As a light rain starts to fall on a Wednesday afternoon, Ben Sandoval tries to maneuver a basketball past two hustling teenagers.
Sandoval dribbled the ball successfully to the other end of the basketball court at the Española YMCA Teen Center. As another opponent rushes toward him for a steal, Sandoval passed the ball to a teammate, who shot it for a layup.
“It’s raining, all right,” Sandoval yelled after the score.
Sandoval, 40, is the director and one of the founding employees of the Center. He said he helped to initiate the Center to aid teens in Española’s underprivileged communities to succeed in life.
“I had a desire to work with teens,” he said. “I had a passion. I wanted to work with that challenging group of teenagers. It took me back to that time when I was a teenager and I was rebellious and rambunctious, and I really enjoyed that. I wanted to hopefully be a part of the success of young people here.”
Family YMCA Senior Program Director Diana Martinez said the Española city government started to work with the Los Alamos facility as a result of a parent’s grassroots complaint in 2007 that the city lacked recreational centers for teens. Martinez said that in 2000, Los Alamos National Laboratory had given buildings to the city to develop for teen programs, but the city had failed to do so for seven years.
Former mayor Joseph Maestas was affected by the complaint, Martinez said, so he decided to do something about it.
At the time, Sandoval was childcare program director at the Family YMCA, and Maestas’ son was participating in the program that Sandoval was overseeing. Sandoval started conversations with the former mayor about a potential center.
“His son was a preteen,” Sandoval said. “When he participated in the summer program, he said it would be awesome to have a program like this in Española. It’s well-needed. Then we had potential plans to do something like this in Española.”
The planning process advanced through 2007, and midway through that year, a rundown building in the city’s west side became the founding site of the Center. Luckily, the process unfolded faster than expected, Sandoval said.
“At the time, the building was vacant, just walls and sheet rock, a mess,” he said. “The seed was planted. We met with mayor Maestas, and we discussed, ‘This is what we have.’ That meeting, I believe, was in June. Lo and behold, the Y has always been an organization of action. By October, we have a teen center.”
Now, the Center serves youth aged 12 to 19. The Center offers various after-school programs, such as cooking classes, woodworking and greenhouse projects. Sports programs in basketball, football, volleyball and baseball are also available for teens.
An average of 45 students come to visit every day, but some days, the number more than doubles, Sandoval said.
Martinez said the YMCA focuses on teens’ health needs, and the Center does so by improving their spiritual and mental development. She said she credits the success of the Center to Sandoval.
“Ben became the boot on the ground, the director charged with making it happen,” she said. “We’re extremely pleased with him. We consider ourselves very lucky that we found a staff member who was qualified and had the passion to bring our vision to fruition. It was his hard work.”
Career change
Originally from the Valley, Sandoval spent his teenage life in Rio Chiquito, a small community of about 300 residents near Chimayo. He went to school at Victory Christian Academy, and in 1991, he became the school’s first graduate.
Sandoval then spent eight years in the army while taking college courses. When he got out of the military, he got a job with the United States Postal Service as a letter carrier in Los Alamos.
But an accident in 2002 changed his career and his life.
“My wife and I and our oldest boy were involved in a terrible accident May 8, 2002,” he said. “We were struck by a teenage drunk driver in Santa Fe on Highway 599. The drunk driver ran a red light. The young man was 16 years of age.”
Badly injured by the accident, Sandoval was no longer able to fulfill his duties as a letter carrier and had to quit his job. He wanted to pursue legal action against the drunk teenage driver’s family.
Then he found out that the boy lived with his mother, a single mom struggling to support five children. The driver was supposed to be playing video games with his cousins in Ojo Caliente the day of the accident, but he decided to party in Santa Fe instead.
“At that point in my life, I could have chosen to go after the family and take them for every dollar that they own, or I could try to make a difference in young people’s lives,” he said.
He chose the latter option. In 2003 he started working with teenagers at the Circle of Life North Residential Treatment Center in Alcalde. The nonprofit, which served predominantly Native American teens involved in drug, alcohol and sexual abuse, had to close in 2003 after Sandoval worked there for a year.
He then spent nine months as the house director of Casa de Corazon, a teenage treatment center for boys in Española, before moving to the Los Alamos YMCA in 2005. There, he rose through the ranks to become the facility’s childcare director before helping with the Teen Center.
Sandoval said working with the Center is his way of giving back to his home community.
“When I grew up in Rio Chiquito, I had nothing to do as a teenager—nothing,” he said. “This has inspired me to provide a good program for the Valley and the kids. I would have loved to have a place like this when I was growing up.”
Teen shenanigans
A teenage Sandoval climbed up the mountain along Highway 503 with his cousin Joshua. The two collected rocks and started tossing them to cars passing along the road.
“It was hot that afternoon,” Sandoval said. “I don’t know what came upon us. We just started throwing rocks at cars, you know, to see how many cars I could hit. What was I thinking right? We were on top of this hill thinking we were invincible.”
But really, they weren’t, he said.
The two carried on their antics, and it was Sandoval’s turn. He threw a rock and successfully hit a truck. He thought it was really cool and celebrated by giving his cousin a high-five.
The truck kept going at first, but after a moment, it drove back next to where the teens were. Spotting the two, the driver got out of his vehicle and climbed up after them. The two ran away successfully.
“When you’re a teenager and an adult is coming after you, it’s a wake-up moment,” Sandoval said.
Luckily, the driver did not call the cops on them, but the man did know Sandoval’s father, and the teenager got in trouble when he got home.
Now, Sandoval said he understands how many teenagers can get into trouble inevitably. He said teenage trouble does not prevent teenagers to attain success.
“I think back to all of the choices that I’ve done in the past,” he said. “I was bored. I didn’t want to be pulling weeds at the house. I didn’t want to be watering the plants. I just wanted to be a teenager and go do stuff.”
Joseph Dunham, who has been a member of the Center for six years, considers the Center as a life-changing facility. He used to tag, break things and burn things, he said. He broke into a private property in town, and was charged with breaking and entering, larceny and evading.
Dunham, 18, has always loved rapping, and he said the Teen Center’s music studio has helped him to launch his career and to turn his life around.
“I’ve been rapping since I was 12 years old,” he said. “I started out on one of those voice recorders. I’d be recording and just have the sound up right next to the TV. I’d be putting out CDs on the streets, and now, I’m at the Center in a studio.”
After releasing his first album last summer, Dunham, who goes by the stage-name of Young JD, held his first rap show May 12 in Albuquerque. He will release his second album, titled “Angels and Demons,” in July.
Dunham dropped out of high school his junior year but expects to earn his General Educational Development certificate in the fall. And it’s all to the Teen Center’s and especially Sandoval’s credit, he said.
“Ben has gotten me out of a lot of trouble as a kid,” he said. “He’s gotten me out of a police car, out of drinking. He’s a good man. He does what he does and he does it for the kids.”
Sandoval said the key to an effective teenage program is to relate back to being a teen.
“Everyday, I encounter situations where either I was faced with a similar challenge or I didn’t have the tools when I was 14 or I didn’t make the best decisions or I just simply didn’t have the frontal lobe development in my brain to make a conscious decision,” he said. “By having the interest in what’s happening in his or her young mind, it makes us successful on a day-to-day basis.”
Working with family
Sandoval met the love of his life, Renee, in high school. The two both entered the army, and in September 1995, Sandoval popped the question after years of dating.
The two have been married ever since. Their two sons Benjamin and Brandon are 12 and 9 respectively, and their daughter Janessa is 5. Renee Sandoval works alongside Ben Sandoval in the Center, and the director said their work environment is a healthy one for the Center’s teens.
“I love my family,” he said. “I’m a very family-oriented individual, and I try to involve our kids in all aspects of our life. The fact that Renee and I work together and have a business relationship is very healthy for the teenagers because they get to see a functioning family.”
Ben Sandoval said the Center provides teens who feel uncomfortable in single-parent households a more functional family structure.
“I feel that the community faces many challenges,” he said. “We live in a somewhat impoverished community where we have young people that are growing up with single-family households. Many, many children don’t have a solid family base. Many of our teens need that extra direction.”
Renee Sandoval, who herself grew up in a single-parent household, said she is touched to provide troubled teens in the city what she didn’t have growing up.
“For some, they don’t have families, so they adopt us as families, and we adopt them,” she said. “I tell everybody that I have about 200 kids.”
Renee Sandoval started volunteering in the Center with her husband in 2007, she said. She said that although she once felt uneasy to interact professionally with her husband, she has now gotten used to it. Their work dynamic inspires the kids, she said.
“Sometimes it’s hard because I’m known as Ms. Renee around here, and he’s Ben,” she said. “Back and forth, when I communicate with him, it’s always Mr. Sandoval. It was weird at first, because when we’re home, it’s Babe. We work really hard to show the kids that it can be done, that family stuff does not get in the middle of us working.”
The couple’s involvement in the program helps to ameliorate the region’s drug problems, Martinez said. She said the two serve as “adoptive parents” for children with complicated backgrounds.
“The state of New Mexico has multiple reports on multi-generational familial drug use, not just the entire city,” she said. “It’s a known fact. Drug and alcohol use deteriorates the family and the child. Some people can continue the pattern. Some children are the victim.”
And the Center tightens their family, Renee Sandoval said. Their children have consistently been actively participating in the facility’s activities, and their oldest is now an official member of the Center.
“As a family, my kids get to see their dad,” she said. “Otherwise, if he’s this involved in the community, then we won’t even see him. He gets caught up in so much that at least, this way, they can still see him. It works for us. Everybody asks me, ‘How can you stand your husband all day long?’ We’re weird like that.”
A rewarding job
Because Española is plagued by issues such as drug and alcohol addiction, the community should provide more resources to prevent teens from getting sucked by bad influences, Ben Sandoval said.
“During school, they have the basic structure,” he said. “They have the classroom, they have the teachers, they have the principals and their councilors. But once 3:15 p.m. arrives, it’s sort of a free-for-all. Sometimes, they just need a place to lay down and sort of turn the world off for a little while, or a place to socialize with people and release those feelings, those hurts that they’re dealing with.”
To steer Española youth away from trouble, the Teen Center offers mentorship and “safe alternative after-school activities,” Ben Sandoval said. He said the Center also organizes campaigns and presentations against drugs and gangs, and conducts talks and lectures about safe sex, health and hygiene.
Isaiah Espinoza, who first got involved with the Center seven years ago, was one of the teens who found safer activities through the Teen Center. An Alcalde native, he said the Center helped him avoid involvement in drugs and gangs, which are prevalent in the area.
“It just gave me something positive to do rather than being out there and breaking into houses and stuff,” he said. “We play basketball, we play pool, we look at computers. There wasn’t really anything for me to do as a kid except to play in the dirt.”
Espinoza had memorable experience with the executive director while in the Center. He said he loved going to rock climbing trips to Albuquerque with Sandoval and the rest of the Center’s teens. He said he also has a friendly court rivalry with one of his mentors.
“I like basketball, Ben likes basketball,” Espinoza said. “We would run a team, and there’s a little competition between me and Ben. He thinks he’s better than me.”
Although some of the teens who visit have had troubled pasts, the Center does not turn them away, Ben Sandoval said.
“We don’t put down the person that’s in need of help,” he said. “We provide them that help, but then we talk about how their life has been impacted by a substance. We talk to them about the statistics and about making better choices. And if they make mistakes, we’re still there to catch them before they fall all the way down. It’s kind of like throwing a life-safety net.”
Espinoza said he is thankful to Sandoval for the Center. And now that he is no longer in the Center’s age bracket, it is time to give back by serving as one of the senior members of the facility.
“It did keep me away from a lot of trouble,” he said. “I wish Española has more things like this to offer young people. Now, I’m already 20 years old, and I’m coming back because this place has played a big role on me growing up.”
Ben Sandoval said his students’ success stories keep him determined to push for the Center’s enhancement.
“To be honest, there are days that I ask myself why I am doing this,” he said. “Money makes the world go around. It’s always nice to have a good paycheck. This job doesn’t pay in the perspective of a big paycheck. A lot of the times, it’s volunteering. But it is very, very rewarding. That’s what keeps me going.”
Push for expansion
Since its founding in 2007, the Center has consistently been growing, Ben Sandoval said. The Center now offers weekly academic tutoring for students, and is also pushing for development in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields through its robotics program.
Besides the robotics program, the Center will continue its youth and government program in the summer, Ben Sandoval said. The new program would allow the Center’s teens to experience working with officials in city hall and learn about how local government works, he said.
The Center will cooperate with small communities in Pajarito for further charity work, Ben Sandoval said. He said the Center will also hold one of its regular three-on-three basketball tournaments on June 21.
But at the moment, Ben Sandoval is pushing for expansion of the facility. He said he has been in conversations with the city government for possible help with his plans.
“We want this program to be bigger,” he said. “We’re sort of tapped out of space. It would be nice to clean up the Teen Center a little bit.”
Martinez said the Center operates on a $189,000 budget, of which the city contributes about $40,000. She said the Family YMCA seeks more funding sources for the Center, such as the Rio Arriba and Santa Fe county commissions.
Martinez said she is optimistic about the Center’s future plans.
“We were called never a stagnant organization,” she said. “We must grow or we die. In a business approach, it was the right thing to do.”
Ben Sandoval said the Center should be more accessible to the city’s youth.
“I would love to be located on Riverside right on the streets where kids can see a flashing sign,” he said. “It takes a lot of work to let the kids know that we exist, that we are over here on the west side.”
To instate a more effective program, Ben Sandoval also calls on parents’ support. He said parents should do their part in safe teenage development by encouraging their children to seek safe alternative activities in Española.
He said parents should also have closer interaction with their children.
“You don’t ignore kids,” he said. “You have to communicate. Make eye contact with them, and sometimes, a little touch to their shoulder.”
As for teens, Ben Sandoval said they should never be afraid to express themselves. He said he urges them to get involved in the community as much as they can.
“I feel that all teens are in that challenging group,” he said. “I don’t think that any particular teen is not facing his or her own challenges. For every teen it’s going to be a little bit different, but you should stay on task, move forward, look ahead. Don’t get stuck in that rut. Don’t get stuck in that obstacle that you’re going to face.”