He was always born a special boy with just his father to guide him along the right moral path. Frank was this boy’s name. Frank was on the right moral path for a while. That all changed when he entered middle school. He began hanging out with a group that liked to call themselves MS-13. The MS stood for middle school, and the 13 because, well that’s how old the leader was. The leader was a boy named Raul. Raul had emigrated from Cuba at the age of six. He grew up in a rough part of Cuba where all of the people hated Fidel, including his parents. When he was six though, everything changed. His father was caught in an anti-government meeting and was caught by the secret police. They were to come to his house that night, and they did. They came to his house, but not before his father but him in a boat with his grandparents sending him to America.
The Rouges were a gang started by Raul’s brothers when they came to the United States. When Raul joined their gang, it was a fully-fledged crime committing organization. Raul part in the gang was to be a courier of messages from one gang member to the next, and to do recruiting for the gang at his school.
This brings us back to Frank. Frank was born in the States in the same year as Raul, in the same city that he has been in for 13 years. Frank had a caring father that was firm, but not a dictator. Franks mother was soft and gentle with Frank because she didn’t want to hurt his feelings or bruise his ego.
When Frank met Raul, he was intrigued by his story and how he was able to work for a gang and still do well in school. Frank then proposed something that would change his life forever and shake his parents to their core: he proposed they create their own gang. Frank suggested that they name it MS-13 because they were in middle school, and they were 13. Their gang started out small enough, but then it grew because of Raul’s ability to recruit people to their cause. Their first joint recruit was a boy by the name of Joe. Joe lived with his grandparents because his mother died giving birth to him and his father had to be put in asylum for extreme grief counseling. With nowhere to go, he lives on the street and lives in shelters. When he joined Linkin Park Middle School he didn’t have any idea that Raul and Frank would court him and ask him to be a part of their gang. What he did know is that these were guys his age trying to include him in something after school…. Even if it was illegal. Shortly after they recruited Joe, Joe, Raul and Frank dropped out of Linkin High to fully start working on their gang.

End of Part 1