"Walking and Working on the Boulevard" and "Confessions of a Runaway" from Sunshine/Noir II: Writing from San Diego and Tijuana
The Best of San Diego City Works Press
This year is the twentieth anniversary of San Diego City WorksPress. In the lead-up to this auspicious birthday and the publication of Sunshine/Noir III: Writing from San Diego and Tijuana (in April 2025), The Jumping-Off Place will be featuring some of the highlights from City Works Press’s many publications.
“Walking and Working on the Boulevard” by Nancy Farness Johnson and “Confessions of a Runaway” by Justine Bryanna are in “Memory and Loss,” which is the third section of the anthology Sunshine/Noir II: Writing from San Diego and Tijuana.
by Nancy Farness Johnson
Walking and Working on the Boulevard
The high school I’ve worked at for the last 16 years has history in City Heights. Doors were opened September 2, 1930. The school was named Herbert Hoover, after the president who put people back to work after The Great Depression. A stone marker on the Der Wienerschnitzel side of the school announces that President Hoover’s Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) helped build the school. The student body was white, and the surrounding neighborhood of Talmadge was upper middle class. Movie theaters and family restaurants were on every corner, and mothers strolled through the neighborhoods with their children in tow.
Mothers still stroll the neighborhood with children in tow, but most don’t live in Talmadge, and except for about 11%, they are not white. A report put out by La Maestra on Fairmount Avenue, calls City Heights the neighborhood of “New Americans.” Forty-three percent of the City Heights population is foreign born. In the 70’s they came from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. In the 80’s civil war brought refugees from Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatamala. In the 90’s ethnic Albanians from Kosovo and Kurds from Iraq as well as East Africans fleeing border wars in Ethiopia and Eritrea arrived, followed by the Sudanese and Somalis.
Hoover reflects the ethnicities of City Heights: 70% Hispanic, 14% Asian, 12% African American, 2% White. Forty percent of the parents at Hoover did not graduate from their own high school experience. With or without an education, these parents emigrated from more than 60 countries and speak more than 30 languages and dialects. Their drive to become successful members of City Heights is admirable, but they must overcome numerous barriers including language and economics. They must fight for employment, often filling the lowest paid jobs.
In the last 16 years, I have read thousands of journals from these diverse immigrant students, reflecting the challenges of their individual stories. Students were given the option to fold pages in half if they didn’t want me to read an entry. They knew before they ever turned in their first assignment that if I felt they were being hurt or abused in any way, or might hurt someone else or themselves, I must as a mandated reporter turn their story over to Child Protective Services (CPS). It still amazes me how many pages were not folded over, were just waiting to be read. It still amazes me the heartache and anxiety that can pour out of a teenage child’s fingertips.
One young girl wrote about the fear she experienced when her mother went off to work at the 24-hour Mexican restaurant on 22nd and University Avenue, from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. She was left with her father for the evening. He drank his first Taurino Cerveza when he walked in the door after working all day shoveling someone else’s dirt or loading up someone else’s discards. He frequented Del Cerro, Hillcrest, and North Park in his dilapidated truck because those neighborhoods had the money. Their rejects kept him comfortable while he made his way through a twelve-pack before the evening was done. The light would creep into this young girl’s room when the door to her bedroom was pushed ajar. She would pray and feign sleep. But it didn’t matter what she said to Jesus or what she did to try and fool her drunken father; he would overpower her delicate body time and time again.
I asked her to stay after class the next day, and shared with her my obligation to the County of San Diego. More importantly, I shared with her my concern for her safety and well-being. I shared how much I cared for her and told her that no daughter should have to protect her body from her own father. She furiously screamed, “You have no business ruining my life! You have no idea what will happen to me!” She cried and pleaded with me not to tell.
Teachers never know what happens after we file CPS reports, and a student will rarely give up the details to an informant. The student never spoke to me again, and didn’t make it through the school year. A year later, she showed up in my classroom after school one day. The second I made eye contact with her, she began to cry. She walked across the room into my arms, and by the time she reached me, I was crying too. She said, “You saved my life. I just wanted you to know.”
Another 16-year-old girl wrote about her boyfriend and how much he loved her. He had scoped out the canyon behind Hoover, directly across the street from those fancy Talmadge homes, and found a cozy place where the two of them could have sex, a different period every day so no one would catch on. Sometimes the school narcs would check the canyon, so he would have to choose a secluded alley off Highland or the romantic spot underneath the stairwell of the 200 building. Her story didn’t stop with the great sex. It went on to say that sometimes he would slap her, punch her, or give her a shiner . . . but he promised to stop. I didn’t have to wonder if her facts were true; I could see the evidence myself.
CPS informed me there was already a report on file, confirming that the other teachers knew as well. I tried talking to her, especially after a fresh beating when she was open to hearing my facts about red flags and the cycles of abuse. I printed out articles for her and begged her not to stay with him, but the bottom line was she would do anything for him.
A journal entry written in pink ink with hearts on top of every “i” was written by a 14-year-old student who was a mother and didn’t really understand how she had become one. A San Diego County health teacher had come in to teach a mandatory course on male and female anatomy, stages of dating and intimacy, venereal diseases, and contraceptives. This naïve mother wrote about how embarrassing it was to see all the pictures, and drew a pink penis next to a girl and a cartoon speech bubble, saying “penis, penis, penis.” Inside was her rendition of a giggling emoji. She wrote about a party she went to in someone’s garage on Chamoune Street just six blocks from school. No parents around. An advanced-level game of spin the “Two Buck Chuck” bottle left her as the winner. She was taken into a dark corner behind the dilapidated couch, barely slipping down her pants for the insertion of something that she had never seen before, during, or after the birth of her child.
If you were to read my journal entry from my Mt. Miguel High School English class, four decades before these young women, it would tell you that when my boyfriend pressured me to have sex, I broke up with him. He smashed in the passenger door of his new car with his fist to prove his love for me. He bought me a dozen red roses and asked me to forgive him. I did. A few months later, he manipulated me with a tearful confession about a failed sexual encounter with a previous girlfriend. “Do you think something is wrong with me? If I just knew I could do it, I’d be okay with waiting.” My entire life, I had been taught to wait, but my concern over a possible threat to my boyfriend’s manhood changed everything. I didn’t wait. And after that first manipulation, I got more red roses every time he lied, slipped into another woman behind my back, or punched one more hole in the wall.
So, is my story any different than my students’ stories? Has the culture of San Diego high schools changed in 40 years? We should have known then to change archaic belief systems about girls and rights and safety, but we should certainly know now after nearly half a century. Society has always seen what it wants to see, and forgotten what it wants to forget. Even though my story is not that different than my students’ stories, I don’t want to see the truth. I don’t want to imagine that my students are being hurt, manipulated, or forced into sexual encounters that they didn’t choose for themselves. Being a mandated reporter, I have never had the luxury of refusing to see what was right in front of me.
These girls in my high school classroom didn’t have the luxury of . . . well, they didn’t have any luxuries. Many of my students can’t be involved in healthy extracurricular activities like those students memorialized in the History Room of the Bookie Clark Media Center at Hoover. Unfortunately, most City Heights students can’t live the San Diego billboard life, taking the Number 7 to surf in the afternoons (nevermind the beach is at least two transfers and an hour and a half away), studying at the Weingart Library in the evenings (their parents don’t allow them out after dark), and catching a late flick at the AMC Mission Valley 20 (Oh that’s right my mom works nights, my dad’s been deported again, and I have to watch my little brothers and sisters).
What we don’t want to know is that yearly hundreds of San Diego high school girls, who may have started out being abused in their own homes or by their own boyfriends or simply by a stranger at a party, become victims of sex trafficking in San Diego. We don’t want to understand that victims of sexual abuse may continue to be sexually abused if they are manipulated with promises of love and money and possibility. Even after my personal experiences of abuse, and even after intellectually knowing the truth about abuse and who it happens to, I held onto my own archaic understanding that such terrible things only happen in poverty, in the seedier parts of City Heights, Barrio Logan, or Encanto, parts of San Diego that I don’t have to frequent if I don’t want to. Such atrocities could never happen in my own neighborhood or in my own classrooms. I held on to an archaic understanding that those involved in sex crimes were involved by their own choice.
What saved those of us who went to high school at Hoover or Mount Miguel or San Diego High in the pre-1980 years? What was different? Why were over 300,000 girls forced into sexual trafficking last year? Were the young girls of my generation that different than the young girls of today? I don’t think so. There have always been dark things going on behind doors, in dimly-lit garages, in shadowy alleys. We have always chosen not to see them. We’ve gotten away with it for a long, long time. But the statistics are too shocking now. The means by which a boy can manipulate a young girl have increased exponentially with technology. And to young girls, he’s just a cute boy on Facebook or Instagram or in the cool car cruising El Cajon Boulevard. Many of these fine boys have found a lucrative diversion from their own difficult home situations by becoming pimps.
The Hoover of the 21st century does a pretty incredible job of seeing what tourists, politicians, and business mongers choose not to see. They have an amazing Health Center that serves hundreds of students a year. They bring student advocates, psychologists, counselors, and yes, even CPS workers onto campus to address the real issues facing our teenage girls and boys. There is an active parent center and even legal help available for students and families. Through one of the many programs at Hoover, I met a detective who handles sex trafficking cases in San Diego County. He confirmed that many of my own students had been propositioned, threatened, or were already working the streets. For every story I shared with the detective, he had hundreds of similar stories. His unit operates stings where young girls are caught prostituting and later put in safe houses where they are protected and given life skills to change their destiny. Once they feel safe, their testimony is used to identify leaders of sex trafficking rings across the United States.
How did girls comparable to my own students end up as prostitutes? Maybe they were being abused at home and decided to get the hell away from the very people that were supposed to be protecting them. Maybe their sexual exploitations started off innocently at a party where the spinning bottle stopped and a blow job or worse was required instead of the obligatory kiss. Sometimes the girls were blackmailed after the first act that went too far, and threatened with exposure to their parents. Sometimes the perpetrator threatened to hurt a younger sibling if the girl didn’t sleep with someone the boy set her up with. Rarely in these high school dramas did a young girl wake up one day and want to be sexually exploited, or dream in their princess dresses of growing up to be prostitutes. Recently, the detective who talked to me about sex trafficking in San Diego put me in contact with a sex trafficking victim who wanted to tell her story, hoping she could help girls who faced the same atrocities she had. The victim was a young woman who had been sexually exploited for the past 15 years.
Amy sits across from me at The Tin Fish restaurant a few blocks north of Market Street and within walking distance of Father Joe’s Village on E Street where she is living. It’s on the edge of the Gaslamp, maybe too much character for some tourists, but loved by locals for its fish tacos, fried fish and chips, and frosty beers. The patrons lucky enough to be enjoying this beautiful weekday morning at 11 a.m. would never know that eight months ago Amy’s testimony helped in the arrest of four major players in the San Diego sex trafficking ring. We settle on a table removed from the fray, and Amy nonchalantly, but incessantly scans her environment. Amy has stunning, piercing, golden eyes. She is eight months pregnant with her eighth child. She is wearing blue jeans and a yellow v-necked top that shows a tattoo across her chest. Down her arms, there are three other small tattoos, the last right above her wrist. She shows me the scars on her wrists, mangled one on top of another, where she has tried to take her life. Her short brown hair is covered with a blue and purple scarf pulled over her forehead and tied in the back. From her backpack she brings out a pack of cigarettes, a Ho-Ho, a Butterfinger, and a small recorder that memorializes her voice reading poetry that she wrote while in jail.
Amy: No date, but it’s important.
Fuck the world in which I live. I’m tired of being pushed, shoved, abused and used after all that I give. These men are scoundrels, piss ants, and poor hustlin’ asshole fools. I won’t take their mistreatment or bull. As a prostitute, call girl, drug dealer, student, I don’t have time to be played like a fool. That’s why I started way back when I was just ten years old, using my body, not as a treasure, but as a tool to get around all the dumb ass male fools. And I’ll die living by that rule.
Nancy: Ten years old. Wow. You were obviously super intelligent. Have you finished all your schooling?
Amy: Uh-huh. I’m a certified information technologist, certified production assistant, certified food handler, can type 65 words a minute. I have my diploma.
Nancy: Man, girl. There’s a lot for you to do out here.
Amy: As a girl now, it’s kind of weird staying in a homeless shelter. I’m creating a life for the little baby inside my stomach, not knowing whether someone is going to come try to take her, or whether somebody is going to shoot me or kill me once the baby is born. I’ve had this pimp’s family chase me around town saying, ‘Oh, wait until that baby’s born. I’m going to kill you, shoot you dead. She’ll live on without you.’ It’s just . . .
Nancy: Terrifying.
Amy: Yeah. And if it weren’t for me being able to call the detective and the girls from BSCC, I wouldn’t know who to turn to, you know? Other than God himself.
Amy then talks about the threats against her life and the pimps she has helped to imprison.
Amy: At the time when I was busted, I was taken to a safe hotel by BSCC from the Bilateral Safety Corridor Coalition here in San Diego County. What they do is they bust us working girls, us escorts. They send an undercover officer to our room to get us. Once they have us in custody, then they interrogate us until they break us down . . . and it’s not hard to break us down . . . although it took them 13½ hours to get me to break.
Amy shares her attempt to take her life, fearing what would happen to her if she testified. Afterward she was put in a safehouse until trial.
Nancy: Can you go way back to your earliest memory of family or street life?
Amy: I was taken from my mother when I was nine, and for the longest time I didn’t understand why I was taken from my mom. But then things started piecing together. My mother was a crack-addicted prostitute. She didn’t give a damn. Her drug addiction meant more to her than I did. Men meant more to her than I did. Because of that, I became a runaway. I ran away from 29 foster homes, and about 16 group homes. Two families wanted to adopt me. I took off from them. This is in the process of age nine to 18. I accumulated 149 points on my juvenile record. I was considered for adult prison by the time I was 15 due to some trafficking charges, that I was trafficking for my oldest son’s father, my son who is now 19.
I got pregnant when I was ten by a dealer who my mom owed ten dollars to, had my son at eleven.
Amy shares later that the money was owed for a $10 piece of rock cocaine. She goes on to talk about her pregnancy.
Nancy: Were you in a foster home at that time?
Amy: No. I ran away and I was gone the entire time that I was pregnant with my oldest son. I didn’t go to pre-natal care, stayed at home, was locked in a room by myself the whole time. I had home delivery.
Nancy: Were you back at your mom’s during your delivery or were you in foster care?
Amy: With the baby’s father, the drug dealer. He wouldn’t let me go nowhere. Every time I tried to go outside, he would block me. I was already smokin’ crack at the time so . . . I started usin’ crack when I was 14, but I was snortin’ cocaine when I was 10, 11 years old. Smokin’ pot, drinkin’, hangin’ out late at night. I started trickin’ out my body when I was 13 to a dude named . . . to different dudes . . . mostly my mom’s tricks or johns.
We spent another hour talking about her father and brother, her children, and her eight pregnancies. Only two children survived. Amy ends the interview by reading a poem she wrote to her own mother:
Mother, oh mother, why did you leave me? Now I’m alone to deal with the guilt and shame. Mother, oh mother, you introduced me to the drugs. Now I’m crawling around picking at the rugs. Mother oh mother, do you know that I wouldn’t have turned to prostitution and drugs if you would have given me more love and hugs? Mother, oh mother, did you know I attempted suicide because of the way you died? Mother, oh mother, please try to understand me. You created this monster in me, but I forgive you as the Lord has forgiven me.
According to a January 2014 FBI report, a San Diego-based investigation, much like the one Amy was involved in, recovered 60 female sex trafficking victims, including 11 minors. In its press release, the FBI reported that “twenty-four alleged North Park gang members and associates [were] charged in an indictment . . . the racketeering conspiracy involved cross-country sex trafficking of underage girls and women, plus murder, kidnapping robbery, and drug-related crimes.” Those charged managed prostitutes, forcefully coerced women into prostitution, maintaining their obedience and loyalty through acts of violence, and grew their business through advertising and booking motels where acts of prostitution could take place.
There is hope. Programs like San Diego Youth Services (SDYS), just ten minutes from City Heights, provides emergency services, safe houses, transportation, food, education, and much more for young women that end up on the street for a multiplicity of reasons. One of the programs under the umbrella of SDYS is called STARS, and is coordinated by Laura McLean, who I met at a STARS fundraiser held at the Joan Kroc Center on University Avenue. McLean explained to the crowd, “STARS provides services for teen girls between the ages of 13 and 17 who have experienced commercial sexual exploitation” (sdyouthservices.org/STARS). McLean works tirelessly to encourage the public to stop using the word “prostitution” to refer to our young girls who are being sexually exploited. She says, “Being a victim of human trafficking isn’t a choice, and we should use the best descriptive words for these victims of human trafficking.”
A lot has changed at Hoover and in San Diego since 1930. We have more immigrants coming into San Diego from Mexico and Central America, but recently also from many war-torn, terror-striken countries in Africa, Iraq, and Albania. Unfortunately, what hasn’t changed outside of Hoover -- through the affluent, political, critical lens of outsiders -- is the tendency to see what we want to see and believe what we want to believe about what we choose to see. The beauty of the changes at Hoover is in the diversity and tenacity of the student body. Students are learning to see what is before them, call out the demons of the dark, and insist on protection, dignity, and the right to walk proudly in the light. Hopefully, the outside world will catch the reflection of the City Heights kaleidoscope that is the next powerful generation of change.
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by Justine Bryanna
Confessions of a Runaway
Tonight was the night.
I didn't sleep. I was tossing and turning like a tadpole growing legs, panicking and clutching my stuffed lion tight. Tears flowed silently down my face and I choked on them, washing away the pain of an only child, too long neglected. I was alone. I was ready for anything the world had to offer. I was twelve years old. The weight of the world was on my small, bruised shoulders.
I crept quietly into my parent’s bedroom, holding my breath as I waited to see if it was safe. I stood above them, clutching my fists so hard that my nails dug into my palms. They both looked so innocent, so peaceful. Their dreams could be sweet. My mom's mouth was hanging open, and her husband, my stepfather, had a furrowed brow. I wished I could smash his face with a hammer, and let the blood wash over my hands, cleansing me of his sins. A child should not feel these things.
Most people look innocent when they are resting, and even the darkest evils can be hidden behind the mask of sleep. The only difference between good people and evil people is what they dream about when they are sleeping. Evil people have to face their demons every night, and here I was, facing mine in consciousness. I didn't want to be a living demon, I didn't want to be evil. I knew if I stuck around I would become like him, or become a drunken pushover like my Mom.
I loved my mother, but I knew I couldn't rely on her. In between her first and second marriage I became her caretaker—I was her only friend. She loved me so deeply and told me I could do anything... she never failed to make me think I was invincible. But she could never be there for me, and for many years I fostered resentment against her. I was angry that she didn't save me from my stepfather. I forgave her because I knew that she could not fight my demons when she could not even escape her own. I forgave her when she divorced that monster. I never forgave him.
This was my only chance for freedom. If I didn't leave now, I felt that the entire world would cave in on me. I would end myself somehow; I would self-destruct. Or, more accurately, I felt my stepfather would end me, and I was determined to beat him to it. I make the decisions about my life, not a man who hardly knew me and didn’t care about my wellbeing. Since my mother was no consolation, it was all up to me. I was my own savior; my saving grace was my self-esteem.
Back in my bedroom, I quietly shuffled for my favorite dress, clean underwear, and socks. Pants would be better, but the doctrines put forth by my religious step-grandparents forbid me from wearing anything but feminine attire. I only owned school uniforms and Sunday clothes. A dress is an awful thing to run away in—it makes you look weak. I seemed so innocent, so fragile, but inside I was a tiny warrior, fighting to be free of the oppression I felt in my body, mind, and soul. I lithely pulled the lacey pink dress over my pounding head, which was twanging like a broken cuckoo clock... sore and stressed, but I was ready.
I would have to change clothes as soon as I got a chance. And my hair, too. I would change my name, I could be another person the moment I walked out that door. I had to kill my former self, a child that got straight A's, a girl who had friends and played Barbies and painted her nails. That girl was now dead, I smeared warpaint on her face and she was reborn as a phoenix, flying out of a burning building. I had been training myself for this moment, knowing it would be the scariest thing I would ever have to do. I could jump fences. I could run fast, even in a dress. I could steal. I knew how to hotwire a car, even though I didn't know how to drive. I could talk my way out of any situation by batting my eyelashes.
I grabbed my toothbrush, toothpaste, and a hairbrush to tame my long, wild locks. It’s best to look presentable in all situations. I put them all in my backpack, and closed the zipper in slow motion so as to not make a sound. My backpack had a piece of plastic on the front that could be written on, generally reserved for immature ramblings. I scribbled FREE across the back and pulled my arms through the straps.
Mustering up the most grace and stealth I had ever known, I crept down the stairs, avoiding the step that creaks like you avoid hot lava, or cracks in hopscotch. All the lights were off in the living room, so I followed the wall with my hand, careful not to bump into anything. I traced the picture frames, bitter memories of synthetic smiles and forced happiness. I saw my cat, peacefully sleeping in his bed, and I said a silent prayer that he would be safe without my presence, and that no harm would come of him. I would have taken him, but even at my young age I knew he would be a burden to my survival. There would be no more cats to lap up my tears at night, where I was going. If my parents awoke, I was still going to run like my life depended on it. I would run into the hills of City Heights and never look back. I would be found years later, with the media in awe of how I survived among a pack of feral dogs, my hair matted and tangled, unrecognizable even to my mother. I had lots of fantasies of how my adventure would end. My life did depend on this moment.
Just hours ago, I had been thrown across the same living room, then stripped naked by my stepfather. He flung me around like an old flag in a storm, ripping this way and that until only rags remained. I was ordered to stand at attention and recite a letter from his superior officer that praised his duty in the military... wearing rags. His greatness was artificial; he was a coward, a bully and a liar. The letter was really about his superior ass kissing skills. Although my mother half-heartedly tried to fight him off, it became too clear that I could no longer stay here. She was too drunk to help, still drowning her own childhood away. I should have been more upset with her, but she taught me how to punch, and how to respect myself when no one else does.
I had fought him that time. That’s why he ripped my clothes to shreds. It’s tough to say what I did wrong that time—when the punishment is more severe than the crime, you get lost in the suffering. He wrestled me to the ground, and I pretended I was hurt, crying and holding my knees and rolling on my back as a scared child does. All he wanted was for me to read the letter, and I refused to the point of being attacked. My leg was spring loaded, and as he stood over me, thinking himself powerful and mighty, I cracked my leg out as hard as I could, and my mary jane heel hit him perfectly, precisely and squarely in the balls. Thanks for the tip, Mom. Men had a weak spot that I otherwise would not have known about. As he doubled over, I felt a power I had never felt before, and I regret that I did not kick him again, when he was down. I was going to pay for it either way, as these things often go. The blood rushed to my face and I screamed as loud as I could. I wanted to whole world to know that I had just kicked my evil stepfather. Justice is a dish best served with a swift foot to the nuts.
Just days before I had celebrated my 12th birthday party. My friends from school came over, and my Mom made vegan carrot cake that nobody could tell was vegan. Even then, it was obvious to my friends that things weren't right in my home. As word got around, I was able to sleep over with other families on the weekends, but that still wasn't enough of an escape from the cruelties I experienced. Knowing what a regular, loving, functional family is like makes your situation seem that much worse. But the kindness I experienced from strangers was also what kept my hopes alive. The world is full of good and evil people, and the only way to tell the difference is in how they treat those who are weaker and worse off than them. My descent from one reality to another led me to believe that it was time to liberate myself from tyranny. It was time to run...so I plotted my escape.
After saying a final goodbye, I locked the door behind me. The air was frigid, and sliced right through my thin, pink dress. I shivered from the moisture, I shivered from my fear, and I shivered from the adrenaline pumping through my ice-cold veins. I was in shock for the first few steps, waiting to hear the clambering of footsteps, the screaming of my name, or the sudden flash of lights in the upstairs window... but nothing happened. It was as silent as a horror movie before the first person gets killed, the suspense could stop my heart from beating.
Each step felt entirely new: I was learning how to walk again. As I started putting one foot in front of the other, I realized that this stupefied pace would get me nowhere. It was then that I resolved to run, and I didn't stop running for many years. I ran to the gate, and I let it slam as I ran across the road like an animal before it becomes road kill. My footsteps beat the pavement like a marching band belting out a victory song, I could feel the beat vibrating in my head. I ran up a hill, sweating and panting and vomiting out everything that had made me such a victim before. I ran from my troubles, from the police, and I ran from my Mom. I ran to survive the hand that fate had given me. But most importantly, I ran for myself.