Twelve-year-old Carlos Gonzales demonstrated a skill the morning of May 15 that not many other children his age possess: an ability to find syringes.
“Here’s one!” he yelled, pointing out a used syringe along the side of La Joya Street in Española, that otherwise blended in with the dirt and gravel around it.
According to Delancey Street resident Kenneth Gutierrez, 30, that familiarity shows the danger children like Gonzales face in Northern New Mexico. Gutierrez, who is two years into a program to kick his heroin addiction at the rehabilitation center in Alcalde, demonstrated a professional wrestling move he’d use on Gonzales if he ever heard he was using drugs. They both laughed, but Gutierrez doesn’t want Gonzales growing up to be like him.
“I destroyed my life,” Gutierrez said.
Gutierrez and Gonzales were among the 100 or so participants at the eighth annual Youth and Family Walk Against Drugs. Children, parents, people running for political office and police made the annual 14-mile walk from St. John the Baptist Church in the Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo to El Santuario de Chimayó.
For some of the youths there was an opportunity to horse around with friends and grab some food at the end. For political candidates, it was an opportunity for some electioneering. For organizer Efren Sanchez, it was another year fulfilling a calling he was given after he had a vision of the Virgin Mary years ago. But others, those who fought addictions, said they were there for more complex reasons: to help others, to better understand their own situation or in one case, to reinforce a sober lifestyle only one month old.
Some were less-open about the details than others. Tegra Donnelly, 23, also in the Delancey Street program, carried a cross at the head of the march.
“Man, I was quick to get high,” he said, describing his life on drugs. “I wasn’t always quick to grab the cross and do this.”
State Police Lt. Eric Garcia said he thought the demonstration was a show of solidarity among community members and the police and government officials and political candidates who came to walk. It needs to be visible, he said.
“It’s a generational problem,” Garcia said. “Grandparents are doing it, and their grandkids are doing it.”
Jerrica Salazar, 20, and her father, Jerrold Salazar, 38, both of Española, walked side by side during the march. Jerrold Salazar said he had been addicted to heroin since he was 15 and watched his daughter grow up to become a user, as well. She is 20 and has been a user for three years, he said.
He said he was too “drugged out’ to realize what had happened. He’s been off of drugs for just one month and now the thought of their shared drug use bothers him.
“That does bother me,” he said, talking about his daughter. “You end up using together.”
Jerrold Salazar said he quit drugs after he flunked a drug test that was part of his probation for a Jan. 5 drunk-driving conviction.
His daughter was arraigned May 7 for a probation violation that stemmed from one felony count of criminal conspiracy and a charge of shoplifting.
Jerrold Salazar said he’s worried he’ll end up like his brother Kenneth, who died about a year ago of an overdose one week before his 37th birthday. Jerrold Salazar had been present for several of his brother’s non-fatal overdoses and had about three or four of his own, which he describes as blacking out. All of these experiences hadn’t stopped him from using and he searched for a minute when asked if he had any advice that could help addicts like himself.
“Ask God for strength not to use again,” he said.
Gutierrez, who had served time in prison for armed robbery, thought there was a personal reason that drove him to use drugs, though he may never find it. What helps him stay clean was staying involved with activities like the walk.
“I don’t have regrets,” he said. “I get to come out here today. I get to talk to you. And I get to help out this dude (Gonzales) here.”