American Son Read online

  The intimidation factor remained for a long time, after I won Olympic gold, after I turned pro, even after I was making more money than him.

  I remember one night, after I had bought a house in Montebello for myself and the rest of the family, I tried to sneak home with my friend Raul after a night of drinking and clubbing, fearful that my father would catch me.

  I had gone out with friends after beating Paris Alexander in Hollywood in my third professional fight. Raul and I got dropped off at the house around 3 A.M. We asked to be let off down the block because I didn’t want my father to see me. He would not approve of my coming home that late, especially considering I was intoxicated.

  I had had security cameras installed around the property, so Raul and I tried to chart a course to my room that would avoid the eye of the lens.

  Here I am, soon to turn twenty, and I’m still acting like a misbehaving grade school kid. My father’s towering presence could affect me like that.

  When we reached the perimeter of the house, Raul and I got on our stomachs and crawled forward as if we were soldiers trying to get under a barbed-wire barricade. We made it to the house, but every door was locked.

  We were so drunk that after crawling around for a few minutes, we would stop and take a short nap before resuming our reconnaissance.

  Through the shades, we could see my father watching TV in a first-floor room. My bedroom was on the second floor. We figured if we could just get there, we could claim in the morning that we had been there all along.

  There were pillars in front of the house that served as supports for the balcony off my bedroom. I pulled a chair over, got on it, and strained to reach the balcony’s railing.

  The combination of being drunk and standing on a rickety chair left me about as steady as a fighter getting up from his third knockdown. But with Raul putting his weight on the chair to anchor it, I finally steadied myself enough to get a firm grasp on the railing and pull myself, legs kicking, over the top, collapsing onto the balcony.

  I listened for a minute, fearful my father had heard me, but when his heavy steps didn’t come plodding up to the second floor, I figured we were home safe.

  More luck. The outside door to my bedroom was unlocked. Now all I needed was to get Raul up there. He got on the chair, but faced the same problem I had, a drunken climber on a wobbly foundation. I reached down, straining to grab his outstretched arm.

  All of a sudden I froze. Raul looked mystified, because the chair felt steady and yet I looked unsteady. When Raul turned around, he understood.

  Holding the chair for him was my father.

  I could never get away with anything with him around, though I didn’t try to get away with much. My brother and I were both good kids. So were most of the friends I hung around with. We were the innocent kids on the block. We didn’t want to get involved in anything bad.

  My father’s definition of a bad kid? Eric Gomez. Why? Because Eric, whom I’ve known since I was five, was always on his skateboard in the street and I wanted to be right there rolling alongside him. In my father’s eyes, that made Eric a bad kid because my father was afraid I’d get hurt emulating Eric.

  That’s not to say there weren’t kids in the neighborhood who really were bad. Those were the gang members, including some who asked me several times to join them when I was thirteen and fourteen. I didn’t need my father to tell me that was a bad idea. I knew those guys were into more than skateboards.

  There was so much gang activity in our area that my brother and I didn’t go out at night. Certainly not alone. The farthest I might venture would be our corner liquor store to pick up a gallon of milk. But I would only go with my brother or a neighbor.

  As my amateur career progressed, gang members began to recognize me. That’s when they stopped putting pressure on me to join them. Instead, they protected me because they respected what I was doing in the ring.

  My protection was assured by the godfather, a man in his sixties with white hair who would walk around the neighborhood aided by a cane, no shirt on, tattoos everywhere. He was THE guy.

  One day I ran into him on the street. He nodded at me and said, “Don’t worry about nothing. We are looking out for you.”

  At the time I didn’t know I needed help. I was naive. But as I got older, I came to appreciate the fact that they had put out the word to leave us alone. When I say us, I mean the whole De La Hoya family. Shootings were happening down the street, cops were constantly patrolling, and helicopters were cutting through the night air above us, but our home was always immune to danger. It was like we lived in a protective dome.

  For that, I guess I can thank the man with the cane.

  My unique status in the hood was never demonstrated more dramatically than the traumatic night that began with a seemingly innocent walk over to the home of my girlfriend Veronica Ramirez, a block from my own house. It was eight o’clock, a seemingly safe and peaceful time.

  Wearing a leather jacket and carrying a camera, I had gotten within a few houses of my destination when this truck came roaring up. With squealing brakes, it came to an abrupt halt and about eight guys wearing ski masks jumped out. There were guns everywhere. They put one to my head and I thought I was going to die right there at the age of fifteen.

  “Give me your jacket,” one demanded. “Give me your camera.”

  “You got a wallet?” said another muffled voice.

  “Yeah, take it,” I said.

  It all happened in a blur. Next thing I knew, the truck was racing down the street and I was alone again on a peaceful night.

  Feeling like I was going to pee in my pants, I raced over to Veronica’s house and we called the cops.

  When I finally got up the nerve to go back on the street, I hurriedly walked home, constantly looking over my shoulder, taking a different route just to be safe.

  As I arrived, an aunt, who was staying with us, told me, “Oh, your friend just came by and dropped off some stuff he said you left at his house.”

  There was my jacket, my camera, and my wallet.

  “What the hell is this?” I blurted out.

  The next day I found out the muggers had been a few guys from the neighborhood who had not known it was me in the dark, and had only learned my identity when they opened my wallet.

  Maybe I should, once again, have thanked the man with the cane.

  That wasn’t the end of my experience with gangs. Long after I had moved out of the neighborhood, another gang tried to move in on me.

  I was already a pro when I got an unsolicited offer from an unexpected source, a new fan base I discovered lurking in the shadows.

  It was at a club in West Covina where I had gone with Raul and some other friends, about twenty of us in all. I was single, carefree, and, with five pro fights behind me, pretty well known in Southern California.

  This blonde came over to me and started talking and soon we were out on the dance floor.

  No big deal. This wasn’t the first woman who had ever approached me.

  As we became friendly, she flashed a big smile and said she had somebody who wanted to meet me, pointing to a table in the corner.

  Again, no big deal. People often wanted me to meet their relatives and friends.

  She led me through the darkened room, past the gyrating dancers, to a crowded table and pointed to one guy, probably in his late thirties, who seemed like the leader of the group.

  He introduced himself and said, “Can I buy you a drink? As a matter of fact, I’ll buy you all the drinks you want. I can take care of you.”

  There was nothing unusual about him. He wasn’t adorned in tattoos or gaudy jewelry. He didn’t speak in a loud or abrasive manner.

  I thanked him, figured he was a fan with a lot of money, and went back to my table.

  As I sat down, my friends started whispering, “Do you know who that is? That’s the Mexican Mafia. They must have identified you.”

  Having heard of them, I became scared. The blonde woul
dn’t leave, choosing instead to hang next to me. And the drinks kept coming, ordered courtesy of that other table. I felt pressure. Even when I went to the restroom, I felt they were watching me.

  Sure enough, when I glanced over at that table, several guys were staring at me. They wanted to continue the conversation. I didn’t.

  A part of me thought it was exciting, an adventure. But I knew it was an adventure that had to be cut off immediately if it was to have a happy ending.

  Time to make a run for it. Raul and I decided my friends would surround me and we would march out of the club in that formation, a twenty-man battering ram.

  I counted to three and we stood up and headed for the door like a wild herd. I felt relief when the cool night air hit me, but not for long. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw my new friends come racing out of the club in my direction, anxious to continue our discussion.

  There were probably a thousand people in that club when we left. Seconds later, it was practically empty, the crowd spilling into the street and chaos ensuing. Most of the people probably didn’t even know who I was. They had just seen my group pursued by my wannabe buddies and followed to see where the action was.

  The action wasn’t going to be in my direction. One of my friends had already reached his car and started the engine, and I ran over and jumped in. His tires screeched as he backed up, banging somebody in the leg as we accelerated.

  We made it to my house in Montebello without further incident, ten of us piling into the living room, laughing and high-fiving, replaying our exciting night over a few beers.

  After about an hour, the group started to break up. Most of the guys left and I went up to my room on the second floor. I lived in a cul-de-sac, the guys having all parked in the semicircle. I could hear their engines starting and could see their lights go on through my shades.

  I glanced out the window and froze. There, in the middle of my street, standing perfectly still, the cars pulling out around her, was the blonde from the club, staring at my house, focusing on my window. It was eerie.

  I didn’t come out, and she eventually left.

  I later heard that group was indeed the Mexican Mafia and that they were interested in handling my career. They never tried to contact me again.

  And I never went back to that club in West Covina.

  VII

  MY ROOTS

  To this day, my Mexican roots tug at my heart and Tecate holds a special allure for me. Mexico brings back warm memories of family bonding and emotional ties that I never experienced at home.

  It was so different when we made the three-hour drive to Tecate to visit my maternal grandmother and her family. We usually headed across the border in the summer, sometimes staying for weeks at a time. Either my father would get time off from work, or my mother would take us, driving the car herself.

  Our Mexican relatives—aunts, uncles, and tons of cousins—awaited our arrival each time with great anticipation, wondering what riches we might be bringing with us, clothes for the adults, coins for the kids that my mother or father would press into their eager little palms. The whole town would turn out when our car pulled up. They saw us as the rich relatives, coming from America, where they imagined the streets were paved with gold. We may not have been rich back home, but in Tecate, we were royalty.

  It was funny. Soon after we arrived, we were all just family again. But when we prepared to leave, we were perceived anew as the gringos, heading back to that magical place known as California. It’s not that our relatives were putting us down. Our other life in America was never perceived as a negative.

  As a child, I might not have understood the concept of two different countries, but I knew we were heading into a different world when we came to Tecate. The roads were dirt and so was the floor in my grandmother’s house.

  There was one bedroom and a kitchen. That was it. My grandmother would give her bed to us and we would all sleep in it, the whole family. Or sometimes my brother and I curled up on the floor. I don’t know where my grandmother slept, probably on the floor in the other room. She didn’t mind. We were the guests and she wanted us to have the bed.

  I never met my grandfather. I didn’t know where he was, and as a youngster, I never asked.

  Those long stretches at my grandmother’s place were happy times. I would be awoken at dawn by the roosters on her property. I jumped up knowing what awaited me: my grandmother’s delicious breakfasts. Everything she cooked tasted great, but her specialty was tamales. They were amazing.

  Because there was no indoor plumbing, we had to use an outhouse in the back to take care of business. Before we went down there, we walked to the well and filled up a bucket so that, when we were done, we had water to flush. We were bathed in a metal tub with the well water.

  I remember one time, when I was about nine years old, I had to go to the outhouse around nine in the evening. If there wasn’t a full moon, the nights down there were frightfully dark, especially to a kid, because there were no lights.

  My grandmother’s mother, Candelaria, lived near the outhouse in a cabin. She was very old, a mysterious figure who never left her abode, not even to eat. Food was brought to her.

  On that night, I had forgotten about my great-grandmother as I made my way down the rock-strewn path, gazing up at a sky filled with more stars than I could ever see in the smoggy air back home.

  The path to my destination led past my great-grandmother’s cabin. The noise from the main house had faded as I neared the outhouse.

  All of a sudden I felt a cold, bony hand grip my wrist. It was my great-grandmother. Having latched on to me, she made this low, guttural sound, almost like a growl. It was about as close as she came to talking.

  It was so scary for a young kid. If I could have, I would have leaped back to the main house in a single bound. But I couldn’t get free. She wouldn’t let go. I started screaming, alerting my relatives, who finally came running to release me.

  The conditions in my grandmother’s house may have been primitive compared to my parents’ home, but there were times when I wished Tecate was my home because my aunts and uncles down there were openly loving and caring, able to show their feelings for me far more easily than was the case in my own house. I had conversations down there, long, deep conversations that enabled me to open up about my own feelings. Those were the conversations I so desperately missed at home.

  Tecate wasn’t our only destination in Mexico. We would also go to Durango, near Mexico City, to visit my father’s family. It took us twenty-four hours on the road to get there.

  My paternal grandmother, who was separated from my grandfather, lived in a bigger house with more relatives in the area than we found in Tecate, aunts and uncles and cousins. And this grandmother even had a bathroom in the house, the ultimate luxury.

  The social environment was the same as Tecate. There would be as many as ten people sitting around a table, drinking hot chocolate, eating the Mexican-style breads, talking, laughing, and interacting. I couldn’t get enough of those gatherings.

  Even my parents got into the spirit down in Mexico, becoming more open. It gave me the opportunity to say things I would never say back home. Even telling my parents I loved them? I would think about trying to sneak that in.

  But I never did.

  Border control was a lot looser in pre-9/11 days, but my parents were still cautious about going through customs. They would warn us to be sure and say “American citizen” to the customs officer.

  My mother always had a hard time with that because, even after she had become an American citizen, she still struggled with her English. She always got nervous as we approached the border. She would sit there in the front seat, repeating over and over again, “American citizen. American citizen.”

  Just before the border crossing on the U.S. side, there was a small building with a sign that read AMERICAN MARKET. It was the last thing you saw before you pulled up to the customs booth.

  One time in particular stands o
ut in my mind. My father, brother, and I had confidently declared “American citizen” without a second thought, as we always did. Then it was my mother’s turn.

  The customs officer leaned in to the car and looked at her. Nervous, she blurted out, “American market. American market.”

  My brother and I started laughing, but the customs officer didn’t see the humor. He made us get out and undergo questioning while they searched our car.

  I had another funny moment at the border with my friends years later after I had won the gold medal. About ten of us, including Raul, went down to Cancún and, while there, purchased about twenty boxes of Cuban cigars.

  On the way back, we were coming through a tunnel leading to the checkpoint. As we got closer, we could see the customs officers. They looked mean and serious, and most alarming of all, they had dogs sniffing for illegal items. Cuban cigars would certainly be on that list.

  We were worried, but Raul said he’d take care of it. Fine, we handed him the bag with the cigars.

  Then we started picking on him. “Raul,” we yelled out, “what do you have in that bag? Cigars? Cuban cigars?”

  Raul, who is usually the calmest guy in any situation, started sweating and snapped at us, telling us to shut up.

  Fortunately, when we reached the customs officers, one of them recognized me.

  “Hey, champ, what’s going on? Don’t worry about it,” he said, waving us through. “Just go.”

  That we did. One of the dogs went after Raul, sniffing that bag, refusing to back off, but Raul kept his head down and just walked faster and faster until we were out of sight. It wasn’t easy keeping a straight face as we watched him try to tell that animal to get lost.

  Just another reason to smile when I think of Mexico.

  VIII

  TACOS AT DAWN