Luis

We do graduation well at my high school.  Really well.   It is the perfect blend of (slightly cheesy) tradition, spectacle, and celebration.  The students are exuberant but respectful, and by 6 pm, the summer heat has usually died down just enough to make sitting out on the football field bearable, and the Discovery Hills and San Elijo ridgeline form a spectacular backdrop that I never take for granted.

Usually, I know close to 100 of the graduating seniors, but because I'd only had two freshman classes in 2014-2015 and one sophomore class the following year, that number was much lower this year.  Maybe that was why one name kept coming up in my head, the name of a young man noticeable for his absence on the day he should have been graduating from high school.  Luis Canseco.  I couldn't stop thinking about Luis.

When I say I had only two freshman classes four years ago, that's not entirely correct.  The summer beforehand - 2014 - saw two cohorts of incoming freshmen take a Summer Bridge program at Mission Hills High School.  I taught the program with a math teacher, blending personal development and character building with academic content and study skills.  We were essentially equipping these kids - all of whom had been selected for the program due to their "at risk" status - to survive and thrive in high school.

Luis was in one of these classes.  He had a mop of thick, curly dark brown hair and arresting green eyes.  He smiled readily and was a very bright, articulate, and charismatic young man.  We gave him an award for Best Vocabulary.  He clearly had some issues in his personal life - I vividly remember him having a panic attack outside the classroom on one of the last days of class - but he was brimming with that kind of raw, untamed potential that so many 14 year-olds seem to have.

I saw Luis a few times on campus during his freshman year but quickly lost track of him amid the bustle and stress of the school year.  What I later found out was that he struggled academically, and by his junior year, he was attending the district's continuation high school in an effort to make up credits so that he could get back on track to graduate in 2018.

On Tuesday, 24th October 2016, at 8:30 pm, Luis was found dead, lying in a pool of blood in the middle of the road.  He had been shot multiple times.

At the time, when his murder was announced, his name didn't even register with me as being familiar.  That sounds terrible, and it is, for sure, but I have had many Luises over the years, just as many Cansecos, and at least two students with exactly the same name.  Add to that the fact that Luis wasn't even attending my school at the time.  And, just as my reaction foreshadowed, his death was quickly forgotten by the media and much of the community, probably as soon as news outlets reported Luis's murder as "possibly gang-related".

As I pondered the senselessness of Luis's death and how rapidly his story faded from our minds (mine included), I thought of another local high school student who was relatively recently violently killed.  In 2010, when Chelsea King was assaulted and murdered while jogging in Rancho Bernardo, the press coverage was relentless, as it should have been.  Chelsea's name lives on in a high profile yearly fundraiser and a foundation.  A documentary has been made about her.  A law regarding sex offenders now bears her name.  There are pages and pages on the internet devoted to her.  She has not been forgotten.  She will not be forgotten, and rightly so, for a child's murder is an unspeakably horrific event.

But what about Luis?  Why has there been no arrest in his case?  Why has there been no public outcry and high profile police investigation?  Where is his foundation?  Why did the press coverage of his death and the homicide case effectively stop that very same week?  I can find nothing on the internet about Luis published after October 29th.  Five days.  That was all Luis warranted in the public memory.  I live a mile from where he was killed.  I have often run past the very spot where he died.  There is no memorial, no plaque, no visible sign that something so brutal and violent happened on that bare stretch of concrete just beyond the Highway 78 overpass.

On first consideration, the answer seems obvious.  Chelsea was beautiful, athletic, white, and wealthy.  She'd had no run-ins with the law.  She fit the profile of the all-American high school teenager.  Luis fit a different profile.  He was Latino, on the verge of dropping out of school, living in a rough part of town, and mixed up in gang activity.  Call it socio-economics.  Call it lifestyle.  Call it race.  But I think that's too simplistic.

The fact is Luis's death conveniently fits a narrative that we as a society have decided is acceptable.  If people are stupid enough to get involved with gangs, we essentially say, then a violent death is inevitable.  We read the news, shake our heads sadly, but there is no public soul-searching or outpouring of grief.  In fact, based on comments from the White House regarding gangs, I would bet that a good number of people would even say, "Good riddance.  Gang members are animals."

Whatever we may claim or think - consciously or sub-consciously - we have clearly decided that some people's lives are worth more than others.  I'm guilty of it just as much as anyone: just look at my initial response to Luis's death.

It wasn't until I bumped into one of my classroom aides from that Summer Bridge class in July 2017 that I finally realized who had been killed.  Ten months after the fact, and - perhaps to assuage my guilt - I was frantically Googling Luis, obsessively driving down Smilax Road, and trying to glean every last bit of information about my former student with the beautiful green eyes whose body had been broken and ripped by bullets from a gun.

One of the last things students in that Summer Bridge class did was write a reflection on the 3 weeks we'd had together, and it didn't take me long to find Luis's reflection, buried deep in my Google Drive.  Reading through it brought his personality back to me in a rush of reminiscence.  It also provided tragic clues - foreshadowing, even - to the tumult in his life, tumult that a three-week summer class and Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens was not going to remove.

An excerpt from Luis's reflection (and my platitudes) at the end of the Summer Bridge class, July 2014.

"I’ve tried being proactive," he writes, "but I let my troubles get the best of me which is my problem that I need to stop and not let it continue." He goes on, "I learned about myself that you can plan out your entire life but out of everything you plan about half or less of the things you planned will actually go accordingly." "You have to be OK with that," says my comment on the side. He continues, almost prophetically, "I realized that life problems can’t be ignored because everything catches up to you eventually." Luis doesn't sound cynical, but he does seem defeated by his world. How can this already be the case with a 14-year-old? I despaired, when I read back over it. He ends, poignantly in retrospect, with this:

I really hope in high school I can find myself and realize what I need to do or what I’m meant for because now I feel lost like I have no where to go, in highschool I hope to do better. As in become someone, whether I become a known athlete or something I just want to be known for something good or interesting but right now I don’t do anything other than stay at home so what am I supposed to be known for? This is what I hope to find in high school, a new start, an actual beginning to my life.

And along the side of the document, my comments still exist: "Don't worry about how other people perceive you", "Be the best person you can be", "Enjoy the ride". They sound so hollow and meaningless.


I'm a fairly optimistic person, but Luis's story is very hard to spin in a positive light, and it has got me thinking about the dozens of young men I teach every day who, like Luis, already feel defeated. Our society tells young people that education is the key to success, and I think I believe that to a degree, but what happens if you live in a community where there are barriers to your education? The inability to study or do homework because of dynamics at home. Trauma. A perpetual cycle of violence and instability. We can't just point to the fact that many kids overcome all of these obstacles. Too many do not.

A few weeks ago, I met Todd, a police officer who runs a program that mentors young people who are constantly faced with these kinds of situations. I mentioned Luis, and immediately Todd told me that he had spoken to him just days before his death, warning him of issues in his life that he had to address. Todd told me that Luis assured him that everything was fine. "I got this," Luis had said.

I'm not entirely sure how to bring this to a close; it's already too long. But every word that I type is another word written about Luis. It's another small part of a memorial that, guilt-ridden, I feel obliged to compose. Luis died in near anonymity and at least maybe when people Google him, this post will show up. More than anything, though, this is a call to a recognition of our collective humanity, that the young man who was gunned down as he skateboarded home was not just a gangbanger. He was Luis, the charismatic, articulate young man with dreams, talents, friends, and striking green eyes. He mattered. He matters.