My name is Juan Toscano.
I was born in Guerrero Mexico. I am the 2nd of 4 boys and one girl. For all my childhood I lived in Mexico, I came to the United States in the beginning of 1994. When we moved here, I was 13 years old, we were living in South Central LA. At 15, I became a gang member. I was having problems fitting into this new culture, this new country; everything was new and I couldn’t even speak the language. This was such a big contrast for me because I came from a small town (pueblo) to a big city. On June 11, 1998, one day before my 18th birthday I committed a crime. This is the most horrible act one human being could do to another. I took a man’s life. I didn’t have the right to take it but I shot and killed Juan Ordones and his friend Carlos Paredes.
This sad event changed my life in many ways. I was very young when I was sentenced to LWOP. Thinking that I was just going to die in prison, I didn’t really care about anything. I kept living with the same mentality that brought me here. I didn’t care for other people’s lives much less my own. Well, during this time, even though I could not speak the language properly I started to read books. I started with fantasy, then went to history, then spiritual books. There was a serious change going on within me that I attribute to educating myself and being open to learn.
Around 2006 Mrs. Elizabeth Calvin contacted me about a bill she was trying to pass for us juveniles with LWOP. I wanted to change even more as she started talking about these new laws that gave us hope. There were other events that started to come into my life that fostered that hope.
My family came into my life and started to positively influence me, I then made one of the hardest but best decisions of my life; in October of 2012 I decided to drop out of gangs and any criminal activity. From that point on I truly made my mind up to put everything I had into this new change in my life, hope was alive. I am a spiritual person, so I started associating with Christian Brothers and Jehovah Witnesses brothers. I started learning more about insight, remorse, amends, and taking responsibility. My insight has taught me who I was before my crime. Poor decision making, lack of self-esteem, and bad associations led to me taking the most precious thing in this world, a life. I know through my insight that in doing this I also made secondary victims of all the family members and associates as well.
Today I am a facilitator for AVP Alternatives to Violence Program. I have attended NA for 5 years and at this moment I am working on obtaining my GED. I know that I am not the same person that I was, I keep myself busy working on my character every day. I am engaging in PREP Classes such as: Anger Management, Victim Awareness, Gang Awareness, and the LWOP Alliance Group. At this point in my life I was a member of MSX3, a gang. I understand the bad reputation as well as all the hurt that I have generated. I now use that former starting point to reach at risk youth, to save them from making the same mistakes I did. I do this by showing the contrast, the life I live now is living amends that shines brighter than any words. There is a better way and a solution for this problem of troubled youth.
Sincerely,
Juan Toscano