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James O'Brien

Survivor voices

Client Stories, 2012 to 2023 - Sometimes at Youth ALIVE!, I would write client stories in a way that sought to approximate the client's voice. Always, of course, with their permission and approval of the final version.


Annette’s Story: Annette’s youngest son was killed in Oakland when he was 18

Back in the years before everything happened, I was what’s known as a super-volunteer. I loved getting involved in my West Oakland community. I even won an award for all the hours I spent as a volunteer. It led to a job at Go Public Schools, encouraging parents to get involved in the Oakland schools. I was raising my four kids, three boys and a girl, good kids, but I did worry about one of my older sons, Philip, about the time he was spending on the streets. My youngest son, Deante, who everybody called Peak-a-boo, had graduated from McClymonds High with a 4.0 and had gotten a good solid job right out of school.

 

On November 28, 2016, I had to leave work in the morning to meet a delivery person at my home. Around 10:I5, I was about to return to work, when a car came skidding up and ran up onto the corner. Out fell Peekaboo’s friend Otis. He yelled to me, “Peak-a-boo’s been shot!” “Is he dead?” I asked.

Yes, he said, Peak-a-boo is dead. Later I learned that Peekaboo’s friend Trayvon was dead too.


I rushed to the scene on 39th Street. Police tape was everywhere but the police themselves seemed distracted or uninterested. I slipped under the tape, approached the body and pulled back the gray blanket. There he was, my youngest son Peak-a-boo, 19 years old, with a massive fatal wound in his chest. Peak-a-boo, who studied hard, worked hard, loved sports, played them all well, including at McClymonds. He had a room full of trophies and medals. I took him into my arms and cried. Everything was changed.

 

Even before I got back to the house, Tammy Cloud was there. I knew Tammy from West Oakland. My brothers had gone to school with her. She told me she was with Youth ALIVE! and was here to help me. She didn’t ask me a bunch of questions but was just a comforting presence, like family. Before she left, she told me she had made an appointment for me at the Victim of Crime office for the next morning, to apply for victim compensation. It would help me pay for Peekaboo’s funeral.

 

That night I got a phone call from Youth ALIVE!’s Marilyn Washington Harris. I knew who Marilyn was because she was everywhere in West Oakland. Marilyn had started Youth ALIVE!’s program to help families of homicide victims after her son Khadafy had been killed on the campus of McClymonds only a few months after he had graduated, back in 2000. That’s the thing about Youth ALIVE!, the people they send to help you, they feel familiar. You know they understand how things are in Oakland. YA! people come to your aid organically. They don’t try to change you or push you.

 

Marilyn and Tammy helped me through the worst time of my life, but that was only the beginning of my relationship with Youth ALIVE!. I go to Youth ALIVE!’s Circle of Care monthly support group for those grieving the violent loss of a loved one. I feel comfortable in that space. Nothing is forced. You can express yourself, be yourself, with no judgment, or you can step back and not say anything and just listen. It has something to do with them being from the community, even from the streets.


In 2020, I became involved in a video project with KQED and a group called Be-Imaginative, in which Oakland mothers wrote and recited letters to their lost children. It was an incredible experience and people really responded to our stories. The final video even won an Emmy! It felt good for more people to hear my story, to learn what families go through. It felt healing. The video and Emmy opened doors for me.

 

And as I’ve slowly moved forward, my volunteer and activist urges have returned. Many mothers are never even told that their murdered child had possessions, things in their pockets, phones with pictures on them, whatever, but things a mother would want. YA!’s Marilyn Harris helped me fight to get Peak-a-boo’s possessions from the police. We never did get his car back, which had been impounded. And so, with Youth ALIVE!’s Advocacy Director, Gabriel Garcia, I helped change the City’s policy to charge survivors to retrieve their loved-one’s impounded car. And remembering that I had never once been contacted by Oakland police after Peekaboo’s death, I helped fight for the city to change the way it treated victims, to stop treating them like they were suspects. With Youth ALIVE!’s Healing Director Nicky MacCallum and other mothers of lost children, we developed a training for Oakland police officers, to show them how they could – and why they should -- treat victims and survivors with dignity.

 

Today, I have Peak-a-boo’s things now. But I don’t have him. To lose a child you held in your body for nine months is to lose part of yourself forever. If it wasn’t for my work trying to change things, if it wasn’t for the true caring and understanding of people at Youth ALIVE!, of Tammy, Nicky, Marilyn and Gabe, I’m sure I’d break down. It a constant battle, but there is life after a tragedy like mine. I’m grateful to Youth ALIVE! for helping be find that life. 

 

Mike’s Story: Mike went to jail after getting recruited into the gang life; he went on to be a founding member of Youth Alive’s first program and is currently a member of the agency’s board of directors

 

My name is Michael Munson, a Youth Alive Board member but a long long time member of the Youth ALIVE! family.

 

I was 16, living in East Oakland with my mom, a nurse and single parent. I was a regular Oakland kid, street smart, yet hood dumb. I was savvy in the streets,  but I was too trusting. The guys I was hanging with sold drugs, crack to be specific. I saw some inefficiencies in their operations. So I gave the OG in charge some ideas to fix things. They were very good ideas. The next day I got a collect call from Santa Rita Jail. It was the OG’s big brother. He was I jail for kidnapping and torturing a crackhead police informer.

 

He’d heard of my ideas and thought I was “sharp.” He needed me to do him a favor and if I did it, it would mean a bump in seniority. The favor? Visit the crackhead informer, who was also at Santa Rita, and read off for him a list of his family members and their addresses. Just remind him: we knew where they lived.

 

I had never even been to Santa Rita, the drive is only about twenty minutes, but it felt like we were going to Los Angeles. I was soo nervous. The walk from the parking lot to the entrance, seemed to never end. My mind was racing, trying to remember the things I was told to say. I get there register for a visit, giving the Sherriff my ID and they escort me to a seat and I wait. The CI was currently in the infirmary recovering while in jail from the beating.

 

The guy sits down. He looks perplexed. He’s like, “Who is you?”


I say, “that parts not important, listen closely,” and I recited his family’s address. I reminded him of why he was in the infirmary. If he didn’t want the same for the people that lived at this address, he should quickly forget what he had told the police.

 

Witness intimidation, terrorist threats, hood dumb.

 

It didn’t dawn on me, what I had done. Needless to say , he reported to the CO and when the big homie’s court date arrived, they called my name in court and were prepared to arrest me right there on the spot. Luckily, I was outside parking the car at the time.)

 

I would later be asked to fire bomb the house.

 

I did.

 

By this time I was on OPD’s radar, I was getting rolled up on by detectives and brought in for questioning several times. I just would sit there with my head down, like thumbs up 7up. I guessed they didn’t really have anything or I would be in jail. On the streets, with the drug wars going on between neighborhoods, I had now been shot at several times, luckily by people who were terrible aims.

 

One day around the same time, my TV/ Broadcast teacher at Castlemont, a man named Bruce Kennedy, called and asked me to come to meeting. He was my favorite teacher and a mentor/father figure, so I agreed, but didn’t actually go. An hour after the event was supposed to have started, he shows up at my house and makes me go. It was a meeting about a training program called (SAFE) Students Against Firearms in Education.

 

SAFE was going to pay me to learn about guns and gun safety. Since it seemed like easy money with only a small time commitment, I reluctantly agreed. Mr Kennedy literally would come and pick me up off the block and drive me to these trainings.

 

This was the origin of what would we know today as Teens on Target. I was a founding member. This very first group of students would develop many of the training modules that would become the base of knowledge for TNT over the next 20 years.

 

What did TNT do for me?

 

TNT gave a me a voice. I could share my experiences with middle school kids, and they listened. Because I had the street cred. That was powerful! Standing in front of more than 200 parole officers at a conference in LA, my first large public speaking event, I told them one of the stories about how I had survived a shooting attempt by hiding in the aqueduct between lake merrit and the bay. I explained that the ease that I could get a gun and how easy it was to get sucked into the wrong friends and wrong influences. TNT had given me a bigger voice than the hood did. And TNT wasn’t constantly shooting at me. It wouldn’t leave me riding in a squad car with some detective wearing too much cheap aftershave and the windows rolled up in the summer.

 

I spent the next three years working with TNT, developing curriculum, doing research, turning the information into digestible nuggets for the kids we would speak to. We put together role plays to demonstrate that carrying a gun only meant you were more likely to either be shot with said gun, or be involved in a shooting because of it, that carrying a gun didn’t make you safer, just more vulnerable.


By the time I aged out of TNT the streets were long in my rearview. I had a different perspective. I had a whole different and outlook on life. Where I was headed was to be a statistic, dead or in jail before 25.


TNT changed that.

 

Twenty years later, after having stayed in contact with the various staff from TNT and participating whenever asked. Here I am.

 

Ajahnay’s Story: Ajahnay had a volatile upbringing in deeply troubled East Oakland

 

My mother was a single parent. No real job. She would bring men in and out of the house just to pay rent. At one point I was molested by one of the men. I was six. She tried to kill him but he over powered her and beat her. We eventually moved out of Oakland because my mother was afraid we would be taken away. We moved to San Diego and lived in a homeless shelter, where she met her husband. She eventually had 2 more kids. The first time I seen him beat my mother, I was in 3rd grade. Once when he beat her I called the police. They arrested him and she pressed charges but he got out. She eventually filed for divorce and one day they had a court meeting. After the meeting, he followed her, threatening her, so she had to hide in a Starbucks. She decided it was best for us to move, so we moved back to Oakland. I thought it was the start of a new beginning, until my mom started to use drugs and alcohol. When she was drunk or high she would abuse me and my siblings. One day she threatened to kill me with scissors because I would always try to protect my siblings from her beating them. Sometimes she would leave the house for a couple of days and I had to take care of my siblings. I made sure they got to school, ate, bathed, did their hair. They started to call me "little mommy."  They eventually took us away from my mother and separated us. We remained in foster care for 3 years. I use to tell myself that it was my fault me that my siblings are in foster care. I even had family members tell me it was my fault. Right now I live with my mother in a one bedroom apartment. I still love her but our relationship is not where I want it to be. Every shoe and piece of clothing I have is from my money. I pay for everything even my phone bill.

 

I met Youth Alive last year. A friend told me that I should come to a session. My friend told me that it was a violence prevention group and that they talked about abuse and about violence in Oakland. That made me feel that there are people out there that care about kids in Oakland. They care about what we go through. Youth Alive helped me realized that I am not the only one who has been through struggles. They showed me that it was okay to have gone through these struggles. They helped me realize that it wasn’t my fault that my siblings and I were in a foster home. They made me realize that I did what I did to protect my siblings and to get my mom help.

 

At YA's Teens on Target, when we go to middle schools to present, and I hear some of the kid’s stories, it encourages me to tell them mine, to let them know that they aren’t alone and that they can overcome their struggles. Youth Alive made me realize how strong I am. I am a 4.0 student at Castlemont High School, and I am able to tell my story. I am able to understand not to be ashamed of what I went through. Youth Alive also pays me. That money they pay me goes towards clothes, shoes, food in my stomach, hair supplies, accessories, and a phone to use. I have a counselor at Youth ALIVE! who helped me apply to college and for a scholarship, which I got. So I’ll be telling my story and using my phone at college next year. 

 

Miracle’s Story: Miracle was a student at Oakland’s most troubled high school, located in Deep East Oakland

 

My name is Miracle because my mom had four boys before me and thought she’d never have a girl. I’m a senior at Castlemont High School on MacArthur Boulevard in East Oakland. I have been a Teens on Target youth leader at Youth ALIVE! sine I was a sophomore. Back then, a counselor told me she thought the program would be good for me. Maybe because I like to talk.

 

I went to check it out because it was a violence prevention program. I love TNT because we talk about what’s real.

 

I grew up in East Oakland, by 96th and Plymouth. I always saw people on the corners or on the block hanging out, but I didn’t know they were selling drugs. They were just part of the neighborhood. One day when I was 10 my dad didn’t show up to pick me up on a Wednesday. He was always tough on my brothers, but nice to me. No one had seen him for a week. Then my mother came home one day crying. She told me she had been to the morgue to identify a body and it was my dad. That was a big eye opener for me.

 

There are a lot of hurt people in Oakland, not bad, but hurt people, people who have never been taught the straight and narrow or who do things without thinking. People do things that are really hurting themselves. They don’t listen, or fall in step with the wrong people. There’s always a root cause of violence and death. At Castlemont, I know the gangs and turfs, and the people on this side and the people on that side. I even have some family members involved. I’ve had shootings in front of my house. Because of what I learn in TNT, I can talk to these kids about what’s real. I want to help people.

 

TNT is a place I can be myself, where we are always connecting on real life issues. First Caheri, who told her own story about getting shot and how it changed her life because of the Youth ALIVE! people around her. And now we have Fransua and Hisham. They are always open. They relate to you. They are funny, but we always end up having serious conversations. They give me knowledge. All along, people who cared have inspired me.

 

But my favorite TNT thing is what we do in the second half of the year, when we go into the middle school classrooms and speak to the younger students about violence prevention. We do skits and read poems. After they do our workshops they all want to come to Castlemont and join TNT. Some of them do and they remember me and come up to me in the hallway and say they’d seen me at their middle school. Now I’m the older one. Because of TNT, I’m a role model. 

 

Brandon’s Story: A teenager in Deep East Oakland Brandon robbed people, sold weed, got arrested.

two young men posing before a car in black and white
Brandon and YA's Jesus

 

I’m Brandon. I was born in East L.A. My family moved to Oakland when I was 13 because my mom was looking for a better paying job.

 

I’m 19 now. We live in the Deep, also known as Deep East Oakland. My dad left when I was 7. When I needed him he wasn’t there. When my dad left out of my life, my uncle was helping raise me, then he was gone, away to jail for life. I think boys depend on their dad. Without that, they don’t have that guidance.

 

I got in trouble in L.A. and I got in trouble in Oakland. I got in fights. I sold weed. I robbed people. I hung around with older guys. Guys I met in the hood. I dropped out. I was never school smart. My school was the streets.

 

Then I got arrested and went to juvy.

 

 

They help you get back to school, get off probation and stay off probation. I see my case manager Jesus Martinez a lot. He commits to it. He says, Bro, I’ll see you on Wednesday, he’s there on Wednesday. (Even if I’m not.) Shows he cares. I tell everybody, Jesus is family. Because he helps me out. It’s all positivity. Me and Jesus, we’ve been through the same things. With him, I learn how to forgive. He tells me, sometimes we forgive, even though it’s hard.

 

Now I’m surrounded by positivity. I want to get my diploma and go to college. It’s always in your head, college, college, college. It’s stressful! But it’s way better than the negativity I was used to.

 

Not so long ago, I told Jesus how I got in an argument with my mom. I was telling him what I did. And he was like, you messed up, you got to make it right. Jesus, he doesn’t show fake love. I have friends who show fake love. But he doesn’t. I never had that love in my life until now. I trust him.

 

With Jesus’s help, I attended the first meeting of Oakland’s new Youth Leadership Council and I’m applying to be a permanent member. I have a lot to say and I’m not afraid to say it.

 

Jesus also works with some of my friends, and we all believe in him. He helps us believe in ourselves. 

 

Katrina’s Story: The father of Katrina’s young son was killed in Oakland; she herself had had a troubled youth there


I had a baby when I was 19. A son. When he was 4, his father got killed on the street in Oakland. Somebody walked up and stabbed him. Then somebody else came up and shot him in the head. I was living in Vegas at the time and had to come home and tell my 4-year-old son his dad was gone forever. He cried but I don’t think he understood. He went to his daddy’s funeral, touched the body, but he thought his daddy was sleeping. He didn’t really understand for another couple of years. Then the emotions came. But…listen...violence was never my only problem. I was a black girl growing up in Oakland. I lived with my dad, but then he move to Texas for work. I didn’t want to live in Texas. Oakland was my home. I was 14. I ran away, ran back to Oakland, moved in with my mom. Her husband molested me. Get in line, Violence, other troubles got here first. I told CPS about him and they took his ass away to jail. Good! But my mom was angry at me and blamed me.


So, I’m 14, a girl, African American, in Oakland, separated from my father, a victim of sexual assault by my step-father, living with a mother who hates me. One Friday night I took the bus to a big football game between Tech and Castlemont. They were rivals and things were tense. The stadium was in lock down but people were jumping fences to get in and out and a riot jumped off. A guy messed with me and then I fought with one girl and then I got on the bus. She ended up on the same bus. And then they came for me. 9 girls, maybe 11 girls. I don’t know. I got a concussion. Knots on my head and bruises. They kicked me. I woke up at Children’s Hospital. The police had a year book for me to pick out who had jumped me but I couldn’t remember faces.


There was a woman in my hospital room named Kyndra. She was from Youth Alive. My mother wasn’t going to help me but Kyndra was beautiful to me. She told me she could help me do things, she could help me. She helped me get my California ID, she came and took me out of the house to get food, to get a break from my mother. When I turned 15, she helped me get emancipated, independent and free. She was the first woman I ever met who was a role model. She helped me get back going to school, get a job, 2 jobs, actually. I got my diploma at 18. Even after my wounds had healed from the beating, she was there for me. This was 14, 15, 16 years ago. This summer I graduated from San Joaquin Delta College with my business degree. Next year I’m starting at Sac State. I’m studying to get my real estate license. I have the entrepreneurial spirit. My son is almost 11 now and a sweet and sensitive kid. All that happened 14, 15, 16 years ago, and to this day, every time I do something good, every time I accomplish something, I thank Miss Kyndra and Youth Alive. She did things for me that no one else had ever done.

 

  

Breana’s Story: On her first day at a new school, in East Oakland, Breana got shot at her bus stop


I didn’t grow up in Oakland but I was born there. We had to leave when I was very young. My mom was getting evicted. So we went to live in San Leandro with my grandmother and my uncle. She was a disciplinarian and he was a school teacher. She kept us out of trouble and he helped us with our homework. But in high school we went back to live with my mother, in Oakland. I started at Castlemont in my junior year. I didn’t know anybody at Castlemont and nobody knew me.

 

On one of the very first days of school, all the clubs and programs had tables set up in the courtyard, but one of them had pizza, so I signed up. It was Youth Alive’s Teens on Target. But this isn’t a TNT story.

 

That day I left school and walked to the bus stop at 90th and MacArthur. I remember the bus stop was pretty empty that day. Not even any other students around. I was listening to music, looking at my phone, not really thinking about anything. But when I Iooked up I saw a man, with a gun, pointing it in my direction. There was a fence behind me. And nothing but open street in either direction. Nowhere to run. Then he fired. The bullet hit the sidewalk. But then it ricocheted and went into my foot. Into the bone. A lady across the street saw it and yelled. She tore off her own shirt and pressed it to my foot to stop the bleeding. Turns out she was a nurse. An ambulance came and took me to Highland Hospital. Somebody called my mom and she met me there and when I saw her I started crying. Crying like a baby.

 

There was another lady in my room who I didn’t know. It was Tammy from Youth Alive’s Caught in the Crossfire program. She said she was there to help me. And she did. She became friends with my mother. Miss Tammy came with me to medical appointments at Highland. Sometimes they would make us wait a long time but if Tammy was there she would talk to people and they would help us faster. They told me they needed to leave the bullet inside of me, and that if it had been an inch or two on either side, they would have taken my foot.

 

I went back to school a few months later and everybody knew me then. One day my foot was hurting more than usual. I took off my sock and could feel something metal. It was the bullet pushing its way out. They took it out the next day. After I graduated Tammy brought me to Youth Alive and took me to her office and she sat at the computer and helped me pick classes at Merritt College. She was like my academic counselor now.

 

I never wanted to admit the shooting gave me PTSD, but I know it did. Sudden noises still scare me. Fireworks at the Coliseum, near where I live. I still get nervous on the street. I know the school I missed and problems concentrating have held me back in college. But I don’t give up. I’m still taking classes, at Chabot now, and next year I should be able to transfer to Sac State.

 

I never wanted to make a big deal about getting shot. I felt getting shot in the foot wasn’t that big a deal. Because I heard of people getting shot in worse places. People got shot in the chest, people died, lost limbs, it’s not that big a deal. But I know it was a big deal.

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