BERKELEY, Calif. — Jessi Fernandez joined a street gang at 13. By his 20s, he had been shot at more times than he could count. He got busted for methamphetamine possession and spent time in Los Angeles County jail for carrying a loaded gun. Yet the persistent danger didn't wash away a street kid's dream — that he would get rich as a drug kingpin, then turn legit.
Escapist fantasies became harder to embrace by late 2015, when rivals gunned down two of Fernandez's closest friends in a few months' time. The second had lived with him like a brother for at least a year, before being shot down not far from their front door in Boyle Heights. Fernandez, then 22, held 20-year-old "Shorty" as he bled on the asphalt, huddled between two cars.
Fernandez had seen others in his community change paths, often starting out with classes and jobs at Homeboy Industries, the renowned gang rehabilitation program. He'd hung around Homeboy enough to strike up an acquaintance with Father Greg Boyle, the nonprofit's founder. But this child of immigrants hesitated to throw over the deep loyalties that defined him — to his "homies," to the streets, to the belief that death or imprisonment for his neighborhood represented a kind of honor.
