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Date published: 3/8/2008
By COLLEEN LAMAY McCLATCHY-TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE EAGLE, Idaho --Gang life lured Enrique Martinez, 25, to drop out of school in the fifth grade and turn to stealing and drugs, a life he advertised with tattoos.His gang tattoos included the letters ESL, which stand for East Side Locos, his Caldwell gang, he said. Three dots near his eye are a gang message meaning "My Crazy Life," he said. Martinez, a Boise, Idaho, sheet-metal worker who wants to study mechanical engineering in college, recently started shedding the tattoos, the last reminders of his life as the gang member "Cholo." Second Chance Grace, a ministry based in Meridian, Idaho, is partnering with the program Dr. Ink-Off, which is a part of Eagle River Medical Aesthetics, to make the procedure affordable for Martinez and others like him. Through the ongoing ministry, ex-gang members can get laser tattoo removal for about $25 a treatment regardless of the tattoo's size. That's cheaper than the going rate, which can hover around $35 to $45 per square inch, the staff said. In return, participants in the program must pass on kindness to others through community service. Kids younger than 18 get tattoos removed for free. Kids join gangs because they want to belong to something, Martinez said as the staff at Dr. Ink-Off numbed his skin for the removal, which will take several sessions, each about a month apart. "A lot of people are looking to the streets for love," he said. They don't find it. "It's a rough lifestyle," he said. "A person gets harder, and you don't really care about nothing." That no longer is true for Martinez, who said religion helped him find the way out in November 2005. He now helps out at Calvary Chapel, steering other kids away from gang life. "I am denouncing it," he said of his former life, which landed him in prison off and on for more than six years. "It is not my life anymore." Among the other 10 or so people scheduled to have tattoos removed on a recent Friday included Lowell Urwin, 25, of Nampa, Idaho, who got into a gang because it was part of his family's lifestyle. "I went down, all the way down," he said as he waited to have his tattoos removed.
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