Writer: Owen Leimbach Photographer: Estevan Oriol
You know this face, but for the record, the name is Danny Trejo. You’ve probably seen him as the bad guy (or apparent bad guy) in one of the more than 100 films he’s been in over the last three decades. And while you might think that he really is a badass, well, you’re right. Sort of.

    While Hollywood’s other tough guys were honing their menacing lip curl in the mirror, Danny Trejo was in and out of the California prison system (where he was a boxing champ in San Quentin) for the better part of a decade. Those wrinkles on his face are the real deal—cut so deep and in such troubling contours that you know you probably don’t want to know where they really came from. Suffice to say, he’s been places you ain’t never been.

    But that face and hard-knock life have turned out to be an asset for the full-time crook who made parole, turned it around and became a drug counselor to troubled teens. It was while aiding a counselee that he happened onto a movie set and became one of the most recognizable faces of “bad” in Hollywood.

RISEN Magazine: What was the biggest thing you dreamed of when you were a kid?
Danny Trejo: Having my own apartment. [Laughs] I never thought I’d be sitting here with you. I wasn’t really supposed to make it alive out of the '60s, so I’m pretty grateful every day.

RM: When most people talk about making it out of the '60s, they talk about surviving the hallucinogenic drugs or not drowning in the mud a Woodstock. What was going on with you during that time?
DT: I was doing armed robberies. And when you’re doing that, you don’t have a long life span one way or the other. You’re either gonna spend the rest of your life in prison or end up dead.

RM: Are any of your friends from back then still around?
DT: Yeah, there’s Charlie who I met when I was 8 years old. He was my uncle’s best friend. My uncle was my mentor. I have another friend named Charlie that we knew when we were like 13. Then there is Joey, who I knew when I was like 13 or 14 years old.
    Joey got married and found the Lord. Both Charlies have done a lot of time. Those are the two reasons that anybody [from back then] is still alive.

RM: Did your uncle take you under his wing when you were a kid?
DT: Yeah, that was my uncle Gilbert. My dad was hard-working and he was a lot older. My uncle was only about six years older than me; he was my dad’s youngest brother. So instead of being my uncle, he became like my older brother. He turned me on to grass when I was about 8, gave me a fix of heroin when I was about 12 and took me on a robbery when I was about 14. He did what he knew. That’s what I did too.

RM: Do you think that kids always end up doing what they see around them, or are there other factors at play besides environment?
DT: A lot of it has to do with choices. I had another uncle named Rudy who was a college student, went into the Navy and did real well. I just chose the easy way. Doing wrong is the easy way and doing right is the hard way. The real hard stuff is going to work for eight hours and getting a paycheck and having the government take half of your money. But I figured with the robbery thing that the government wasn’t going to get anything.
    That’s why kids are looking to be look-outs when they are 13. It’s just money and we are such a money-based society. If you have money, you have stuff, and the more stuff you have, the more supposedly successful you are.
    I went to prison for selling four ounces to a federal agent. And I think I had about fifteen thousand dollars stashed when I got out of prison. I’ve gotta say that one of the reasons I am here today is because I had that little nest egg and I didn’t immediately have to make some money when I got out. When you get out of doing 5 years, you have nothing. My mom didn’t even want to let me in her house. [Laughs]
    I think the main thing for kids is education. But we have made our education system so vast. You go to high school and you get lost. There’s no individuality in high school, junior high and elementary school. One of the best things we’ve got going is preschool because you might only have 20 kids in one class. But then you go from that to a mass school of elimination. Every kid that’s a little problem, we put them in a category. These kids here, we can’t work with them. These kids, well they’re okay so we can work with them. These kids are excellent, so we can definitely work with them.
    Our prison guards earn more than our teachers. To me that sounds backwards. Our teachers should be the highest paid people we have because they are the ones taking care of our kids.

RM: How did you learn to do the right thing?
DT: [It] was May 5, 1968. There was a softball game going on (where one of the teams was from the outside) one day when I was in prison and a fight broke out. It was alleged that [a few other guys and I] attacked a free person, hit Lieutenant Gibbons in the head with a rock and [busted up the coach of the outside team]. Those were all three gas chamber offenses for drawing blood.
    So we went to the hole. I was in the hole, and someone had written in feces “God sucks” on the wall. And I thought, “This is what my life has come to.” I knew in my heart that I wasn’t a bad person, but something’s wrong here. I mean, “God sucks” is written in s—t. So I remember saying, “God if you’re there, everything is going to be okay. If you’re not, I’m screwed.” That was it. That was my prayer.
    From that day forward, I took alcohol and drugs out of my life. I think that is one of the biggest things for our youth. It’s hard to do right when you are drinking and using. If you get up in the morning and you’re planning on going over to a friend’s house and drinking, you’re already wrong. Alcohol and drugs are the biggest deterrent from doing right.
    There are very few just “bad” kids. If you look at gang activity, if you look at burglary, if you look at most juvenile offenses, they are alcohol or drug related. And yet, if you look at most of our commercials for alcohol, they’re related straight to fun; straight to being cool. Straight to everything that a young person wants, even though [the alcohol companies] can say they’re not [targeting kids] because they’re using adults [in the commercials]. But what kid wouldn’t want to be on a jet ski in the Bahamas?
    Hollywood gla