Central Valley Raised
This is an attempt to describe my younger life to up until a bit after my first arrest as a juvenile.
I was born and raised in the Central Valley of California.
The Valley is comprised of small towns, where the parties are in the cuts (country for you city people).
Everyone knows everyone, is what it means to be Central Valley raised.
It was just me until I was 3, then my brother was born.
My mother and father are hard-working Mexicans. They raised us the best they were capable of doing with the knowledge and education they had.
Specifically, I was born in Merced California.
From my birth to the age of about 9, I lived in Planada California. Planada is also known as “Planet X” by the locals and surrounding towns.
From an early age, I was continually told I could be anything I put my mind to, and that school was the most important thing to focus on. My mother and father both didn’t finish high school and had big plans for me from early on.
The thing was, my parents worked from early in the mornings to late at night and sometimes on the weekends as well. This left my younger brother and me to be raised, primarily by our grandparents.
Role Model
A lack of my parents being there for me and my brother, lead me to seek other types of role models. Not having a constant standard being taught and displayed by my parents took me on a path of discovering for myself what I believed truth was.
The media propagates we are free to discover our own truth, so I became another victim of this worldview.
By the age of 9 we moved to a house in the country of Gustine California, and a year later we moved to Newman Ca, where I currently reside today.
At the age of 10, I was very much into gaming and was obsessed with Pokemon, friends started meaning more since I did not live in the country anymore, and could go over friends houses, and invite them to mine.
At the age of 11 music started to play a bigger role in my life. Eminem was the first rapper I began to idolize. I remember memorizing every song on his Slim Shady LP. I began skateboarding as well during this time and listened to rap music constantly without much other guidance in my life. Again, my parents would tell me things, like I needed to do good in school and go to college, but they weren’t very active figures in my life since I didn’t see them much.
Thinking Changes for the Worst
My parents usually bought me and my brother most things we wanted. From about the age of 12, I saw how much my parents worked and for so little compared to wealthier people. My dad’s brother brought Cell Phones to the Central Valley area when they started popularizing and became wealthy selling cell phones.
I would get to go to my cousin’s house and think I never wanted to work as hard as my parents for the amount of money they received. This ideology plus the Eminem, 2pac, SPM, and Central Valley gangster rap I was listening to, lead me to create a worldview which believed all was permissible as long as it benefited me. I wanted to make a lot of money, but I didn’t want to work hard for it, plus the music I listened to usually glorified making money in some illegal ways. These ideas molded me on the daily.
The age of 12 is when I was first arrested.
Locked Up
I was hanging out with my cousin on the weekends a lot. We would sneak out at night and drive around and break into cars and stores with his friends. Even though his friends were older, it was always my idea.
One night we were going to use a brick and break the window of a skate shop in Merced. When I tried to throw the brick through the window, it didn’t break. We quickly left and went around a neighborhood in Merced where I broke into a car and pressed the button that was in the cars driver sun visor to open the garage. We left for a bit and came back when we thought enough time had passed to make us seem obvious. This was around 3 a.m. When we went back and passed by there were people outside. We kept driving and headed home when we were stopped. The car was searched and we were arrested because a stolen screen was found which I ripped from the car I was in. Since my cousin and I were minors they called my cousins parents.
At around 7 in the morning, my parents arrived to pick me up from my cousins. They expressed their disappointment in me and I did not get to see my cousin much until a few years later. This was the greatest disappointment I had caused my parents thus far.
After about a month or 2, my parents decided it would be best to move me to my aunt’s house in Merced.
My mother’s sister is like a second mom to me. Her husband is like a second father. They introduced me to the Apostolic faith. I always knew they were Christian, but being there I learned what it meant to be an Apostolic Christian.
–Jose Moreno
Find out what happened next –>