Why do we do what we do?

Dear Group,

This may not be of interest to anyone but I'm going to post it anyway.

I spend my week days working with inner city troubled youths. Most of them belong to the many street gangs in the Los Angeles Barrios. A few days ago I lost one of my favorite kids. A young kid by the name of Mauricio Ibarra. I had worked with Mauricio since 1995 when he came to us straight out of Y.A. ( California Youth Authority)

Mauricio was shot in the head at point blank range Weds. night while using a local pay phone. He made the mistake of going out into the summer night shirtless, and exposing his many gang tattoos. It cost him his life. He was 7 days away from graduating High School. He would have been the first in his family to do so.

I have lost many kids to the system, or the morgue, over the last 5 years but this one really got to me.

I quit a decent job running camera and video editing for a local Hollywood TV show, to work with these so called "bad" kids. I fell in love with the job and have devoted the last 5 years to trying to do something about the senseless violence and waste of life in the L.A. streets.

As of today, I don't want to do that anymore.

I have to find something else. I hope I can find some of the answers I'm looking for through this board. I would like to encourage any of you lurkers out there, to start posting to the board. You may just have the answers someone else is looking for. Your input does count.Like Gordon says, it really is about WE.

Oh yeah, one more thing. Mauricio was not just a statistic or a animal as some of the Rampart cops on the scene may have said. He was my friend.

To better days,

George Marquez