Slaying a dragon

Revisiting a dark day from one’s past isn’t easy. But it can sometimes prove therapeutic. On an afternoon some months ago, Roberto Nerey slowly retraced his route to the Washoe County Courthouse, which he hadn’t gone anywhere near since a morning 11 years ago.

He was 20 that morning in 1991. Wearing a new suit, he walked from a parking lot to the courthouse with his fiancée, parents and siblings.

He stepped slowly. They understood. His life seemed over. Nothing was left of the young man’s dreams. He faced sentencing for conspiracy to commit murder, a result of Reno’s first documented drive-by shooting.

The marble-pillared building loomed like a stone dragon ready to devour him. Roberto averted his eyes. The city was coming to life—sun shining, traffic rushing, people briskly walking to work. But he felt only fear and defeat. His heart thumped in his chest.

It may be hard to have sympathy for him. He had been a gang member, attracted by ethnic bonds and love of a party. But to his credit, as the gang grew increasingly destructive, he’d quit. He hated seeing old ladies dragged by their purses, young girls taken advantage of. He had a night job, had started college.

But quitting wasn’t easy. The gang targeted him as a traitor. They shot at his house.

One night, cruising with a high school friend and the 15-year-old brother of another friend, Roberto decided to confront the gang and call a truce. He’d had enough of the stress.

Around midnight, a car with five gangbangers was stopped at a traffic light on Sixth Street. Roberto’s car pulled alongside. He leaned out the passenger window to summon attention.

Pop-pop-pop-pop!

Roberto spun around. In the back seat, the 15-year-old was cradling a rifle fitted with a banana magazine. A friend had lent Roberto the gun for protection, but he’d kept it under his bed and, this night, placed it in the car’s trunk—just in case. But the 15-year-old had fished it out. His older brothers were hardcore gangsters from Los Angeles. The kid was smiling. He’d just earned his “props.”

Miraculously, only one gangbanger had been hit, taking a bullet to the temple. He was brain-damaged. But he did not die.

Unlike 11 years ago, the courthouse’s Virginia Street entrance is no longer used. This time, Roberto walked around to the Court Street doors, through the metal detector and into the building’s dim light. Footsteps echoed.

Up the narrow staircase to the second floor. Memories flooded back. The monotone of his lawyer explaining Roberto would likely receive the maximum six years. The windowless holding cell, like a metal cage, packed with young drug dealers from Oakland in pea-green jail jumpsuits, nervously jabbering ("Watchoo in fo', ese?"). And the sentencing in the courtroom, a black-robed judge presiding, the deputy district attorney stridently portraying Roberto as a remorseless thug.

Then—the unexpected. The judge leaned forward to deliver the sentence. Roberto felt his gaze. Their eyes locked. The judge’s voice lowered gently.

He sentenced Roberto to two years.

“I think you’re worth saving,” the judge said. Roberto, he said, should spend his prison time contemplating how to prevent vigilante crimes. “You go in there like a man; you come out like a man, to the point where you help your community when you get out.”

Roberto felt as if he had been pushed down a dragon’s throat, but someone was standing at the top of the dark hole holding a lantern.

It was almost 5 p.m. The courthouse had grown still. Roberto sat, head in hands, on a wood bench outside Department Eight.

Lights happened to be on in the judge’s chambers. A friend accompanying Roberto talked to the clerk. A minute later, Judge Steven Kosach emerged. He greeted Roberto with a handshake and smile and ushered him into the chambers.

Of course Kosach remembered the case. It was one of his first big ones after being elected. He remembered studying Roberto’s face, sizing up the young man in front of him, weighing the proper sentence.

Kosach had a story to tell. He’d been a lieutenant in Vietnam. Before combat, he’d peer into his troops’ faces, divining if they’d follow his orders. They were mostly poor blacks and Chicanos, ages 19 to 21. Some of the faces resembled Roberto’s.

Kosach told Roberto he’d read his pre-sentencing report with great interest and concluded Roberto hadn’t set out to kill anyone on the night in question. He was worth salvaging.

Now, he was glad to see he was right.

They shook hands again. When Roberto emerged into the evening air, the courthouse no longer was a dragon.

It was just a building. And he had a lot of work to do.

You see, in prison he had not joined a drug gang. Once out, he became an anti-gang activist. Today, he directs the nonprofit Unlimited Intervention, showing up at gang hotspots to defuse tensions and counsel victims’ families.

It’s not easy work, and Roberto’s relationship with local law enforcement is uneasy, as well. Old animosities don’t entirely fade, even if the parties share aims. Perhaps the relationship will improve.

There have been many more Reno gang shootings over the past 11 years. Roberto is one semester shy of his college degree. Law school beckons. What he’s after, in adulthood, is political power. He wants to find solutions to the cycle of violence that grows more ominous, threatening us all.

A major salvage operation, if you will.

Reno freelance writer Michael Sion is working on a book with Roberto Nerey.