Mercedies Escalante has had a lot of jobs over the years. She has been a grape picker and packer, an elementary school aide, a barber, a cashier at the 99-cent store, and a postal worker.
Often, she has also served as an unofficial counsellor. As her small, rural town in central California was racked with a spate of gun homicides, she helped neighbours make funeral arrangements, listened to grieving parents vent their anger and despair, and talked down those wondering if they should take justice into their own hands.
This is why so many people in Delano know her. And, she hopes, why they will trust her as she begins her latest job: peacekeeper.
Escalante is one of the latest hires at the non-profit Garden Pathways, a regional community-based violence intervention program that has opened a new pilot in Delano. The idea behind groups like Garden Pathways is to break a cycle of violence begetting more violence by helping the town heal.
Escalante hopes to reach out to as many struggling, vulnerable people as she can – and help them get whatever they need: therapy, financial support, job training, a sense of support and community.
“It’s exciting. It’s something new in town,” she said. “And I think people are ready for a change.”
Violence prevention programs – which seek to reach the people who are most at risk of becoming either perpetrators or victims of gun violence – have existed since at least the 1980s in cities like Los Angeles and Chicago. But in California’s agricultural central valley, such programs remain exceedingly scarce. It may be among the reasons why gun violence rates are so disproportionally high here, according to gun violence experts and community leaders. Although Los Angeles or Oakland may see more shootings overall, across California, rural towns such as Delano have proportionally much higher rates of gun deaths.
Kern county, the rural county north of Los Angeles which encompasses Delano, had the highest gun homicide rate in California 2016 and 2021, according to the California department of public Health – double the statewide average. Overall, the state’s agricultural central valley and central coast regions had much higher gun homicide rates than the rest of the state – echoing trendlines from across the US. Throughout, rural communities often have higher rates of gun homicides and suicides than urban communities.
“If gun violence happens in bigger cities, why wouldn’t it happen in smaller communities?” said Escalante. “But I think places like Delano are just overlooked, because we’re just a small town and you wouldn’t expect to have so much violence here.”
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Over the past several weeks, Escalante has put on her neon-green Garden Pathways T-shirt and stationed herself at neighbourhood parks – as a way to introduce the non-profit and herself to locals. Often, she sets out snacks or food, kickbacks or Garden Pathway-branded swag, to entice people to stop by. “Especially because I worked as a postal worker, lots of people recognize me or at least know that I look familiar,” she said – which helps.
“But then, usually, people think we’re selling homes,” she added, laughing. Garden Pathways does sound a bit like an up-and-coming suburban subdivision – and Delano has seen a flurry of new housing construction in recent years. “So people are like, is this for the new homes coming up here or there. And I have to explain: ‘No, no, this is a new community program.’”
Garden Pathways’ main goal is to reduce gun violence and break cycles of retaliatory community violence. This means that when there is a shooting, Escalante might rush to the scene, to hold and comfort the victim’s family and friends. She might talk them down from seeking retaliation, and help them access therapy or other resources to process their grief.
Her colleague and friend Kathleen Viramontes, who is the group’s program coordinator in Delano, might visit with survivors of gun violence as they recover in hospital, help them look for safer housing, enroll in school, find health insurance and, ultimately, rebuild their lives.
However, when Escalante is out promoting the program, she usually pitches the organisation’s other initiatives – which are designed not to respond in a moment of crisis, but to address the root causes of violence.
People tend to perk up when she mentions access to group therapy, mentorship and job training programs, she said. A lot of people show interest in Garden Pathways’ free tattoo removal program, she noted. Laser tattoo removal is an expensive service – and for many people who are looking to move on from their involvement with local street gangs, the ink can become a big hindrance, even disqualifying them from certain work opportunities at schools and hospitals.
Parents often perk up when they hear about the education programs, which include partnerships with the local community college and technical training school. There are courses for those interested in working in construction, in the nearby oilfields or at one of the region’s many behemoth online logistics warehouses.
Right now, the courses are only offered at Garden Pathways’ main location in Bakersfield, but the organisation is planning to start offering satellite classes in Delano soon. “I think people are starting to get really excited.”
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For years, grieving families in Delano have been seeking to understand why their town was seeing so much violence, and what could be done. Some blamed the police for failing to bring perpetrators to justice. Others blamed street gangs for perpetuating cycles of violence.
Many blamed the town itself. Delano has been shaped by deep inequities and cycles of poverty. It was one of the California communities most exposed to paraquat – a toxic weedkiller linked to an increased risk of developing Parkinson’s disease. Many households struggle to afford water here – in a dry region where groundwater supplies are periodically under threat.
One in five residents live below the poverty line, and for years, job opportunities have been scarce.
For decades, Delano has struggled to make do with less. Residents complained that there never even seemed to have been enough ambulances to go around, or enough doctors or therapists.
Recently, though, things are starting to change. The opening of a Maya Cinema sparked a rush of excitement back in 2018. A new aquatic centre finally opened this summer, after the town had gone a decade without public swimming. And everyone has been looking forward to a new Target store opening soon.
“We’ve never really had anything for the kids,” said Crystal Medrano, 32, whose two closest friends were killed in separate drive-by shootings. “So that’s when you see kids around Delano, like, running the street, turning to gangs.”
She is one of the few people in Delano who was already familiar with Garden Pathways. She had discovered the non-profit in 2016 when she briefly moved to Bakersfield after her best friend’s death.
She was looking for a fresh start, so she enrolled in Garden Pathways’ job training program. And she began to attend group sessions – where she and others shared their stories of grief. “It opened my eyes,” she said. “They showed me there was more to life after my friend passed away.”
The program’s arrival in Delano, she said, was a big deal.
Since last summer – when Garden Pathways’ expansion into Delano was first announced – there hasn’t been a single gun homicide. It’s unclear why exactly that is, but Joe L Alindajao, Delano’s mayor, said he believed the violence prevention program has played a role. “I really believe that Garden Pathways are a huge, huge part of that reduction,” he said.
Though the program has barely gotten off the ground, just its presence, he said, has been a “godsend”.
“For the first time in the history of Delano, we’re having a community-based approach to addressing public safety. It’s gotten a lot of conversation going on in this city,” he said.
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Support for programs such as Garden Pathways gained momentum during the pandemic, amid a growing recognition of the daily, constant toll of gun violence in US communities.
In 2021, the US Congress passed the American Rescue Plan Act, which included funding that many cities are using for a range of “community violence intervention” programs. Some of these programs focus solely on violence interruption – sending out teams to defuse tensions and keep peace in the community. Others provide resources – counselling, job training, mentorship – for those most at risk for becoming involved in violence. Some, like Garden Pathways, offer a bit of everything.
The approach has proved difficult to academically research – in part because it can be so varied across different communities – but it has shown promise in places such as Baltimore, Maryland, where a program that offers resources and mentorship was found to have reduced gun violence by 25% in the city’s western district, which had historically seen the highest rates of gun violence.
“I think the interventions that work best are really focusing on healing the community,” said Cuco Rodriguez, the chief strategist at Hope & Heal Fund, a violence prevention group.
But even as community violence intervention programs become increasingly adapted in big cities, few exist in rural communities, where Rodriguez said the approach could be transformational. In smaller cities, he said, small changes can have big reverberations, he said. “I mean, we’re halfway through the year and Delano hasn’t had any homicides – why wouldn’t you correlate that with the fact that this program is just starting up, and there’s new conversations happening?”
Peacekeepers such as Escalante are also able to more easily connect with people in tight-knit communities, where news travels quickly and people already tend to know each other or know of each other, Rodriguez said.
Escalante, too, thinks her ties with the community will be crucial to her success.
Escalante ended up applying to the peacekeeping job after Viramontes – one of her closest friends – was hired there. Both women were born and raised in the area, and both have had to struggle and fight through tragedy, largely alone.
Escalante has lost a number of friends and family members to gun violence, and to prison. She grew up with people who are still involved with local street and prison gangs. “They pretty much witnessed how I grew up. They know what I’ve been through,” she said. “And that helps because it’s hard for them to be able to connect with somebody that doesn’t know the streets, or doesn’t know that lifestyle.”
She bonded with Viramontes, in part, over their shared traumas. When Viramontes was in her early 20s, her mother was shot and killed by her stepfather. “And I kind of got left, at 23, to figure out how to navigate all of that alone,” Viramontes said. There was no one to tell her how to organise a funeral, how to access victim’s compensation, or how to cope with her shock and anguish.
“I can remember about a year after my mom was killed, thinking that if the police weren’t going to fix this problem, I need to fix this problem. And I was willing to throw my whole life away to fix it,” Viramontes said. “And it would have taken me two phone calls to have a gun in my hands.”
Now, the two women hope they can help pull others out of that dark space. “I want to use my experience,” Viramontes said. “It can sound cheesy and cliche, right? But if you want change, you have to set out to change.”
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As community gun violence prevention work expands into rural communities, organisers like Rodriguez have been urging the groups such as Garden Pathways to think about their work in the long run.
Violence prevention can be traumatic work, Rodriguez said, with small teams often shouldering a large burden. “The support and healing and wellness piece for workers is essential,” he said.
As she settles into her role, Escalante said she has been trying to pace herself. But the work also feels instinctive to her. “I was already doing this before I applied for Garden Pathways, for my friends and my family,” she said. “Now when I go out, I just feel like I’m helping out another family member.”
On a Monday afternoon, she was going to follow up with a woman, her little cousin’s friend, actually – who has been in recovery from addiction. Escalante had initially reached out on Facebook, and the woman had seemed interested, though a big sceptical. “I think some people are worried like: ‘Do you work with law enforcement? Do you work with parole? And if not, why are you even reaching out?’” she said.
So Escalante will make sure she has some space to think about it – before following up again. “I’m slowly reeling her in,” she said, smiling. “She’s slowly opening up, letting me know what she needs. I’m crossing my fingers.”
