Vato Maldito, My Life of Crime, by John "Bubbles" Gallegos, edited by Raoul Vehill

In the summer of 1965, I was paroled back to Hayward, where I lived with my sis and her husband. They had two children by then, Raoul and Louie. I was released about the time that the riot started in Los Angeles. I soon landed a job working for 3A road service. In November, when the rainy season began, I had to work 16 to 20 hours a day, with no days off for the duration of the stormy weather. I purchased a 1959 Chrysler New Yorker and it seemed that my life had really turned around.

I was lonely. On weekends I would drive to frequent the bars in east Oakland. I ran into some of the crowd I had known before I was sent to Folsom. Since most of them were into drugs, I soon was using also, methadrine crystals, which at that time were still legal, and heroin, which I had been using off and on since 1958. Drugs were the main reason I embarked on a criminal career, though I always believed I couldcontrol their use.

I began living with Peggy Archuleta, my first true mate, in early '66. She had a doctor's prescription for disoxin, a potent weight reducing speed, and methadrine crystals. We used heroin and alcohol too. One day in late '66, she introduced me to an old man by the name of Ezekiel. He was a heroin dealer. One day he approached me about going to Mexico, his native land, and picking up a cargo of heroin. He himself, could not cross the border because he had been a Villista, a soldier of Pancho Villa in the early '20s. In 1922, all of Villa's and Zapata's warriors were banished from Mexico, or executed in the years following Villa's assassination. I went to Mexico for him, met his people, and returned with the drugs. From 1966 to 1969 I muled drugs from Mexicali to Oakland for him.

In 1969 he was busted for dealing and sent to prison. While he was in the Alameda County Jail, awaiting transportation to prison, I went to visit him. I had come to love and respect this old man, who was a Yaqui Indian and had been a Revolutionary with Pancho Villa, who had overcome the corrupt regime, only to usher in an even wore corrupt party, the PLR, and then had been banished from his homeland. I asked him if there was anything I could do for him while he was locked up.

"Yes there is," he said. "Take care of Elaine for me. I'm leaving the house to her. But she has a bad heroin habit. She'll probably need some help down the line, you know, groceries, diapers for the baby and stuff. Help her out if you can."

He had hooked up with Elaine while I had been serving a one year sentence in Santa Rita, the Alameda County Jail in 1968. He had come to visit me. I asked him how things were going for him on the outside.

"Not to well. I took this young girl in who has been buying stuff from me. She's going to have a baby," he said. "I haven't been able to get the money together for her to go down there and pick up the stuff."

"How much do you need?" I asked.

"About a thousand," he answered.

I had recently received an income tax refund check. I had used half the refund money to send Peggy to Denver to stay with my folks until I got out. "I can lend you whet you need," I said.

I released the money he needed with the agreement that he would visit me at the jail every

two weeks to repay the loan. Every two weeks there after, he brought me two grams of heroin, until I got out. I was released in October of '68. My wife, Peggy, flew all the way back from Denver to pick me up. I had planned to end the relationship as she had quit using heroin while I was locked up. She still drank liquor and took her diet pills, but living with my parents had helped her out a lot. I figured that if I ended our union it might be better for the both of

us.

I had been writing to a woman I had known since grade school. She lived in San Francisco and was to have picked me up on my release date, at midnight. But she didn't show up. Instead Peggy appeared, much to my surprise. Her mother and stepfather drove her to the jail

Molly and Ruben, Peggy's parents, hadn't liked me much when we had first hooked up. But when I had sent Peggy to live with my folks while I was locked up, so that Peggy could get off the drugs, they seemed to see me in a whole new light.

Peggy and I stayed with her daughter, Hope, from a previous marriage, as we had no place to stay at the time. Molly would pick me up every morning to go job hunting. Within a week I landed a job at a ladder company in Alameda. We soon had an apartment a few blocks from my job. Everything was going just fine.

One evening, Ezekiel showed up at my door. He had recently received a shipment of heroin from Mexico, but his lady, Elaine, was getting into it. We asked me to hold a few ounces of the stuff for him, which I did. Soon though, Peggy was dipping into it. When the old man came for his stuff, we had used about half of it, which I had to pay for. It took nearly all of our savings. But even worse, we were strung out on heroin again.

About that time, my brother Richard arrived from Camp Carson, on his way to Viet Nam. He had trained at Fort Ord, in California, while I had been in jail. He had even come to visit me in Santa Rita, some six months prior. He spent a week with Peg and I, during which time

we partied on diet pills. Since he was still a teenager, 19 years old, I was very worried about him going over there. I even tried to persuade him to let me go over there in his place. In other words we would trade identities. He almost went for it, but backed out of it at the last moment. When it was time for him to report to the Oakland Army Base, to ship out for War, I had a heavy heart. I visited him a couple of days before he was flown out. While we were walking back to the car, I struck up a conversation with a guy who worked in ordinance at the base. We went to the bar for a couple of drinks and to talk. He told me he had several assault rifles that he wanted to sell. I told him that I could sell them for him. Soon after that, we were doing business.

I knew some of the Hell's Angels were interested in weapons. I had bought some heroin from their Prez a few months earlier, for a couple of guys I had met in jail. And too, I knew some Black Panthers in the Bay Area. Things went well for awhile. I was working at the ladder company and selling weapons on the side, to supplement my income. Peggy told me about then, April '69, that she was pregnant. I was very happy to hear the news.

Peggy told me that she wanted to give birth to our child in Denver. But since I had a job and some excellent conditions, I did not want to leave the Bay Area. Things were finally looking up. Shortly after that though, I learned that my weapons connection had been busted by the FBI, which caused me no little worry. I was still on parole from the California Department of Corrections. I could not just leave the state. So I went to my Parole Officer's office. I asked him for permission to visit my parents in Denver. He issued me a 30 day pass and advised me that if I could find employment, I could have my parole transferred there.

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