Day by day, Enrique Flores found himself falling into the gang life. And his brother inadvertently provided the gateway.
Flores, who grew up on San Jose's East Side, idolized his older brother and was always by his side. Soon, rival gangs assumed Flores was a full-fledged gangster. At that point, Flores joined his brother's gang.
"In seventh grade I began to go to gang meetings because I was getting chased'' by his brother's enemies, said Flores, 27, who eventually quit gangs, attended Santa Clara University and now counsels troubled teenagers.
For Flores and many others like him, their introduction into gangs wasn't a conscious choice but rather a path paved by a relative or member of their household. There were no initiation rites. Instead, they were forced into gangs by familial circumstances.
"Some get jumped in, others get 'sexed in' and others commit a crime to prove they're down, but I was just let in because of my mom's boyfriend," said Julie O., 30, a former gang member who now directs a teen services program for the YMCA in San Francisco.
She declined to be identified by her full name, fearing repercussions from the gang members she once ran with.
Her mother's boyfriend had a corrosive effect on her life, she said. She alleges he molested her -- and he also brought his Sureno gangster friends to her East Los Angeles home.
Julie soon compared what she saw -- gang members, guys who seemed to have it all, driving expensive cars with their flashy girlfriends -- with what she knew at home: her aunts cleaning house, picking up after their children and cooking for their husbands. It was an easy choice: She decided to embrace the gang life.
The decision led her to a year and a half at a Los Angeles County camp for youth offenders and also to San Francisco's juvenile hall.
At 14, she was convicted of severely beating a rival gang member. Julie said her friends also were involved in the fight, but they let her take the rap.
"I was the only pendeja," or dummy, she said, "that didn't change my story, so I was the only one who did time.''
Her homies turned their backs on her in another way, too, she said. They never phoned, wrote or visited her while she was in custody.
When she was released from the youth camp, a judge sent her to live with a foster family in Contra Costa County because of conditions at her East L.A. home, Julie said. After she arrived in Northern California, she attempted to join a Sureno gang in San Francisco.
""I didn't like it,'' Julie said, "because the gangs were prostituting the girls, and I was used to selling drugs. ... The gangs up here are different from the gangs in LA.''
At 18, when she left foster care, Julie dropped out of gangs for good, she said. She realized all her friends had either become drug addicts or were dead.
Julie is estranged from her mother, who now lives in Berkeley.
"I was mad at her for a long time and I was hurt,'' she said. "I really hated her but now I let it go.''
Conversely, Flores talks to his brother once a month. But they never discuss the past, he said.