Silicon City

by Cary McClelland

  The more difficult—but I think worthy—goal is how are these students going to end up becoming really good people, good citizens that are going to eventually come back and help their community? Or help another community? Or just be mindful and aware of how this whole thing works?

  I related to the high-achieving students, the nerdy kids, the straight-A students, the quiet ones in the back, just trying to study and get into a good school. That was who I was, so that made a lot of sense to me.

  I struggled with the kids that were rebellious or just weren’t taking that approach. And they struggled with me. With such big classes, they don’t get support, so it becomes virtually impossible for them to plow through when they have all these other things going on. They are slipping through the cracks.

  There’s a lot of talk now, especially in California, how the suburbs are now poor areas. Because Oakland’s getting so expensive, and San Francisco is, of course, really expensive. At twenty-two, it didn’t make any sense to me that I was teaching in a suburb with a bunch of kids that were from disadvantaged backgrounds.

  But, gosh, a lot of my kids never have been to San Francisco. Their life is so removed from that. They would joke: San Francisco is a “white-people city” or a “rich-people city.” It didn’t play into their daily experience. It’s far. You have to go forty-five minutes on the bus. Sometimes it feels like you’ll never get out.

  TONY SAGRADO

  His work as an advocate for kids facing incarceration has been recognized by the governor of California and the attorney general of the United States. He has changed lives and changed how California, even the country, approaches juvenile justice. We are squatting between cardboard boxes in the back storeroom of the nonprofit where he works, an organization dedicated to helping kids avoid incarceration and remain at home, in their community. He offers me the only cushioned chair and sits on a plastic one himself.

  I remember saying, “I’m going to attend every funeral.”

  The way some of these communities grieve, it was foreign, really foreign to me. They have the SWAT team outside, patrol cars cruising around the block. Because this kid was shot in a drive-by, there’s the potential for retaliation. Or they have the whole gang there, so their rivals may think, Why don’t we just light up the whole funeral home or the whole church?

  Three-hour-long funerals. Open mics. I’d never been to a funeral where they had open mics.

  Now, on a semiregular basis, I look down at kids in coffins.

  When I was in college, I worked at a grocery store. I worked the swing shift at night, and we’d take our breaks out in front.

  One night, these two kids come by on bicycles, and they fall off right in front of us. One of the kids says, “They were shooting at us with a BB gun.” The other was bleeding and bleeding from his leg. I looked, and it was a bullet hole. Through-and-through bullet hole in his leg.

  He fell, we lifted up his shirt, and he had three bullet holes in his back. He was struggling, breathing. We called 911. I held his hand. He died on the way to the hospital. I found out when the local newspaper called. I saved the article.

  So when I started doing this work, it really clicked for me. There’s moments you feel like you’re just right in your own wheelhouse, like you have the tools and the gifts to do well.

  A kid is charged with a crime, and he’s placed in juvenile hall awaiting trial. There’s a bunch of research on how custody leads to further criminal activity—and the thought is that you divert this kid from spending unnecessary amounts of time in custody, you save him from the cycle of crime. So we argue for them to await trial at home.

  We say, “If you let this child out, we will make curfew calls every day to make sure they’re home. We will do school visits to make sure they’re going to school. We will be in contact with their probation officer, with their family.”

  And man, I felt like I was fully alive when I was doing it. You stand up and you put your name on the line, I’m responsible for this child. Basically, we offer ourselves. Our word.

  My first case was this young kid. He was living on Treasure Island. I looked at his school record, and he had missed not days, not months—he had missed years of school. His mother was a crack addict, but she was the sweetest woman you’ll ever meet.

  I remember meeting them at their home. I’d never been in a home like this. These smells I’ve never smelled before. Have you ever smelled crack, what it smells like when it’s being burnt? That smell, I’ll never forget that smell.

  The floor was carpet, real thin, worn spots where you can see the concrete. There was no pad or anything. It was very cold and dank. It felt like the outside on the inside. That’s the only way I can describe it—it just felt like the outside. No warmth that you would expect from a home.

  But his mother, she cooked me a meal. I’m looking at that kitchen—I’m not a germophobe or anything like that—but the kitchen and the pots and pans, they just looked filthy. I thought it must have been a haven for mice and roaches. And I’m processing all this while she’s making fried chicken and collard greens there on the stove. And I’m already committed. I know I’m going to eat this meal.

  I look back and really connect that with my faith. That family didn’t have much to offer me; they did what they could. They were warm and welcoming in an unwarm and unwelcoming place.

  I saw myself in her. How much of life is trying to put something together, put the pieces back together, and to be accepted or to be loved?

  I really connected with them. The father was eighty years old, there was a huge generational gap. She smoked crack and drank probably every day—the kids had to watch that—but she was there in every meeting. Intoxicated, but she loved her kids.

  He started attending school twice a week. The probation officer was like, “We need to lock him up. We need to. He’s only going two days a week. Blah, blah, blah.”

  I stood up in court and I had his previous attendance records. A’s on the whole thing for months and months of absences, maybe a spotty P here and there for present. And I was like, “Your Honor, I understand the court’s concern, but you’ve seen how far he’s come . . .” She was soft on him, she threw some grace his way. And that kid ended up doing really well.

  I have never worked with a kid that I didn’t think could make it. Not all of them, obviously, do. The problems are complex. Each case is unique. But bureaucracies don’t know how to treat people as individuals. Their approach is very one-size-fits-all. And as a result, the system is a huge net. Once you’re caught it’s hard to crawl out.

  We had this one girl. She was about four feet tall. She was a lesbian girl, very strong, a stud. Everyone was scared of her. She had a lot of sexual trauma in her past. She caught a case for robbery, ended up in the system, and just kept failing probation. Kept getting violated, kept doing time, eventually ended up in a group home. Failed that too.

  We got working with her. By then, she was seventeen, eighteen. She might’ve had twentysomething school credits, not a lot at all. Which was one of the reasons why she always failed probation. You’ve got to attend school regularly.

  Sitting in a school meeting, she totally has this breakdown. She’s crying tears and she comes around to it: turns out she has a learning disability. No one had ever evaluated her. Because we miss her learning disability, she never comes to school, lands on the street, becomes a troublemaker, smokes, and goes to jail . . . And that’s how it goes.

  And it was relatively a minor fix. In a matter of a week, we plugged her into the right classes, and she was thriving. Her judge actually came to her graduation. We were all there. All cheering her on. She’s one of those kids—no one would have batted an eye if she had been forgotten—but suddenly someone’s paying closer attention.

  Sometimes I feel like we’re not even a drop in the ocean. This thing is so big. We’re never going to win. And at the funerals, the hopelessness really hits home. Parents aren’t supposed to bury their kids like that.

 
But I tell myself, I’m not going to quit. We can be more flexible. We can find gaps in the system. Looking at each kid, finding those areas where they have need and pouring ourselves into helping them, it’s funny how simple the change can be.

  Working in nonprofits, the pay is not that good. My buddies, a lot of them are either in tech or are bankers, attorneys, and whatnot. Several times, I’ve been so embarrassed that I’ve lied about how much I make . . . just in the spur of the moment. I don’t make much money. And the benefits—I work for a small organization, so any family member, it’s really expensive to add them. And my wife stopped working after we had our daughter.

  She came real early—twenty-eight weeks into the pregnancy. Two pounds five ounces. She didn’t cry.

  This is her. [He shows a picture.] She was about the size of my hand. A little peanut. [He shows another.] This is her a couple of months along. They saved her. She spent her first five months in the NICU. That was two years ago. She ended up pulling through. But she has some difficulties.

  After that, we realized that doing the work of my heart, it’s not going to pay the bills. I have this baby in the NICU—my wife’s benefits are about to run out. And I’ve got to get another job. Just for the benefits. In her first year, all her bills were like a million dollars. She’s since had some surgeries, so she’s like the $3 million baby.

  So a job opened up to work for the city in Juvenile Hall. To be a jail guard there. They call it the baby penitentiary. I put in for it because . . . well, really competitive city jobs pay well, and have great benefits.

  Now I’m a walking contradiction. My day job is here—working and advocating for kids. And then, at night, I’m a guard. For the last seven, eight years, I have been advocating for kids, telling judges that we don’t fix society by incarcerating them: “It’s treatment, it’s services, it’s interventions, it’s . . .” And at night, I work in an institution that is part of the problem I try to fix during the day.

  My first or second day on the job, and I’m doing these fifteen-minute room checks. Late at night. Each kid has their own room, and the rooms have these little windows. They become these depressing cabinets. I’m looking into these windows at these kids, kids that I’m fighting for in my day job. And I’m about to cry.

  I’m trying to think economically, It’s just another job. But if they see me crying, I’m never going to . . . It’s a kind of betrayal.

  It was hard telling people that I took this job. One of my closest friends, she’s a public defender, one of the best in the city. And I waited the longest time to tell her. Because I was so scared. She’s my hero. She had known about my daughter, she had been through that with me and she knew the financial struggles . . . And we were sitting in her office and she was just like, “I understand.”

  I soften that blow, trying to think, I am going to be the good one. I’m learning a lot. Wherever the path is taking me, I’m going to look back and value this time. This is just making me a better person. I’m going to be the best guard. I’m going to be a change agent. I’m just undercover here. I guess the talk is I’m the softest guy in there. I sneak chips in and different things like that. It’s a way of connecting.

  But I found out very quickly that the culture is overwhelming. My colleagues are very tough on the kids. Very. They have that whole mentality: “We slam kids.” I’ve seen stuff in my short time . . . I’ve seen stuff in there that . . . it’s some serious shit. And it’s regular. It’s the norm and my . . . the lines are so blurry for me . . . This shit we’re doing, it’s not right.

  And I want to believe that it won’t change me. But if I’m there long enough, it will. You’re seeing kids in detention. What that does to someone’s psyche. Just even the little things of slamming a door on a kid, hearing them throw up, putting kids in shackles and cuffs, restraining a kid.

  I put a shirt on with a shield, a star, and I feel the dehumanizing effects of the uniform. Outside, I can wear whatever I want. There, I got to wear these big, baggy, black cargo pants, and I’ve got to wear these shoes. The architecture and the aesthetics of the pen, it’s just very cold.

  But quitting means moving. That’s the thing: I’m deeply connected to the families I serve during the day. This is my heart. This is the community I surround myself with, I want to be buried here. I don’t know anywhere else really. Where would I go?

  I want to tell myself I have an out. This is just a means to an end. I’m not going to be this guy for twenty, thirty years. I’m here for a couple of years only. Then, when my daughter’s a little better, my wife starts working again, I won’t have to work this second job. I tell myself that—that’s me just trying to get by—I won’t be there that long.

  But I’ve got to be there Monday.

  CHRISTIAN CALINSKY

  He stands outside his shop on Haight Street like a friendly neighborhood guardian. The area was once famous for being the heart of the counterculture. And it has always attracted the young and the lost looking for some of that old hippie magic. He was no different and had spent years living on the street, in and out of recovery and in and out of prison. Today, he’s like a reverse Fagin, coaching his young “outside neighbors,” helping them clean up the neighborhood, themselves, and get off the street.

  I met this girl named Misha and she said, “Let’s go to San Francisco.” And I was like, “All right.”

  I called my grandmother. She would help me, still, if I was in desperate need. I’m like, “It is raining nonstop and I can’t sleep outside. I need to get somewhere else.” So I ended up here in ’96, got off the Greyhound, and went straight to Mission and Sixteenth.

  This was before Care Not Cash,† so you could come to San Francisco and get a wad full of money and a free hotel, the junkie’s dream. Hundred forty-seven dollars cash, plus a hotel room for three weeks—emergency housing.

  Misha went down to do that because she had ID. And when she got back she’s like, “I’m gay. I want nothing to do with you. I hate men. Get the fuck out.”

  “What? How did this even happen? You liked me a few hours ago . . . in a way that made me think that you were not . . . that you’re at least queer!” So my first experience in San Francisco was Mission and Sixteenth, homeless and getting duped by a woman.

  A girl named Kristine said, “You don’t want to hang out here at night.” So I came up to the Haight.

  Golden Gate Park nearby has been a draw for a hundred years. Even during the Gold Rush, this park was like a campsite, basically. Then the hobos started coming. Then the hippies came. And now the street kids are living there.

  It’s a different demographic, sort of the elite of the homeless. You’re not so bad. You’re not so strung out that you’re having to hook or break into cars. You’re not having to do the things that most of the people in the Tenderloin are doing.

  And Haight Street kids know it. “We’re Haight Street kids so we’re better off. We’re still viable humans.” Or, “I’m not in the Mission because when I’m in the Mission and dabble with those drugs . . .” Or, “At least I’m not in the TL.” It’s this whole privileged class inside the homeless population.

  But the longer you stay out there, the more likely you’re going to end up in the TL. That’s all I got to say about that. You become clean, business-professional, dead, or a junkie in the TL. That’s the choice you face.

  Back then, your groups would “take out the trash.” They would kick out anyone not behaving a certain way. “You can’t be on Haight anymore.” And if you didn’t leave, they’d pond you, put you in Hep C Pond, used to be full of needles. They’d just throw you in the lake and you’re guaranteed to get stabbed.

  I was on and off the streets for years. When you’re living outside, you’re basically feral. And I had a hard time getting un-feral. You have a certain way of living, and then you get indoors and you’re like, I don’t know how. . . . They put you in your spot, and you’ve got to keep all your stuff in a neat little corner.

  I was very go
od at finding people to fix me, I did that my whole life. One of the girls that I was having sex with got pregnant. I was like, “Okay, well, I love you . . . I love you, right?” Because I know what love is. We get married. She’s the One, the Fix-All. I have three kids with her.

  I got clean in 2000 for three and a half years—and then relapsed and relapsed and relapsed. I got clean, and got arrested for direct sales of heroin and coke. In San Francisco, that’s not a big deal. They always let me out that day.

  But then I’d get out and I’d go to the TL, and I’d shoot heroin and smoke crack, and I’d be back, same place I was eight months prior, in a couple of days.

  One day, my wife had enough. She went to one of my best friends and was like, “I’m done. I’m done with him. I want him to say goodbye to his kids. I don’t want them asking questions anymore. I want them to see him in his worst environment.”

  I was in the TL at the time. They paid a drug dealer to go find me. The drug dealer dragged me downstairs—he actually had me in a headlock. And there’s my wife, my best friend, and my two kids at the time. And I weigh one hundred twenty pounds, I’m strung out, I stink, I have a string tying on size thirty-two jeans. Total wreck, one hundred forty pounds lighter than I am now.

  She’s like, “I’ve got $200. We’re going to get a hotel room. I’m going to give you a weekend with your kids so you could say goodbye.” With that money, I went and bought a bunch of heroin, went to the hotel, spent most of my time in the bathroom fixing.

  My kids, they had no idea . . . I mean . . . no idea what was going on with me. They just knew that I looked like a skeleton. They kept saying, “We love you,” one of them kept asking, “Are you sick? Why are you sick?” I was like, Okay, I’m going to go get high.