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inside, a person’s worth is judged by the last ass kicked down the totem pole—until their friends come back to give you a beatdown. If you unknowingly brawled with a gang member from Temple Street, years later every member in the joint can be after you for that.

    The week Joey turned 21 he says he recognized a face in his cell block but couldn’t place it. The man grinned at him, menacingly.
    Joey says the man approached him in the gym, training. He claims the man called him a “no good Mexican” and he was“gonna pay” to which Joey responded “I am Puerto Rican, and in closing: Fuck you in the neck!”
    The guards were watching so the man took off as Joey went back to work on the heavy bag. When Joey asked around, he learned this was the man who had shot him from Grape St., Watts. Joey claims he knocked him out the same night he learned the man’s identity.
    After dinner the next night, Joey says he was warned to look out for a hit on him. A few days later he found his cell door abruptly opened. Guards ran in and handcuffed him, took him to a strip cell, hosed him off, and questioned him. The man who shot him had been hung in an apparent suicide—except with his hands tied behind his back.
    Joey claims he spent his time in an empty cell with no light and one blanket, not even aware of the man’s death until the investigation about it.

    After that incident, Joey was transferred to northern California, to a facility called Preston Youth Facility, in Ione, where he is again imprisoned 33 years later, on the same property as the Mule Creek State Prison.
    In the summer of 1981, Preston was where “troubled” inmates were sent to separate them from rival gangs. In the 1980s, the Youth Authority focused on sports at least as much as rehabilitation, and it had a boxing program. So according to Joey, he was traded by the warden at Preston to the northern facility in return for a basketball player. Joey’s new home was heavily occupied by members of Mexican gangs.
    After several trips to solitary confinement (“the hole”), Joey says he was put to work teaching boxing to the other inmates daily. He says they frequently embraced the contradictions of letting a rival gang carry one of their members off the floor instead of helping them up yourself.
    Joey learned that he was a skilled illustrator and began creating tattoo patterns, portraits, and whatever people would commission from him, in exchange for food. His work began appearing in
Low Rider
and
Teen Angel
magazines.
    Joey started to correspond with many people, re-building his connection to the outside world through the postal system. One woman who particularly caught his attention was Maria, who began visiting Joey with her son, TJ, on the weekends. Joey spent his days training in the gym, planning on making a comeback when he expected to be released in 16 months, despite statements that he was washed up and done for.
    As his release date approached, Joey was issued a gate pass; meaning he could work outside of the prison grounds. He became a bus boy at the Denny’s in the port of Stockton. Joey said he would go through each week trying to remember to tell Maria to buy a gun at the pawnshop, but each time she visited, Joey says he would be distracted playing with TJ, and forget to mention it. So one day Joey returned to his cell block and wrote her a letter, instructing her to buy a gun. He says his reasoning was that it would be an item for her own protection until he was around to protect her, himself.
    At Denny’s on Monday, while Joey was telling the waitresses about Hollywood and “the gangster life” and drinking a pint of Hennesy, he was called up front over the speaker to see the transportation cops.
    Instead of the usual routine, they turned him around and put the bracelets on. Officer Rudy said they intercepted a letter saying that Joey was trying to purchase a weapon. Since all mail