Jimmy Figueroa (upper right) and the Resilience mentors who were hired for their ex-con status.

Is the pandemic bringing more pain to poorer, ethnic neighborhoods? Yes and no.

For Sandra Mora, the Covid shutdown is a unique opportunity to bring hot meals seven days a week, to the families of teens she is mentoring out of a gang lifestyle that she was once a part of.

“It’s usually salad, BBQ chicken or pulled pork, and potato salad,” says Mora, 45. “It’s a balanced meal for our kids and their families,” The meals are prepared by the Oceanside Collaborative Kitchen, a public/private venture that cooks donated meals for the area needy. Sandra and her co-worker Joseph Lopez, 36, have been delivering the meals to 12 to 15 households seven days a week since the pandemic started. Mora and Lopez were once part of rival Oceanside gangs. Each family they serve has five to seven members. “Some live in a two-bedroom apartment,” says Lopez. “Unfortunately, some of these parents aren’t eligible for food stamps because they’re undocumented,” says Mora.

Mora, Lopez, and four other “two-strike” ex-felons make up the six-person team of community mentors who each oversee three or four teens (mentees) under the Vista-based Resilience program. The idea behind Resilience is that the mentors’ past gang activity makes them uniquely qualified to connect with the gang documented probation youth. Resilience is funded and overseen by the San Diego County probation department which was looking to replicate New York City’s Credible Messengers restorative practices program.

The Coronavirus shutdown means that these Resilience teenage mentees do not get their lunches which are usually provided at their continuation school. This was a cue for Mora and Lopez to use the Resilience vans to help their struggling kids and their families to bring the chow to their kids and their families.

“To me the beauty of it is that with all this chaos, the meal delivery has brought us even closer to our kids,” says Mora. “With all the stuff happening, it shows we’re still here for you.”

Another mentor is Timothy Jackson who was one of the founding counselors of Resilience. Because his face-to-face meetings can’t happen now, he now counsels his kids via the internet. And he says the new isolation is causing a stir-crazy unease with some of his kids.

“The majority of kids are fighting depression,” says Jackson about the new struggle he senses from his mentees. “Before, it was like they had the challenge of going to school, and maybe dealing with a couple [gang] rivals on their way to school. But they still had a cause. Now they have to stay home. They can’t meet with us in person. It used to be we could pop up at their house. Now they have to stay in their house 24/7. One of them told me, ‘Man, this is like being locked up. All I do is lie in bed. This is like being in jail.’ The way they describe it, it’s like being paralyzed. One of them told me he felt like his new purposes have evaporated. They told me it was all they could do to not get in trouble.”

The teens involved in Resilience are on probation following charges including robbery, assault, burglary and substance abuse.

Jackson, 38, who spent a total of 14 years incarcerated, says the idea that the system would extend a hand to a bad-direction kid was unthought of in his youth.

“I can think of only one officer who offered to take me home when I was 15 and getting into trouble. And he went to school with my mom. We have all survived the wrath of the probation system and now we are trying to help redirect these kids away from it.” Jackson says initial resistance has worn down and the Resilience mentors now get access to juvenile hall and to court and probation hearings. He says now when kids on probation get pulled over “…instead of locking him up, they sometimes let him call us, their mentor.”

Resilience is a six-month program requiring each youth member to participate in at least 30 group meetings and a weekly one-on-one mentor meeting. The kids go on field trips to Lake Cuyamaca or fishing in Orange County.

Lopez says the natural disdain local law enforcement used to have against convicted felons helping with the restorative process is starting to melt. “My ex-PO [probation officer] came to my daughter’s baby shower. This time, instead of kicking the door down, he came with a present.” The six mentors work 30 to 40 hours a week. “I took a $15-hour pay cut to come work here,” says Lopez who used to work in construction for $30 an hour. “I’ve had money selling drugs. Money doesn’t mean nothing. To be able to serve my community and these kids is my pay back.”

Resilience co-founder Jimmy Figueroa grew up surrounded by Oceanside’s gang environment but eventually got a BA in political science from UC Berkeley and a law degree. His street smarts helped him find his staff. “I knew all the mentors before I started this.” He says it was the county probation department who wanted to launch Resilience in Oceanside because of its gang activity and for the lack of services to serve that need. He says the Vista Community Clinic agreed to take Resilience under its wing in August, 2018.

“The Vista Community Clinic really went out on a limb to do this,” says Figueroa. “I kind of already had a team in place. These guys had already been doing this work through faith-based programs or other non-profit groups. But first, they had to become employees of VCC.” He says the human resources department had a no-tattoo policy. “One of our mentors had a tattoo on his [bald] head. It’s kind of hard to conceal those. All of our mentors have visible tattoos.” Figueroa says the VCC policy was changed. “Human resources now understands.”

But there was resistance. “I heard people from other non-profits say this model would never work,” says Figueroa. “That having a former gang member work with current gang members was too much of a risk…that kids would think this is a get out of jail free card. We even heard law enforcement people were saying ‘How can we trust them?’ But people got to know us.”

Figueroa says 61 kids have gone through or are currently involved with Resilience. “We got 23 off probation and only one went back on after being taken off.”

The Oceanside police have identified Center Street and the Posole gangs as the westernmost of the 11 or so territory-based gangs in town. Both have been around since at least the 70s. Figueroa would not name names, but he says some gangs are getting squeezed out of their home turf. Not by death or prison. But by gentrification.

“Now you find that a lot are getting pushed out to the Back Gate [Northeastern corner of Oceanside] or the Tri-City area [adjacent to Tri-City Medical Center]. A decade from now you will find that most current residences living in these communities will be moving east. They just won’t be able to afford to live there. What you’re going to find is some of these rival gang members living next door to each other. The Back Gate area will only get more activity.”