Cleaning Up, Helping Others Break Away from Gang Life

By Michael Picarella Signal Staff Writer

He said he was always on time for class and never had issues doing his school work. But, almost immediately upon his arrival in 2007 at a local high school, he was expelled.

Having been involved in gangs at a young age — shot in the stomach due to gang violence and quite the rap sheet — Santa Clarita resident Ramses Mayorga said his past wouldn’t let him get ahead.

“They kicked me out for nothing,” Mayorga said of the school. “And when I say nothing, they kicked me out for nothing.”

Mayorga’s story is complicated with its ups and downs, twists and turns. It includes falling in with local Santa Clarita gangs when he was 13, suffering from a .22-caliber bullet wound in the stomach about a year later and a 14-year prison stint.

Originally from Atwater Village in Los Angeles, Mayorga came to Canyon Country when he was just a child.

“I came up here because my mom went to prison when I was about 5 years old,” Mayorga said. “I was put in the custody of my grandmother and my aunt, and my aunt lived out here.”

Mayorga would move again soon after that. His grandmother took him to Ecuador to live for about two years, but he’d return to Canyon Country and get involved in sports — almost every sport, including soccer, baseball and football. Asked when the trouble began, he said it wasn’t necessarily one thing or another, rather something that bothered him in general.

“I’m not a fan of bullies,” Mayorga said. “I hate bullies. I hate people that prey on people just because they’re weaker or they don’t look the part of being cool. Even when I was living in the gang life, I didn’t act like that. I wouldn’t do things to people that had nothing to do with the gang life.”

His daughter was among the positive influences that gave him reason enough to escape the gang life. While in prison, Mayorga received two degrees — one in business and one in social behavioral sciences.

When he was young he wanted to be either a lawyer to defend people or a psychologiest to help those with mental issues. Today, at 30 years old, he is kind of doing both by starting a nonprofit in the Santa Clarita Valley where he’s working with kids battling gangs and drugs.

During his incarceration, his mother committed suicide and his younger brother found her when it was too late to do anything about it. Last May, that same brother died from a fentanyl overdose.

Turning Things Around

Determined to wipe his slate clean, Mayorga came out of prison — about a year ago — and got to work. He became a youth advocate for the Bresee Foundation, which is a nonprofit community center that offers after-school programs, family services and gang prevention outreach to low-income youth, adults and families in central Los Angeles.

Mayorga said Bresee was his saving grace, with staff members showing him he could make a difference. However, Mayorga wants to helps kids in the Santa Clarita Valley and is currently in the process of creating his own nonprofit in the SCV called Not Another Statistic_Y.E.S., which stands for Youth Enrichment Services.

Making a Difference

“Honestly, there are hardly any resources out here for people getting into gangs,” he said. “These gangs out here are destroying kids’ lives … We live in a very calm, peaceful place, but violence has risen.”

Mayorga added that gangs are preying on area youth, and he wants to help these kids from folding against the pressure.

He contacted a Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station detective, who arrested him on several occasions when he was living the gang life, and he asked if this detective could help him identify youth in the area going down similarly destructive paths.

Detective Mark Barretto, who’s been with the SCV Sheriff’s Station for 23 years and a gang detective since 2008, said he still remembers Mayorga.

“I don’t forget gang members’ names when I deal with them,” Barretto said. “He told me a little bit about how he was young and made bad choices, running with the gangs, and how he did things he shouldn’t have done, how going to prison helped rehabilitate him and make him understand and recognize his mistakes in the past, and how he wanted to somehow try to be a better contributor to society and try to help be a solution for gangs instead of problem with gangs.”

Barretto said he was more than happy to help Mayorga. He added that he’s seen more criminals go back to crime than become rehabilitated, so he was ultimately pleased to hear from Mayorga and learn about his plan to help troubled youth.

“That encourages me,” Barretto said. “I will say I have a responsibility to protect the community