Lupe Salazar

HomeBoy Ministries was started to help at-risk youth and young adults leave the streets and gangs. We teach youth and young adults how to deal with their life’s circumstances, which we won’t let define them. HomeBoy Ministries helps them understand that they have a choice and that their choices can have a positive or a negative impact on their future.

A broken home…

I can relate to these types of kids because I was one of them. I joined a gang when I was 11 years old.

I came from a broken home. My dad died when I was little. My mom worked hard and did the best that she could, however, she had seven kids to feed and care for. So while she was working hard, I started getting in trouble.

We couldn’t afford Nike or the other popular name brand clothes. As a result, kids bullied and made fun of me for the clothes I wore. The role models I had in my life were either drug dealers or gang members. I started hanging out with them a lot.  That led me to get involved with gangs and selling drugs.  I was eventually labeled as that kid who “wouldn’t amount to nothing.” In contrast, the gang members took care of me.

The streets become my family

The reason I got into gangs in the first place was for money, respect, and possessions. No one approached me to join a gang; I was influenced by society and what I saw and the reputation that came with being in a gang. I wanted to be respected and I wanted to make a name for myself in that world. I wanted to be the biggest and baddest gangster out there and nothing was going to stop me.

I was always getting into fights in the streets, at schools, and everywhere else I went. I got expelled from many schools. I was that kid that everyone would say this kid is going to end up in prison for life or dead — he is crazy. Schools even went to great length to label me as having a learning disability so they would put me in special ED classes. This made me rebel even more. I start hating people in authority — teachers, principals, and cops.

My mom tried getting me help. However, everywhere we went they would tell her it was too late to help me. There was nothing they could do for me. I was too far-gone and it would be a miracle if I ever made it to my 21st birthday.

Hitting bottom

I just didn’t care anymore, and I had made up my mind to make more money, so I started dealing drugs even more. More bricks meant more money, more parties, and more clothes, etc. As I grew older I got deeper into the lifestyle with drugs and gangs. I was in and out of jail. I didn’t care what happened to me. I was only focused on two things: money and respect. This was the kind of life I had thought I wanted. Yet it seemed to become a life that no longer wanted me.

I’ve been shot at numerous times — to the point I had lost count. I’ve been stabbed, run over, beaten up, even thrown out of a three-story building. So-called homies and family members have betrayed me as well. I’ve seen homeboys get killed right in front of me. I’ve buried homies and watched as others were locked up in prison for life.

Light at the end of the tunnel…

I lived like this for a while, but eventually, I started to get tired of seeing homeboys die or go to prison. Losing their families, life or freedom for a neighborhood that was never going to belong to us. Or money that was there one minute and gone the next. I saw the vanity of it all. I asked myself a simple question: is there something better out there than the life I was living.

I had gotten tricked into going to church by a close homie of mine. That’s the first time I went to church. And there was a tug at my heart. I wanted to change but I wasn’t quite ready to stop living this life I knew for so long. After my daughter was born I knew I didn’t want her to call someone else “Dad” as I have seen my homies’ kids call other guys “dad”. God used this to start tugging at my heart. God knew this would start changing my heart and my life. I was still straddling the fence as some people call it. Still doing the same old same old.

A new life

I got busted three times in a week. The judge sent me to a drug rehabilitation camp and soon after that, a chaplain told me about Set Free Ministries in Spokane, WA. I entered the program and this is where I surrendered my heart fully to God. And God, He got ahold of my heart. And my life changed forever. God is good. He taught me how to be a real man — a dad, a husband, and a man of God.

Eight years ago God gave me a vision for a ministry and a heart to help out teens and young adults in the gang and prison culture. HomeBoy Ministries was born.