THIEF ON THE CROSS

They call me Sundown; this is my life story. I was a miracle baby who grew up to become one of the longest active members and leader of one of the nation's bloodiest prison gangs and criminal organizations, La Nuestra Familia. It began inside the California prison walls and spread to the streets of California and America, the land of the free and the home of the brave and of bloody men like me who were baptized in the blood and fed from the table of bloody men, taught in the knowledge and ways of tried and proven warriors who have been to hell and back again. Home of murderers and thieves who dared to believe that we could become something and somebody, not just inside of California prison walls, but even reaching out into the very streets and society from which we had been sentenced to be forgotten by the rest of the world. But we were men who refused to be forgotten, and with the blood of our enemies, we would carve our names upon the pages of criminal history. And we did. I deserved to be crucified for the blood that stained my whole life and the crimes I've committed and the evil I had done. Like that one thief on the cross next to Jesus who found grace in God's eyes, God remembered me too, and now I am trying to live my life as an instrument of God's mercy to men who are as I used to be-murderers, thieves, and organized gangsters. This book was written raw, just as it was lived.