when he was just five years old. The boy was filled with grief—and a longing for acceptance and approval that his father could no longer provide. But in Alberto’s tough neighborhood, gangs were the only authority figures ready to take a lonely young boy under their wing. And once he’d entered that world, Alberto discovered there was no way out. “I was programmed good,” he shakes his head, remembering. “And I’d also picked up a heroin addiction that made sure I wasn’t ever going to leave the Oxnard barrio. I thought I would die there,” he admits. “The way I was living, I could not continue—it was obviously life or death.” But from the jail cell where he ended up facing the consequences of his lifestyle, he recalls, “God revealed Himself to me