Ricardo Guzman brought his family to Colorado from California three years ago, seeking a better life. This summer, Guzman's stepson, sixteen-year-old Eric Campos, left Colorado for the same reason.
Eric Campos posed for this school picture before he
was kicked out for most of last year.
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Eric started his pilgrimage in a stolen van, sped to escape the cops -- and died in a rollover accident hundreds of miles from home. His girlfriend, also sixteen, was seriously injured in the accident.
Eric's death ended everything that his parents had hoped for.
"We wanted the best for them," says Eric's mother, Eustolia Galvez.
Galvez came to the United States from Mexico in the mid-'80s and soon gave birth to Eric. She married Guzman after he arrived in this country a decade ago, and they had two more boys, Ricardo and Pedro. The town they lived in outside Los Angeles was poor, and so was the family. Guzman had a job in a clothes factory, and Galvez helped make ends meet by working in a lunch truck.
Even though they would be leaving behind brothers, sisters and cousins -- by then, most of their relatives had moved to California -- they hoped to find better jobs in Colorado. And while their lack of English limited their opportunities, Guzman quickly found employment with a landscaping company. Galvez babysits.
Through an interpreter, Eric's parents say that they don't know why their son ran away. They say they don't know why Eric started getting in trouble not long after they arrived in Colorado. They don't know why he stole cars, threatened other youngsters or claimed membership in a gang.
Maybe he didn't know, either.
Eric's presence is everywhere in the Guzmans' cramped basement apartment in Aurora. His video games sit beneath the television set. Pictures of Jennifer Lopez, torn from magazines and taped to the walls, still surround his twin bed in the room he shared with his two younger brothers.
Religious objects cover tabletops and shelves throughout the cramped apartment. The furniture and rugs are old and worn. The rooms are dark, and the overhead lights shake with every movement upstairs.
On a small table in the living room is a shrine to the fallen boy.
The family has lit a candle adorned with a picture of the Virgin Mary and the words "Maria Milagros." A plastic replica of Jesus on the cross sits upright in a tumbler filled with pinto beans, next to a pot of pink flowers and a vase of dead carnations.
Eric looks up at his family from several pictures propped on the table. A recent photo shows a stocky teen with glasses standing next to his young girlfriend. Another shows him in Mexico at a party for his then-ninety-year-old great-grandfather. A third is a formal pose taken years earlier, with Eric standing behind a chair in a book-lined room.
In 2001, Eric was caught riding with some other boys in a stolen car and arrested for possession of a firearm, possession of a stolen vehicle and running away. At least two other boys were charged, but the case against Eric was dropped.
The police resource officers at his school, Aurora Central, came to know Eric very well.
"He was a poor example to set for the other kids," says Aurora police officer Dwight Chaplin. "He was a self-admitted gang member. He said he belonged to Sureno 13, which is a Southern California gang."
(Eric's claims to the contrary, members of the Aurora Police Department's gang unit say that Eric was not on their gang list and not identified as a member of Sureno 13 -- also known as Sur 13 -- or any other gang.)
"He was a pretty troubled kid in school," Chaplin says, "but he was a very good person when we dealt with him. He didn't really give us a hard time. I think primarily when you're used to dealing with someone one-on-one on a regular basis, you have a rapport."
The resource officers kept in touch with Eric's parents, whom Chaplin describes as "very good parents, very concerned parents."
But that wasn't enough to save Eric.
Eric was arrested again in October 2002, this time for felony menacing, aggravated motor-vehicle theft and criminal trespass.
According to Arapahoe County court records, Eric stole a car and used it to threaten two teenage girls. When he was arrested, his parents say, his then-fifteen-year-old girlfriend, Nikki Buelich, was with him.
Eric pleaded guilty to felony menacing and second-degree motor-vehicle theft and was sentenced to two years' probation, 45 days of pre-sentence time he'd served in juvenile detention, and thirty hours of community service, which he performed at Mount Nebo Cemetery in Aurora. He was ordered to stay away from gang members.
He was also expelled from high school for the remainder of the school year.
Eric visited his probation officer about once a week, finished his community service and searched, unsuccessfully, for a job. He did "everything right with probation," says Guzman. "No trouble."
"No drugs," Galvez adds in English. "Nothing. He was always home. He would help take care of the kids."
"The only time he left was when he went to visit Nikki," Guzman says.
But on April 22 of this year, Eric was arrested for trespassing near the high school. Police officers called his mother, who was unable to come pick him up and asked the officers to just send him home. Although Arapahoe County officials have no record of that arrest (it may have been a municipal crime), friends say that Eric feared his probation might be revoked because of it.
