I was born in El Paso, Texas to Mexican immigrants but my family moved to the Los Angeles area before I was a year old so I know very little of Texas. I was raised in South Central Los Angeles during tumultuous times which included the 1965 Watts riots. I left Los Angeles when I joined the United States Marine Corps in 1971. While in the Corps I served on both U.S. coasts then closed out my career spending a year and a half in Sasebo, Japan, a Naval base about 50 miles from Nagasaki.