From Cocaine To The Calling Series

One night, my dad came to me and he was sobered up. He had started getting sobered up when I was sixteen but by that time I was a drug addict. He wanted to make up for time lost. He was ready to help me and give me something, but it was too late because I was hooked on drugs. He was sober now, but I was the one strung out. He did the worst thing he ever could have done to S.K. West. He bought me a new car, a new Camaro with personal license plates on it. I didn’t have to pay for it or make the payments. He was sober now, trying to make up things to me. He didn’t know his son had such a drug problem. The Camaro did not make up for the time lost as a child. I started running the streets big time now because I had the car.

Driving to go to work one night I thought to take my life because I had no control in my life. I got the Camaro at a high rate of speed and was going to run the car into a tree. I went off the road and when I hit the dirt something made me turn the wheel at the last minute and I hit the tree sideways. I came out unhurt and daddy found out that I was a drug addict. After that, I told my brother, Steve, my mother and my daddy that I was hooked on cocaine.

How did S.K. get this way? I was young, had never hurt anybody. My family took me to a drug rehab, an alcohol rehabilitation center and checked me in. After several meetings they started bringing out things about my childhood. These programs never did anything for me.

In high school I got involved in marshal arts. Before I would let someone hurt me, it was easier to hurt them. I sought popularity, girlfriends, the in-crowd.

In May, 1984, I had another sports car that my daddy had given me. Memorial weekend had passed and I was sober that day. Three of my friends and myself got into the car and we headed to school. A truck hit me doing about 70 mph and I went into an apartment building with my sports car. I woke up on the sidewalk as they were cutting my shirt, removing glass and I did not remember what had happened. I saw a man crawling out of a pickup that was overturned and the medics ran over to him. As he took a couple of steps, he fell and died of internal injuries. They charged me with vehicular manslaughter. I surrendered myself after I got out of the hospital. Come to find out, they proved I had innocence in the accident. The man ran the red light, all charges were dropped, but still a man lost his life. If I hadn’t have been in that corner, in that intersection, even though I was sober, the thought kept coming over and over that the man would not have lost his life. Now I realize that all my friends were not my friends. They were there for the good times, the free cocaine, the drugs, the partying, but now when West needed somebody, nobody was there. After the accident, my mother and daddy completely washed their hands clean of me.

I started roaming the streets, living on the streets of Fresno, looking at people in condemned building projects, smoking crack and spending their welfare checks on the last little bit they could get a hold of; babies eating cold soup out of a can for there was no electricity to burn a flame; women taking one hit off of a cocaine pipe and selling their bodies to get another $20 piece of cocaine. These things I have seen with my eyes. I have felt the hurt of watching people sell their bodies for a piece of cocaine that lasts no more than 30 seconds.