This sort of comeback story, once a rarity in California, appears on track to become more common, as the state’s political leaders have turned slowly away from a criminal justice system anchored in punishment to one that claims the goal of rehabilitation. His journey has been fraught with setbacks, occasional bouts of “impostor syndrome,” friction with a few people who treated him as unworthy and a lingering fear that he might be dragged down by his dangerous past. By the weekend, he would board a plane for a summer of study in Spain, his second trip to Europe.įernandez has authored a singular resurrection tale that he shared over more than three years of texts, emails and visits with a Times reporter. Closing in on his 30th birthday, he had come to celebrate his graduation from UC Berkeley.
Seven years after that watershed, the Eastside homie named for Wild West outlaw Jesse James would again stride onto the Homeboy campus in Chinatown, on a sunny Thursday in June, this time as an inspiration. After a half-dozen false starts, he returned to Homeboy and asked Boyle for help.
Shorty’s death helped move something inside Fernandez. But this child of immigrants hesitated to throw over the deep loyalties that defined him - to his “homies,” to the streets, to the belief that death or imprisonment for his neighborhood represented a kind of honor. He’d hung around Homeboy enough to strike up an acquaintance with Father Greg Boyle, the nonprofit’s founder. Fernandez, then 22, held 20-year-old “Shorty” as he bled on the asphalt, huddled between two cars.įernandez had seen others in his community change paths, often starting out with classes and jobs at Homeboy Industries, the renowned gang rehabilitation program. The second had lived with him like a brother for at least a year, before being shot down not far from their front door in Boyle Heights. Yet the persistent danger didn’t wash away a street kid’s dream - that he would get rich as a drug kingpin, then turn legit.Įscapist fantasies became harder to embrace by late 2015, when rivals gunned down two of Fernandez’s closest friends in a few months’ time. He got busted for methamphetamine possession and spent time in Los Angeles County jail for carrying a loaded gun.
By his 20s, he had been shot at more times than he could count. Jessi Fernandez joined a street gang at 13.
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