After a violent past, could ‘Puppy' help lead his community to peace?

Yahoo

25-05-2025

Editor's note: This story is part of 'Hard Times,' a special report by The Republican on the challenge of healing from civic trauma.
In the heart of Holyoke, where shadows dance,
Lived a young man named Puppy, caught in a trance.
His eyes held storms, his heart a flame,
A soul entwined in a perilous game.
That is the first stanza of a poem by Luis Antonio 'Khalil' Rodriguez, reflecting on the moment he nearly took a life.
Rodriquez posted the poem on his Facebook page with a newspaper article underneath it, with the headline: '2 Brothers Wanted in Street Shooting.'
Back then, in the early 2000s, people in Holyoke called him Puppy.
'The name Puppy came from childhood,' Rodriguez said, sitting in a Holyoke restaurant, just below Whitley's Boxing and Fitness gym, where he now coaches.
'They bought me a puppy, the puppy bit me, and I bit the puppy back,' he said. The nickname stuck.
'I have a tattoo of it on my stomach,' said Rodriguez, who, although he's 43, is lean and muscular with a defined six-pack and a boxer's physique. 'The name resonated with gang culture and the lifestyle of selling drugs.'
Born to a world where hope seemed lost,
He wandered through streets where dreams were tossed.
In alleys where whispers of violence grew,
He found a home in a dangerous crew.
Rodriguez's parents were drug users.
'I came out of my mom's womb going through withdrawal,' he said.
After his birth, he was placed into child services, moving between foster homes and, eventually, juvenile detention centers. He had two brothers and a sister, who were also taken away. 'My sister got raped in foster care,' he said of the horrors they faced.
Once he was old enough, he started selling drugs, hoping to earn enough for a place where his mom, little brother and sister could live.
'I was always thinking about the future, and my whole process of selling drugs was to try to get my little brother and sister back from foster care. I was trying to get my mom sober enough to get our own place,' he said.
But gang life consumed him – and soon the streets became his only focus. His fellow gang members offered him a kind of love he had never felt. 'For the first time, I felt at home,' he said. Everywhere else in his life, 'there was no love or affection.'
The gang was like a tribe that loved each other and offered 'a kind of unison,' he said. He was 14.
'But then, the goal was no longer to get enough money to get my mom sober enough to get an apartment and get those kids back from foster care,' he said. 'That lifestyle, it sucked me in like a vacuum.'
With fists clenched tight and a gaze of steel,
He wore his anger like a shield, to feel.
The world had taught him to trust his rage,
A fiery script on a youthful page.
The love he received from the gang was conditional. It was contingent on violence.
'I believed violence was a language,' he said.
And in that world, power belonged to those who spoke it fluently.
'The most violent, the most rageful people were the ones in leadership positions,' he said. 'They were seen and respected and honored.'
Reflecting as a grown man who's been incarcerated for attempted murder, he now questions that kind of love.
'I feel like people were more afraid than loving,' he said. 'The reality is people would do these things for me because they were scared of what I was capable of doing to them.'
Yet beneath the bravado, a child remained,
Yearning for love in a city stained.
Even as he sold drugs in a gang, Rodriguez understood that he was just a child. He still had the needs of a child. He still wanted a family. He craved unconditional love. He yearned for 'that peace,' he said. But his life would get much more violent before he found it.
The echoes of shots rang through the night,
As he sought power in a fleeting fight.
Rodriguez was 20 years old when someone pulled a gun on his 17-year-old brother, prompting him to go looking for the man, he said.
On that fateful eve, with adrenaline's rush,
He faced a rival in a deadly hush.
In the heat of anger, decisions made,
A bullet's path by his hands was laid.
He and his brother arrived at the man's house. When the people there saw him, they realized who he was. 'It's Puppy!' he heard someone shout in fear.
A man reached out to shake his hand. Rodriguez slapped it away. His gun was already loaded. 'I ain't come here for that,' he recalled saying.
The man who he said pulled the gun on his little brother walked over, 'acting real tough.' Curses were exchanged. 'I just shot one time to the face,' he said. 'I remember he dropped.'
Such violence was his reality. As he walked away, he didn't think about what would happen next. He didn't think about death or life in prison.
'I never thought I'd make it to 21 anyway,' he said. 'Because a lot of folks around me weren't making it.'
And as the sirens wailed their mournful tune,
The stars above dimmed in the solemn moon.
For in the act of fury, lives were changed,
A cycle of pain forever arranged.
He and his brother ran to Delaware but were eventually found and arrested. Police officers surrounded their car. One stood on the hood, pointing a shotgun down at his chest. Rodriguez's gun was loaded, but he didn't reach for the weapon. Instead, he reached for a photograph. His niece. His family. The life he had always wanted.
'And there was my niece,' he remembered. 'There was life.'
Yet, somewhere, deep in his restless soul,
Lies a flicker of hope for redemption's goal.
For even in darkness, light can break,
And heal the wounds of a heart that aches.
The man he shot survived. Rodriguez went to prison on a charge of assault with intent to kill. He served eight years.
In prison, he met some Muslim men who gave him a new name: Khalil. 'It means 'intimate friend,'' he said. 'They taught me the importance of a name.'
'He told me that this new name was going to define me in the future,' Rodriguez said. 'I didn't believe him, but it did.'
Rodriguez's road from violence to redemption has been long and hard, but he has committed himself to using his failures to help others.
After serving his time, he began working for different nonprofit agencies. He's worked with adolescents from 17 to 24 who have been arrested for committing felonies. He's worked in harm reduction, making sure drug users have clean needles — giving them a chance at getting sober. Rodriguez's father died from AIDS after contracting the virus from a dirty needle.
Rodriguez has spent many hours in city alleys, talking to people caught in addiction. He's picked up thousands of dirty syringes from the streets.
He has worked helping people who suffered from domestic violence, sexual assault and human trafficking. In 2014, he created the Vanguard Movement, which works directly with gang members, trying to help them improve their lives. He has dedicated his life after prison to helping people facing similar struggles he experienced before he went to prison.
Meanwhile, he learned how to feel. The same Muslim man who gave him his name passed along this wisdom.'When I look back at all the decisions I made, I never processed my emotions. It was always a reaction,' he said, adding that he only knew 'happy' or 'angry.' He didn't know anything in between.
Healing for him has been about experiencing a range of emotions, and learning that it's okay to feel.
'It's what you do with those feelings that matter,' he said. All of this work has helped him get closer to his 'authentic self,' he said, which has nothing to do with the gangs he joined as a child.
Since being released from prison, Rodriguez has run into the man he shot. One time, they were attending a basketball game where Rodriguez's stepson and the man's son were on the same team. He hadn't known this before.
When they locked eyes, the man walked out, but Rodriguez followed. They had a short talk. Rodriguez wanted him to know that they could share the same space.
Rodriguez carries the weight of that night. He asked for forgiveness.
'Yet, I understand that he doesn't have to forgive me,' Rodriguez said.
Eventually, they met again and introduced their sons to each other. Then, Rodriguez was doing 'Stop the Violence' workshops and he asked him if he wanted to participate. 'He didn't feel comfortable doing so,' Rodriguez said.
They have not spoken since. For this article, I reached out to the man he shot, but he declined to be interviewed.
'I need to make amends with him through my actions today,' Rodriguez said. 'Which is why I'm dedicated to the line of work I do.'
Oh, Puppy from Holyoke, may you find your way,
To peace and solace in the light of day.
For within the ashes of anger's fire,
Lies the seed of change, and a heart's desire.
A few days after we talked, Rodriguez reached out again. He'd run into the man he shot. And this time, the man said something Rodriguez never expected: 'I forgive you.'
'I was truly awed,' Rodriguez said.
Read the original article on MassLive.