by Miles Harvey
As a doctoral student in developmental psychology at UCLA, Daisy Camacho studies the “achievement gap”—the disparity in academic performance between kids from richer and poorer communities. The 24-year-old Camacho focuses on the role mentoring and after-school activities play in overcoming this divide. As the daughter of Mexican immigrants and first member of her family to graduate from college, she brings to her studies a passionate firsthand understanding of the subject.
Unfortunately, Camacho also has direct knowledge of youth violence. On Halloween night of 2009, she and fellow DePaul student Frankie Valencia attended a party at an upscale home in the traditionally working-class Puerto Rican neighborhood of Humboldt Park.78 When members of a local gang tried to crash the gathering, they were asked to leave. They returned with a TEC-9 semiautomatic pistol.79 Valencia was killed; Camacho was shot through the neck but survived. A petite woman with penetrating eyes and quiet charisma, she still has a small scar under her jaw.
In the ambulance after I was shot, I kept trying to explain to people, “Me and Frankie are not involved in gangs; that is not why this happened to us. We go to DePaul. Yes, we’re Latinos, but, you know, give us a chance.”
And that’s when the paramedic was like, “You were probably just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s just a bad neighborhood with bad kids.”
And I was like, “No! No! Humboldt Park is not a bad neighborhood. Why do these kid have access to guns? And why don’t we have activities for them so that these things are prevented?”
And, to this day, I have a really hard time thinking about the guys who shot us. I kind of just feel like they’re a part of some system that turned them into this, you know? So it took me a long time to not view them as that. To view them as, you made this choice, and because of your choice, my friend is no longer here.
People try to say that you can do anything you want in this country, and that there’s this American dream, and that whatever you aspire to, you can accomplish it. And it’s true that, for some people, that does happen. But for a lot of people, it doesn’t. There are certain things that are not even awakened in you because of the context that you’re in. If you’re in a low-income community, for example, you might not have access to role models.
Elgin, the town where I grew up, is one of the bigger suburbs of Chicago. It’s not the most affluent of suburbs, but you’re not living in the inner city. It’s diverse. It’s very diverse: racial-ethnic diversity, but also socioeconomic diversity. My parents were Mexican immigrants. They didn’t speak English when they first moved here. My mom worked in a factory and my dad worked in construction. And then they got their real estate jobs, and they had their own office. And by then, we were doing really well. I remember they bought me a car when I was 16. Brand new. Over the years, however, more economic troubles hit my family, due to my parents’ divorce and the market crash. Lots of times, it felt like we were worse off socioeconomically than when my parents raised us together with blue-collar jobs.
Sometimes discrimination could be bad in Elgin. You would hear stories about people saying mean things to Mexican-Americans, just very overt. Even when the animosity wasn’t blatant, there were definitely micro-aggressions. But my parents were like, “Sometimes people will have negative perceptions of you because of your heritage, but you just have to keep working hard.”
They weren’t going to settle for what society dictates. I knew since I was very young that I was going to go to college. They made that very clear. Both of them are very ambitious, so if you ever said something like, “Oh, I want to be a nurse when I grow up,” they would be like, “Well, why don’t you want to be a doctor?” Or, if I said, “I want to be a teacher,” they would say, “Well, why don’t you want to be a principal?” It was always do more.
But I also benefited from other people believing in me and challenging me to do better. Although my high school was a little less than 50 percent Latino, minorities were underrepresented in the honors classes and the after-school programs. A lot of times, I was the only one. And I wound up in those classes almost by accident. When I first got to high school, I kind of got lost in the shuffle. I was taking all regular classes, and one of my teachers said, “You should consider taking honors classes.”
So I said, “Okay,” and I went to my counselor, and my counselor was like, “Oh yeah, your scores are way above everyone else’s. You should definitely be taking honors courses.”
I was like, “Man, if that teacher hadn’t told me, I would never have come in here.”
I also took part in a high-school program called Upward Bound, which gave me the tangible skills you need so that you can get into college—an understanding of how to apply and what kind of financial aid is available and what types of colleges are out there. I mean, there’s just so much that you don’t know when your parents don’t go to college; it’s difficult to even articulate it. But fortunately, there were people around me who had high expectations for me.
It was similar once I got to college. I had a lot of good mentors at DePaul. They recommended that I join the McNair Scholars Program, which helps low-income and minority students get into doctoral programs. Taking part in McNair helped me get to different labs, get research experience, present at conferences, things like that. At first, I didn’t know that I wanted to get a Ph.D. I mean, it just sounded cool, but I didn’t know what it was for or why you would do it or whether I would like it. It was sort of the same thing as in high school—people along the way making me aware of opportunities.
But how many other kids like me get lost? Many of them are very capable, but because they don’t have these expectations, they’re not going to rise to meet them.
I met Frankie at the end of our sophomore year at DePaul. We were applying for the study abroad program. And I just started talking to him, and he was like, “Oh, what are you doing at school?” And I just told him, you know, the standard “I’m a psychology major and I’m, you know, whatever.”
And he was like, “Oh, I want to be mayor. I want to change Chicago politics!”
Which was kind of cool, you know?
After the shooting, some people thought I was Frankie’s girlfriend and blah, blah, blah. But it wasn’t like that. He really was just a friend. We connected over family, the value of family. We connected over wanting social change. Sometimes we would try to do homework together. It never really worked, because we would start talking about things that we wanted to change or wanted to see happen. We went to a lot of cultural events at DePaul—like oh, there’s this speaker coming, or this poet, or this author—anything like that, we’d try and go together. And ask tough questions and probably discuss it afterwards—nerdy fun.
Frankie was a dreamer, but he also did things. It wasn’t just, “Oh, this is what I think.” He engaged with people. He was active. He was doing things like volunteering for an organization that helps low-income preschool kids with literacy and other skills.80 After a while, he and I began to share a dream about improving our education system and breaking the cycle of inequality from one generation to another.
See, I was passionate about research, and Frankie was passionate about politics. So our dream was that I would come up with some kind of research that would be useful in making the education system better, and then Frankie would implement it. It was probably a little over-simplistic, but I think we would have made it work. Yeah, we would have made it work...
For Halloween, Frankie and I were like, “Let’s do something.” And a few days before Halloween, my friends from Elgin had posted a message on Facebook. They had rented a ginormous house in the city for a weekend, and they were having this party. And then, I think one of them texted me and was like, “Hey, you should come by.” And I was like, “I don’t know. We’ll see.”
And that night, Frankie and I were supposed to meet one of his friends. But then his friend ended up canceling, and we were like, “Okay, now what do we do?” And I was like, “Oh, well, here’s an option.” We were
planning just to say hi to people at the party, and then we were going to go hang out with his family. I think his parents were at a bar or something. I don’t really remember.
We walked in, and it felt like Elgin High School because everyone looked familiar. It was mostly Latino kids. People were kind of shocked that I was there because I didn’t really go out often. So it was like, “Whoa, it’s crazy that you’re here! How cool!” and stuff. And this whole time, Frankie was with me, so I just kept introducing him to people.
There was a dance floor and people were dancing. There were a lot of people, but it wasn’t packed, like where you’re sweaty and trying to get through a crowd. It seemed like a nice house, but it wasn’t really until my friend started giving us a tour that it was like, “Oh, okay, this is a really expensive house. This is a luxurious house. Look at this indoor waterfall.” I mean, I was aware of gentrification in Humboldt Park, but I didn’t put everything together until afterwards.
What I found out was that, when we were on the tour, three guys from the neighborhood tried to get into the party. And I guess when they came in, they got kicked out. But we didn’t know anything about it at the time. On the tour, it was just me and Frankie and my friend Manny. Then Manny, he got a phone call from another friend who was waiting outside and needed somebody to let him in the front gate. So the three of us went outside.
There was a gangway on the side of the house, and this whole time, Frankie was behind me. So Manny opened the gate, and we were walking back in—and that’s when it happened. I heard four or five pops, and Manny yelled, “Oh, shit!”
I threw myself on the ground, and when I got up my neck just felt numb, so I grabbed it, and I was like, “Oh, man, I probably fell to the ground too fast and I sprained my neck or something.” And then I saw my hand, and I was like, “Oh man, somebody got shot, somebody’s splashed blood on my hand.” And then I was like, “Oh, it’s me.”
The bullet came in through the back of my neck and then came out through the front on the left-hand side. My neck is really small, and the bullet missed everything—my spine, my jugular vein, my esophagus, my trachea, my voice box. And, I don’t know, maybe because I had already survived a couple crazy car accidents, I wasn’t like, “Oh my God, I’m going to die.” I was like, “Oh, this is going to be so tedious to deal with. Trying to explain to my family that I was at a party. Ugh, this is going to be inconvenient, basically.” That was my first thought.
There were suddenly a lot of people around, and everybody was calling the police. And people were staring at me and stuff, and I remember yelling at them, “Hey, stop staring. This is not a show. Keep moving.” And there was a guy from the party who was like, “Just breathe. It’s going to be okay.” And he kept calling me “baby.” And I was like, “Can you stop calling me that?”
And Frankie was sitting near me on the side of the house. I guess I kind of assumed that he had been shot, but I thought, “I’m okay; he’ll be okay.” And then the police came. And I just walked over to the ambulance. And I kept asking them, “Is he going to be okay?” Just to make sure. “Is he going to be okay? Is he going to be okay?”
They were like, “We’re going to do the best we can.”
Then they put him in an ambulance. And I didn’t see him again.
A friend visited me in the ER. It was three, four, five in the morning. I’m not sure, just really late. She came in and was like, “Oh, I just wanted to check up on you.” And I was like, “I’m fine. I don’t care, as long as Frankie’s okay. I just want him to be okay.” Because I hadn’t heard anything. And that’s when she told me that he didn’t make it.
After she left, I was by myself. So I was just alone with that…
The funeral and the memorial service were hard. I just felt guilty. I was the last person that he was with. And he didn’t know anyone at this party except for me, so I felt like it was my fault.
I’ve been to a lot of therapy since then, and I’ve just kind of learned that guilt is not helpful because it’s inhibiting you from dealing with other emotions. So like if you feel angry, if you feel like this was unjust, if you feel sadness, if you feel grief—it’s almost like guilt is preventing you from feeling those things. So you have to kind of like peel off the guilt, and then deal with what you’re really feeling. Those bad feelings don’t really go away; you just learn how to live with them. But sometimes I do still feel guilty. Depends on the day.
The scar in the front of my neck was swollen, kind of 3-D, but now it’s pretty much flattened out. I have a big laugh and if I find something really funny, I tilt my head back. And that’s when people see it. I like scars, because I think they tell a story. And this one, it’s bittersweet. I don’t think you can avoid thinking about the pain. But it also tells the story of my friend—my friend who I was able to dream with, my friend who I hoped for a better future with.
And I think that makes it beautiful.
—Interviewed by Lisa Applegate
Endnotes
76 The Chicago Reporter is an investigative news organization with a distinctive focus on race and poverty. This important resource rarely gets the public
recognition it deserves.
77 Kari Lydersen and Carlos Javier Ortiz, “More Young People are Killed in
Chicago Than Any Other American City,” The Chicago Reporter, Jan. 25, 2012, http://www.chicagoreporter.com/news/2012/01/more-young-people-are-
killed-chicago-any-other-american-city
78 Chicago developer Anthony Mazzone designed and built the $1.2 million
luxury home on a blue-collar street in Humboldt Park. Unable to sell it, he
decided to rent it out as a weekend “vacation rental.” A website advertising the property boasted that it was “located in a serene family neighborhood.” It failed to mention that the block was controlled by the Maniac Latin Disciples. See Mark Konkol and Frank Main, “Killing Puts Spotlight on ‘Vacation Rentals’—Aldermen Push Crackdown on Short-Term Deals for Vacant Homes,” Chicago Sun-Times, Nov. 15, 2009.
79 The TEC-9 assault pistol has no military use. It was designed and marketed
to kill civilians. Capable of unloading a 50-shot magazine in seconds, it was
used in the Columbine massacre. One writer called it “the perfect implement of mayhem, because it does nothing well except spray bullets into terrified crowds.” See Robert L. Steinback, “Gun Advocates Often Rely on Self-Delusion,” The
Miami Herald, Nov. 18, 1997.
80 The Jumpstart program at DePaul is aimed at helping overcome “the
state of inequality in early educational experiences in America.” It was one of several social-justice and service programs that Frankie Valencia took part in
at the university.
HOW DO YOU LEARN TO LIVE AGAIN?
JOY McCORMACK
The stories in this book don’t end with these final few pages. For many people we interviewed, there is no such thing as “closure,” much less a happy ending. But that doesn’t mean they have lost hope. So perhaps it’s fitting to end with Joy McCormack, the mother of slain DePaul University honor student Francisco “Frankie” Valencia.
On Oct. 21, 2011—the day a Cook County judge sentenced 21-year-
old Narcisco Gatica to 90 years in prison for her son’s murder81—McCormack told the court she still suffered from “unimaginable despair, pain, rage and
deep grief.”
“On many days,” she added, “it seems like this darkness is stronger than
I am.”
Two years after the conviction, she continues to fight a day-to-day battle with that “darkness.” But that has not stopped McCormack from throwing her considerable talents, energies and organizational skills into a new effort aimed at helping other survivors. Frustrated by the lack of resources available to her in the aftermath of her son’s death, McCormack founded Chicago’s Citizens for Change (CCC), an organization designed to address the needs of families devastated by youth violence. In additi
on to serving as a citywide clearinghouse for information and resources, her group provides referrals for grief counseling and funeral services, guides families through court proceedings and helps them keep in contact with police about criminal cases. Through a CCC program called Chicago Survivors, families find a real community with other people who have lost loved ones.
An intense and restless 40-year-old, McCormack embodies the struggles of so many people we spoke to for this book. “We all come through this life with some battle wounds,” she says, “and sometimes those don’t allow us to be as whole as we’d like to be as we walk through the world.” Nonetheless, she keeps moving forward.
I had a very non-traditional background. My mom was a hippie; she and my father divorced when I was about 1. The last memory I have of him was when I was 4. I haven’t seen him since.
My mother wasn’t always around, either. She went to South America for a few years when I was a child, and that’s how I came to Chicago to be raised by my grandmother. Then my mom came back to Chicago and we stayed here. Drugs, alcoholism—I grew up around that. It was all part of my childhood. I never remember having that kind of pure innocence that I remember seeing in other kids. I never really went through that phase of believing in the world.
I met Frankie’s father when I was 12. I was still in elementary school at Nettelhorst, on Broadway and Melrose. Chico82 was older than me; I was best friends with his cousin. He gave me a ride home from her house one night, and that was it. We became friends, started dating and stayed together.