,” Mom had pleaded. “Do the right thing at the camp. Then you can come home. You can get a job and have a future.”
“Do not shame us any more than you already have,” Father had warned him, his mouth tight and grim.
Rodrigo was teamed up in a tiny cabin with another 18-year-old named Jon Chandler. He’d been in trouble for drugs and for ramming a teacher’s car. The other guy in their group was Lonnie Bowman, a kid who had been charged with attempted murder. Lonnie was the youngest of the trio, just barely 17.