Sacred Hearts residential home at 1025 Evans was this kids’ perfect arrangement with no real supervision or structure, the freedom to come and go as he chose, which even at 15 years old he longed for. Despite more than a year having passed since the last time he had seen or spoken with Jerry or Phillip Vigil his desire to have a relationship with them was as strong as ever and he was determined to use his newfound freedom to see if it was something that was possible. Knowing where they lived, he set out to reunite with them for no other reason than to talk and see where they were at and what they were up too. It would not take long for his dream to hit yet another snag when he discovered both Jerry & Phillip had been sent to a state facility by the courts over a fight they had been involved in with some others.
On one warm summer July 1977 night dressed in tan slacks hugging his body and a silk shirt with colorful roses over a black background shortly after dusk he set out walking down E Evans toward Abriendo making his way toward 4th street going to east side. As he started walking down Union to cross the bridge a white Pontiac Grand Prix pulls up beside him with two young Black men offering a ride. Unless you knew this kid you would, just as the two guys offering him a ride did, think you were talking to a girl. As they headed downtown the guys said they were heading to a party and asked if the kid wanted to go for a while and they would take him to East Side after. The guys thought the kid was a young girl and drove to a house on West 12th street which happened to be almost directly behind a temporary group home operated by Pueblo County Social Services the kid knew well. McKinny house. As they exited the car the guy on the passenger side took the kid by the hand and started walking around the side of the home where about midway past front of house he stopped, turned to the kid, and started kissing him as he pushed the kid against the wall of the house. Always being prepared the kid had his afro comb (he had the biggest curliest afro of any white kid for sure) which had a knife blade attached to it. As the guy began to feel the kids’ body and discovered he was a guy not a girl, the kids instincts kicked it as he pushed the guy off of him, comb in hand and took off around the block. Knowing the area well the kid knew several kids who were at a group home which was on the corner of West 11th & West St which had this 2nd floor porch facing east. Lucky for him, they were out on the porch. As he sought refuge the two guys in the Grand Prix had driven around the block and parked in front of the temp home in plain view of the porch. After looking around for a few moments they left walking. At that time, the kid walked over to check out the car and realized the guys had locked the keys to the car in the ignition. Immediately both the kid and his friends decided to get the car open and get the keys.
After several friends from the group home made a few attempts to get the car unlocked they succeeded. The original idea was simply to get the keys to the car, preventing the guys from being able to drive it. Just as the kid got into the car to remove the keys from the ignition, a friend suddenly shut the door, said “lock the doors,” as the guys from the group home ran back to the house, the kid heard the guys from the car screaming as they ran toward the car. Without even thinking, the kid started the car, despite not knowing how to drive, he put the car in drive and drove off just as the two guys reached the back of the car.
Without thinking the kid headed for Interstate 25 and started driving north. Long before cell phones were even thought of, as the kid drove suddenly the car started slowing down until he pulled over to the shoulder and couldn’t get it to start again. Knowing nothing at all about cars he sat with emergency flashers on when another traveler stopped and discovered the car was out of gas. The traveler offered the kid a ride to the Tomahawk Truck stop at the Fountain Colorado exit. The kid got a tow truck at the truck stop to pick up the car and set it down at the gas pumps. Regrettably, the kid may have contributed to the pay first policy at gas stations today. The tow truck driver set the car down and started the gas pump to fill it while the kid was on a pay phone with his step-grandfather telling him he needed to pay a tow truck and gas bill. The grandfather then got on the phone with the tow truck driver informing him he was in Pueblo but would be on his way to Fountain within minutes. As the kid walked out to the gas pumps he suddenly realized despite the tow and gas being paid, he was still considered a run-away, and his step-grandfather was certainly going to call his mom.
At that very moment, the gas pump stopped the tank being full. Without even thinking, already having been given the keys back by the tow truck driver, the kid jumped in the car, started it, and drove off, knowing if he waited much longer sheriffs’ deputies would surely show up. The kid, surprisingly to many had quickly adapted to driving a car. He drove to the Colorado Springs area where he spent the night viewing the city from different spots providing various views. As the night wore on, he began to see he needed sleep, so he parked in a parking lot and fell asleep in the car until the heat of the sun rising awakened him the next morning.
After being woken by the heat of the sun the kid started to drove back to Pueblo. As he returned, he drove to a friend’s house on E. Routt not far from the E Evans home he had left the night before. Yvonne Martinez was in a placement with him the previous year and was back home with her family. As he was leaving Yvonnes he apparently backed onto the neighbor’s fence, unknowingly he drove off. The property owner had called police and reported the hit and run on the fence. As he was driving eastbound on Abriendo suddenly two Pueblo Police cars were behind him, not realizing they were trying to pull him over he kept driving but turned to move out of the police way. Police turned as he did, still not realizing they were after him he went around the block only to come to a stop after a total of five Pueblo Police cars had cut him off.
Being a run-away was the first cause of police taking him into custody. Being 15 years old, no driver’s license, etc. resulted in a bunch of traffic tickets, as did failing to stop. It was not surprising the owners of the car did not file theft charges, clearly, they did not want the fact two adult men were trying to have sex with a 15-year-old boy by force becoming public. Since all the tickets were traffic and municipal court the kid was fined with the court establishing a daily deduction of the fine per day in the city jail. The city set aside a corner cell in the jail where the kid would serve his fine. Ask the kid where he was the day Elvis died, and he will say Pueblo Colorado City Jail.
Once the traffic fines had been erased through jail days the kid was once again before Judge Abrams with Social Services to determine placement. Judge Abrams had already made clear he was not open to placing the kid in the state’s juvenile detention system given no criminal acts of any kind by the kid.
Over the summer Pueblo opened a new Juvenile Detention center on the grounds of the Colorado State Hospital a few buildings down from the Closed Adolescent Unit the kid had left in the spring. Social Services again informed Judge Abrams they would need time to find placement. The fact the kid was openly gay didn’t help them in that search for sure. Abrams placed the kid in Pueblo Juvenile Detention center for the time being.
A new residential group placement called VisionQuest had started in Tucson a couple of years earlier and had begun operating in Colorado Springs as well. It was a private operation which was based around the Plains Indians customs. They required each kid and state agree to a minimum 1 year and charged states almost double what other placements did. Now in early 1978, now 16 years old, social services sets up an interview with VisionQuest and the kid. A few weeks after the interview Social Services notified Judge Abrams VisionQuest had agreed to accept the kid into their program in Tucson, Arizona. Because of the out-of-state placement and the cost being over a state limit, in order to place the kid in the program Judge, Abrams would have to order it and issue order authorizing the cost to the state. In early March 1978 Judge Abrams issued the orders and ordered Social Service schedule a date for the kid to be released into custody of VisionQuest.
By April 1978, the kid was picked up by employees of VisionQuest’s Colorado Springs office and driven to the springs. After a day of paperwork and intake the kid was taken to Denver airport and put on a Frontier Airlines flight to Tucson. April 1978 would be the start of this child realizing just how strong, intelligent, determined, and capable of overcoming anything thrown at him he was. VisionQuest, its founder Bob Burton or any of its staff had a clue how to even talk to an openly gay kid much less anything else. Being so totally out of their element the kid was sent to the Lodge in Elfrida, AZ with the belief that putting him to work cleaning horse stalls, and other ranching work would somehow make him straight. The Lodge being run by a tall skinny guy named Pete Ranalli, good looking and self-absorbed who the kid clearly made uncomfortable thought constant belittling the kid was the way to approach him. So, Pete began constantly addressing the kid by calling him “the abortion that lived,” rather than by his name. To the shock of all the kid turned out to be very good with both horses and mules, riding and running them as wagon teams. But they still acted as if the kid was going to rape the other boys, so it was Bob Burton ordered this kid never be housed or bunked in any room with any other boy.
VisionQuest did these wagon trains from AZ to CO and this kid was about to embark on his. He was a Wagon driver first. As the train headed out on the first camp setup he was told while the other kids would be sleeping in the Teepees, he would have to sleep outside around staff. This was required regardless of rain, snow, cold anything, this kid was forced to sleep outside every camp from Elfrida AZ to Castle Rock Colorado (where he decided to run away from camp that night). He would celebrate his 17th birthday on a VisionQuest wagon train which left the Lodge on Elfrida Arizona heading for Denver Colorado. Traveling by horseback and covered wagon through the desert and mountains of Arizona, New Mexico & Colorado this amazingly intelligent teenager was treated as if he could be the plaque himself by an agency that was supposed to be helping troubled kids every single day. To be fair, not all staff working with VisionQuest were heartless, POS who lived solely for control, power over others etc. To this day this kid still has contact with M Harper a counselor he literally embarrassed inside a drug store by loudly seeking birth control lol. Or Miss. Lu from the Swan Rd school, a woman who gave every ounce of her being to not only educating kids but to make sure the kids were able to live the happiest most successful lives possible. A woman who showed every child she understand the importance of a kid having someone willing to truly listen to them.
After being returned to VisionQuest the kid was flown back to Tucson, where he was returned to the Lodge. Despite VisionQuest founder Bob Burton’s ridiculous belief that this now 17-year-old gay kid required separation from all the other boys in the program, never once did this kid even have a desire or attraction toward any around him. Truth is what no one seemed to have caught onto from the beginning was this kid had already established feelings for someone, had already made a commitment to wait and be with that person. Before first being sent to the Lodge this kid fell so madly in love with Alejandro Castillo. They first met one day at the Swan Rd school & office. Alex was in the VQ in home program who had a smile that would make the sun need shades. Alex eyes made you realize they looked directly into the soul. He was this gorgeous hot young man that you would find every girl in school chasing after with a heart that only comes around once in a million. The day this kid was held in Alex arms, held close, kissed, and told he wanted to be with no one but him, was the day Bob Burton and the VisionQuest staff had nothing to worry about. Not that they had anything to worry about to begin with, but hey this was 1978 and truth be told it is believed the staff were more worried about themselves than the other kids.
At the time the kid decided he would like to take classes at Cochise Community College in Douglas and applied to enter. He was accepted and approved for financial aid, because the distance between the Lodge and college was long the kid was moved from the Lodge to the house known as the Farm between Elfrida and Bisbee. It was from the Farm he started attending Cochise College in Douglas.
It was Christmas 1978 when the parents of one of the kids’ former counselors in South Carolina who he had spent Thanksgiving with years earlier were in Arizona and decided they wanted to visit the kid. 1979 came in and the kid had made many Iranian friends with the guys enrolled in Cochise College’s pilot training program at the time the Shah fled, and the US Embassy was taken over and citizens taken hostage. Having become so infatuated with these guys the kid started staying at their house which resulted in VisionQuest listing him as a run-away again.
It was late Feb early March 1979, and the kid was moved to VisionQuest Mount Lemon cabins. It would be the first time since entering the program that this kid actually attended any type of school classes etc. beyond his enrollment into Cochise Community College on his own while at the Lodge. It was at this time that VQ staff started to realize that by spending so much of their time and attention on the unnecessary & unfounded worries about this kids sexual orientation, they completely missed how intelligent, and talented this kid really was. It had already become a topic of conversation with many as to how quickly this kid had become skilled with every aspect of animal care and equipment maintenance and repair from saddles, wagons, harnesses, during his time at Lodge and wagon train. His ability to calm other kids when staff failed, his culinary skills including menu prep and amazing accuracy in food quantities needed for each meal.
Shortly after arriving at Mount Lemon the kid made, it known he wanted to look for an actual job in Tucson. He had already begun taking his GED to graduate faster given his graduation was still months away. He applied for a job as a breakfast cook at the Country Kitchen on E Speedway in Tucson. At the time this was one of the most popular places in Tucson where the weekends were nonstop. Despite no prior experience the kid was hired. At first it was part time and just 3 days a week. That didn’t last long, as with everything about this kid he demonstrated his ability to master anything in record time. Within 3 weeks he went from part time to full time and two weeks after going full time was made lead breakfast/lunch cook. With the promotion came the need to move off Mount Lemon and into one of VisionQuest Tucson houses. He was moved into a home about 3 miles east of Country Kitchen with 4 other kids in the program.
A couple of months had passed and one morning for reasons still without explanation, the kid was getting up and ready to leave for work. Another kid who shared the room in the house with him was awake this particular morning as well and was visibly sexually excited. After the roommate had made serval efforts to get the kid to have sex he gave in and did. When done the kid went to take a quick shower before heading out to work. The encounter became known to staff at which time of course it was the openly gay kids fault, and the kid was immediately removed from the Tucson house and sent back to the Lodge in Elfrida.
Sadly, VisionQuest had spent more than a year now more worried about some openly gay kid turning boys queer, than they were about actually helping the kid. Clearly for the money VisionQuest was collecting for the placement. Upon return to the Lodge the kid found a new staff member had been hired to run the kitchen. Michael De La Rosa. A young Mexican American guy from Douglas, Arizona. Cute as hell, smile for miles, funny and with unusual like for rock music. Michael had been given one of the main Lodges rooms with fireplace on the end going toward the barn. After a week or so back at the Lodge this kid and Michael started spending time together listening to music in his room at night. One song this kid loved, and which Michael played over and over was “I want to know what love is.” It was not long before these visits between Michael and this kid become physical touching, holding, hugging etc.
Soon this child had fallen for Michael and the relationship between the two had become sexual in nature as well. Clearly consensual but still given the year and circumstances technically illegal and definitely against VisionQuest policies (you would think).
Michael and the kids relationship became known to Lodge staff and as was always VisionQuest first response, the openly gay kid was the at fault party. By this time the kid had already fulfilled his one year commitment to VisionQuest and was wanting to leave, but VisionQuest wanted the money Colorado was paying them and had taken the position with the State that continued placement with them until the kids 18th birthday was in the best interest of the kid.
After Michael and the kid’s relationship was discovered, the kid was immediately moved from the Lodge and flown to the Colorado Springs program. He was placed in a home on E. Kiowa which sat on the corner directly in front of the Colorado School for the Blind. While the kid didn’t want anything to happen to Michael, he found it interesting years later that VisionQuest never reported the incident to authorities or the state.
It became clear to this kid his placement at VisionQuest was solely for the money and there was no plans for the kid other than his being kept until he turned 18 a few months later. VisionQuest Colorado Springs included the kid in their Graduation program because he had obtained his GED earlier that year in Tucson. It was after this that the kid realized leaving VisionQuest would be up to him to do. So, he left the house one night and simply walked away. Even after being picked up later as a run-away, he did not return to VisionQuest but instead went to his mom’s for a short period of time.
The End
NOTE: This is a TRUE accounting of a young kids life being openly gay and knowing it from a very young age. Not because he was the victim of sexual abuse as a child, or around certain influences etc as I see many today claim social media to be the reason for kids being gay. It is because of what I have seen and heard and even been told by some on social media that I wrote this. While I have been a staunch advocate against social and political agendas involving so called LGBTQ+ matters; I am just as outspoken against people who want to make claims a child can only be gay if they were a victim of sexual abuse or grooming.
While I can honestly say I have not experienced discrimination in employment or housing that many claim today is and has been on going, but then again unlike the narrative today, I have never lived my life demanding the acceptance or approval of others; nor feel the need to parade my ass down a public street for the world to see, or think everything in my life must be centered around my sexual orientation. Nor do I believe anyone, parent or teacher for that matter should be discussing the matter with children as if it is a subject in school but rather simply be available and open to a child when and if that child comes to you with a question.
Despite my parents being told when I was 6 yrs old I was gay, neither of them ever once in my entire life attempted to influence who or what I am. Or treated me any differently in any way.
I know this is a TRUE story because it is the story of my own childhood. While I support efforts to assist children who have in fact been victimized I encourage all you to understand by insisting that children who know they are gay can only be as a result of being victims causes just as much harm to those kids as those who are victims. And you need to understand that.
