San Francisco Examiner - July 18, 2002
Joyce Nishioka Of The Examiner staff

This Sunday about 75 members and friends of the organization will participate in AIDS Walk, an event that benefits Bay Area AIDS service organizations. Joining them will be Supervisors Tom Ammiano and Chris Daly.

Luis Aroche, a gang prevention counselor with United Playaz, went to the event last year but didn't see much youth representation. That inspired him to organize the group of young people for this year's walk.

"We want San Francisco to know that these kids whom they fear, these kids who get locked up, they do have heart, they want to help, they want to walk in the AIDS walk," Aroche says.

United Playaz members hope that by participating they will also get the word out to young people that the HIV virus is an equal-opportunity threat.

"We work with high-risk youth -- gang bangers, dope dealers, pimps," Aroche says. "We've got so many who risk exposure to this on a daily basis, but they're not aware of it. We want to let youth know that AIDS is not a gay disease; it's a human crisis."

Even average teens have yet to take that message seriously, said 17-year-old Jessica Ragudo, a member of United Playaz. Most of her peers are untroubled about the AIDS epidemic, she says. When a couple has been together for a while, they stop practicing safe sex.

"A lot of my girls stop using condoms, and I tell them, 'What if your boy is having sex with someone else?' " she says. "Even though they're together a long time, they should use condoms."

United Playaz encourages young people, like Ragudo, to get involved in community issues, such as AIDS awareness. Originally, though, it was a gang prevention program, and that still is the group's focus.

In 1994, Rudy Corpuz was hired as a gang prevention counselor at Balboa High School. At the time, there were race riots between blacks and Filipinos. Corpuz brought the kids together in mediation. The young people not only resolved many of their differences, they got along. United Playaz was born.

Today, there are about 100 youth who actively participate in United Playaz.

They come from all ethnic backgrounds, and while many of them are high-risk teens, others are college-bound students.

A former gang member, Aroche knows first-hand what today's inner city teens are facing. As a case manager, he helps incarcerated youth get out of juvenile hall by providing them with anger management workshops, peer-to-peer conflict intervention counseling and job referrals.

But the real key, he believes, is unconditional love.

"We're not trying stop their hustle, we're not telling them to get out of the gang, we're not trying to mock them," Aroche says. "What I tell them is, 'Whenever you need a job, homey, when you want someone that's going to give you real unconditional love, come holler at me.' "

That philosophy has worked for Ragudo, who joined United Playaz three years ago.

"Before I entered I was a little bad-ass girl," she says. "I cut school and would go out and drink and smoke with my girls. Man, I was causing fights. I wanted to beat everyone up."

Growing up in the Mission, she witnessed her share of gang violence. Her brother, who was in a gang, brought his gangster friends to their house, she says, and there were several shootings on her street.

"My parents didn't want us playing outside. We would have to sneak out," she says.

Ragudo sees art as the solution to teen delinquency -- and even to violence.

Through United Playaz, she has developed her interest in poetry, which has kept her positive and focused.

In middle school, she was always coming up with little rhymes. Then, when she started going to rallies and protests with United Playaz, she saw spoken word artists perform.

"I had never heard anything like that. I was really feeling it. Everyone was presenting, and I was like, 'Ooh, I want to try to do that,' " she says.

"I started writing. At first I wasn't all that, but now I can do it -- I can dig it, I can feel it."

Ragudo hopes to become a nurse, while continuing to write and perform her poetry.

Many of her peers, especially in the Filipino American communtiy, she says, also have found solace in self-expression.

"There are not a lot of gangs anymore," she says. "There are different crews, but they're all breaking and break dancing crews, or DJing crews. They're all into entertainment now."

E-mail: jnishioka@sfexaminer.com

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