Profile-Matt-Iverson

Feet That Fit Two Kinds Of Shoes

“I would say off the top of my head, the people that come to mind right now, maybe one or two kids that I’ve mentored have done good for themselves; they’ve managed to get themselves out of that gang lifestyle, get themselves to college.” That was officer Marco Garcia’s response when I asked him about the at-risk youth he has mentored as a member of MVPALs (Mountain View Police Activities League) and a police officer for the city of Mountain View.

The Mountain View Police Activities League is run and cosponsored by the Mountain View Police Police Department. MVPALs offers activities and trips for at-risk youth who would normally not be able afford such things. These include boxing classes, a soccer camp in the summer, and a camping trip to the Santa Cruz mountains to name a few. A lot is done for at-risk youth in the local community, but why can Marco only save one to two? Like many of the kids Marco mentors, he was once like them, but didn’t have the same amount of community outreach. However, Marco, with a little help, was able to turn his life around and is now living a successful life.

The first time I met Marco, I was flat-out scared of him. I was at a training session for high school coaches who were volunteering at the MVPAL sponsored soccer camp, KLD (Kick Lead Dream), which Marco helps run. We were all in the backyard watching a Eurocup match on TV and waiting for Marco to arrive so he could give a presentation about at-risk youth and his expectations from us as coaches. About 15 minutes late, Marco entered from the side gate of the house and I was a little shocked. I had never seen Marco before so I assumed he would look like most other Mountain View cops, but Marco certainly did not. Out of uniform, he resembled a UFC fighter more than a cop.

He was about 5’8” and very built for his size, both his arms and legs were tattooed, his hair was spiked, and he was wearing tough-guy sunglasses.

Marco loudly asked us to turn off the television, find a seat, and stay quite. He was serious throughout his presentation, made no jokes, and was extremely honest with us. Marco openly talked about crime and the various gangs that are in our local community that most of which we had no idea even existed. One of the more surprising was a local white supremacist group in Mountain View. But what Marco was most open about though, was his own life. He described his rough childhood and late teen years growing up in Mountain View to all us without hesitation, and how many of the at-risk youths we would be coaching this summer would be living in similar situations. During the presentation when Marco started to talk about his abusive father, Marco’s seriousness started to make sense. I believe in every at-risk youth, Marco sees a little bit of himself and genuinely wants to help those kids escape from their troubled situations and make better lives for themselves. It is a very personal part of his job because he once walked in the same shoes as the kids he is trying to help.

Officer Marco Garcia has lived in Mountain View all his life and was once an at-risk youth in our community. His childhood and teen years were filled with hardships, a bleak outlook on life, and multiple run-ins with the law. When he was 19 years old, a brief encounter with a San Mateo Sheriff caused Marco to rethink the directions of his life. Marco became a school counselor for the Mountain View Whisman school district and four years ago, took a position at the Mountain View Police Department. Generously, the city of Mountain View put Marco through the Police Academy and he has been serving our local community ever since.

One of the many commendable things Marco has done for our local community has been making the soccer camp KLD “the large, booming success that it is today.”

That is how Sonia Nigam, one of the founders of KLD, described Marco’s key role in the creation and execution of KLD. She said that “he was the one that really got the ball rolling.” “Marco was able to get us going and because of his connections we were able to get the kids, get the equipment.” So much of KLD’s current success can be attributed to Marco and his devotion to the program. Marco has worked with a lot of at-risk youth during his time as a school counselor and a police officer, but there is one kid Marco will always remember. He recounted the story to me as if it happened yesterday. “I know a young kid who is in high school who I’ve known since 6th grade and this young man has a learning disability. I stopped him one day and talked to him and he could barely even speak and make sense. He can communicate with you, his sentence structure is not all there. ‘So I asked him hey bud, why are you hanging out with gang members?’ I remember his exact words, ‘I’m hanging out with gang members because they give me respect and I’m looking for respect.’ And that makes a lot of sense because guess what happens to someone like him at school?”

The answer was painfully obvious. “So to this day he unfortunately can’t read, he has a hard time writing sentences, and he has a hard time making out a sentence just speaking to you. I see him out on the streets and the way he’s dressed and yet, when he walks by he scares people and intimidates people and people move out of his way no matter how old because of the way he dresses.”

Dumbfounded by the situation, I asked Marco if the schools gave this boy any assistance. “I remember him getting a lot of assistance from the schools. This is a case of parents being divorced, dad not in the picture, mom working a couple of jobs, so Mom is never around.” “It’s not the kids in my opinion, the problem we have is parenting,” which makes sense because 34% of children in the United States are living in single parent homes (“Children Living In Single Parent Homes”). When I asked Marco about how important parental involvement is with children, he said, “it’s a continuance of building on that young individual from having integrity and really your values and morals that come from your upbringing.” What Marco said came right out of his own life.

When describing his home, Marco said two heavy words: drinking and domestic abuse. His father “was a heavy drinker” and “he drank about a liter of brandy a day.” Despite the drinking, Marco mentioned multiple times how hard a worker his father was. “Never missed a day of work, but everyday that he came home he was drinking and to the point where he would pass out”. Especially with excessive drinking in households, the chance of domestic abuse and emotional damage is dramatically increased (“Growing Up In An Alcoholic Home”). “He would hit me, my brother, and my mom just out of anger from drinking.” Through all the physical abuse from his father, Marco still mentioned that “when he wasn’t drinking, he was a very loving man.”

From being beaten by their father, both Marco and his brother, Oscar, were filled with anger. Oscar expressed that anger by beating Marco, but Marco didn’t have any younger siblings to take his anger out on, so the kids at his school filled that role. Not surprisingly, Marco was frequently getting into trouble at school for fighting.

The first time Marco went to jail, he was 18 years old. Marco had a warrant out for his arrest for repeatedly driving with a suspended license, and for repeatedly failing to appear in court. When he received the warrant that was mailed to his house, he went to the Mountain View Police Department and turned himself in.

Normally, Marco would’ve had to do just five days, but because he had prior convictions he ended up serving 60 days in the Orange County jail.

Following that, Marco was transferred to the San Mateo county jail to serve time for another warrant. It was during this relocation that Marco had a change of heart and decided to turn his life around.

Marco flew to the Oakland airport with a sheriff from San Mateo county who would help change Marco’s life for the better. During the flight, the sheriff asked Marco if this was really the type of lifestyle he wanted to live. The sheriff also lectured Marco that he needed to provide for his kid. For Marco, this was the first time an officer had really told him to knock off what he was doing and set him straight. Marco told me how he “remembers that point where life kind of just changed for me, where there was this transformation. That was a start for me to realize that hey, there are better things out there than to be in jail with guys that are real criminals.” Marco also recognized how his father contributed to what he wanted out of life. “Even though my father was such a heavy drinker, what he did teach me was to work. Be a hard worker and provide for my family. So even though I was young and couldn’t go out there and make a great living, it was about going out there and bring that money to the table for the family and that’s what I really wanted to do, to provide.”

It was that small and brief amount of mentoring from the sheriff that helped Marco turn his life around.

As a police officer, Marco has really dedicated himself to mentoring both at-risk youth and their parents by providing advice or services from the City. One of the families he mentored was the Aguilars. When Marco was a counselor at Graham middle school, he remembers seeing the Aguilars son, Josue, starting to associate with the wrong crowd. Marco even said, “with him, I actually remember going to his home and visiting his parents and educating his parents. And it appears, I don’t want to take credit for his success so far, I believe in the little part I played allowing him to do something different, it opened up his eyes to doing something different out in the world.”

Thanks in some part to Marco, Josue went from being an at-risk camper at KLD to becoming a coach at KLD. He is also taking very challenging classes at Mountain View High School such as American Literature AP. Not only has Josue changed, but his parents have changed by becoming more involved in their son’s academics. Studies have shown that students with involved parents are more likely to earn higher grades and go off to college, which Marco encouraged them to do (“How Parent Involvement Affects Student Achievement”). Happily, it’s looking like Marco will soon be able to add one more person to his list of successfully mentored at-risk youth.

For the future, Marco already has ideas about potential programs and activities for at-risk youth he’d like to see put in place. One of Marco’s ideas is to buy a small plot of land and take at-risk youth out there to camp and work on a farm with animals. With excitement on his face, Marco told me how doing chores and caring for their animals would teach at-risk youth responsibility and the rewards of hard work. He even talked about having a therapist there who would listen to the kids and give advice since many don’t have someone to talk to at home. Marco’s enthusiastic description of this program was infectious. Most importantly though, Marco just wants people to know that “there is a community here that wants to help you.”