My location research for Rescued not Arrested started here in Phoenix on a Sunday drive with Roger. Sitting in the passenger seat, camera pointed out the windshield, I videoed his route along the I-10 freeway to where he’d rolled his Mercedes into the median wall on that fateful morning, September 25, 1997. Approaching the curve where he’d lost control of the vehicle, I zoomed in on the sign that read 45 mph.
“I must’ve hit this curve doing over a-hundred miles per hour,” he told me.
Close. Police forensics clocked him at 88 mph, according to the report. Traffic zooming by, I videoed the black mark on the median wall across the four lanes of highway, still there after more than twelve years. We then drove over to the Sixteenth Street Bridge, a mile-long trek to where Roger had limped after his failed suicide attempt when he couldn’t find the gun that had been spewed from the car—along with his two female passengers, bloody and lying in the street. Knowing that Roger had covered that distance in a mental fog and on a broken leg, I was amazed human spirit’s determination—even when that determination is to end one’s own life. At the bridge, Roger did a re-enactment of his partial leap over the rail, the attempted jump to his death before the police dog caught his pant leg and dragged him back to street side.Next on the agenda was a trip to L.A. where I followed Roger down memory lane, tracing key moments of his youth. He showed me the tiny apartment complex where he grew up just outside Little Armenia. He showed me the driveway where he’d watched a friend take his last breath—a toke on a crack pipe laced with a bad batch of dope. The kid had taken the first draw on the pipe laced with something lethal. It was the first hit on a shared pipe—one that Roger usually took. The heart that ceased beating night should have been Roger’s.
We climbed the sixteen-foot high chain link fence of his old high school and walked the grounds. He showed me all the nooks and crannies of good ol’ John Marshall High: the dirt-clogged field where he practiced football; the graffiti scarred tables of the lunch area; the staircase where the lethal street gang, Armenian Power (AP) claimed a small area of turf. Climbing back over the fence and leaving school grounds, he showed me the street corner where he’d TKO’ed a member of the AP, a pivotal moment that started a revenge spree—leading to his eventual flight to Phoenix.
We lunched at his favorite restaurant as teen, a greasy Greek dive at corner of Santa Monica and Hollywood Boulevard. I had the chicken kebab. Delicious. Watching my carbs, I skipped the rice. We then drove up Hollywood Boulevard while I filmed his approach to the gas station where the revenge fest with the AP culminated in a shootout. In an insane salvo of gunplay, a bullet that took the life of a friend—a bullet meant for him.
The rest of the locations I uncovered on my own. Digging through the paper trail of Roger’s criminal past, I traveled to locations noted in the reams of arrest and police reports that recorded the State of Arizona’s never-ending beefs with this thug Armenian. One of the thickest reports I read detailed the shootout between two rival gangs at the business of Roger’s parents—Choo Choo’s Deli. The shooting resulted in the death of a sixteen-year-old boy. Roger would open the place on the weekends as an after-hours “speakeasy” for his teen friends. The parties attracted gangs donning all colors. It was just a matter of time before two rival turfs collided at the kegs. The police report was as thick as a phone book. Using the police narrative, I sketched on graph paper the exact locations of the parked cars and shooters hiding behind them as the parking lot turned into a shooting gallery. I videoed in great detail for my own narrative. I even filmed Roger’s path to the local liquor store where he would buy his kegs. Taking video footage of the small strip-long party store caught the suspicion of the current owner. He came storming out and said,
“Hey, what you do taking the filming of my place, huh?”
What I do? I do get out of here—that’s what I do! I am sure he took my license plate number down as I retreated from the parking lot.
Having never been incarcerated, I became a badged volunteer with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) in order to get into the jails so I could gain crucial perspective of life behind bars. I also wanted to get a first-hand view of Roger’s ministry. I shadowed Roger on my first visit on March 11, 2009. I still have all of my original MCSO Visitation Logs. I was only planning on visiting the jails a few times, but God had other plans.
It wasn’t until my second visit, March 24, to visit an inmate named Jason, when Roger said, “Okay, I am assigning you to Jason. Be sure you see him once a week.”
What! I thought. No, no, no. I didn’t sign up for this. Me? Mentoring guys behind bars? Like, with a Bible? No, no. See, I do children’s ministry. My expertise is creating goofball characters like Professor Eugene J. Nerdwhiler and his sidekick Waldo Irving Crabtree. Mentoring the incarcerated is serious business. I’m not equipped to do this!
But the ministry was young, and Roger made me aware of the dozens of mentoring requests he was getting per week. There were too many of God’s lost that need to be reached. He said he couldn’t do it on his own, and he was actively recruiting a team.
I soon found myself drafted into God’s mighty army—re-stationed from the stage to behind cinderblock walls and bolted chains.
It wasn’t until my third or fourth visit to Jason before God gave me my life-changing revelation—a revelation that was going to be the cornerstone of my survival and trust in Him for unseen events rapidly coming my way. God directed me to Hebrews 5:12-14: “In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.”
For over fifteen year in Children's Ministry I was "drinking the milk" rather than "eating the solid meat" and understanding the depth of God's Word. That day God started me on a journey I called “Leading a Hebrews 5:12 Life”. Mentoring the incarcerated meant more than just reaching the lost behind bars. God had launched me on a journey to understand Him and His Word at a deeper level than I had ever experienced before.
I soon learned that this was not just God’s time of teaching. It was God’s time of preparation—preparing me for events ahead that were about to turn my world upside down.
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