Parents 'Get Serious' After Charges Filed in Child's Truancy

The gave Ayman and Alice Haddadin three chances last school year to correct their son’s truancy. The Orange County District Attorney’s office gave them one last chance to come in and talk.

None of it worked.

So when San Juan Capistrano school resources officer  of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department came to , Alice Haddadin’s reaction was at least consistent.

“'Get the F out of my house,’” Abe recounted Thursday night.

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The behind-the-scenes details were revealed at a sparsely attended meeting at  to inform parents about the Gang Reduction and Intervention Partnership, or  in their school.

The story of the five parents whom law enforcement officials arrested for their children’s truancy made news statewide. For the Haddadins’ then-eighth-grade son, it was the culmination of three years of efforts, trying to get their son to school at , Abe said.

“Most parents would say, ‘Oh, this is getting serious.’ Well, it got serious for them,” he said.

The Haddadins have since pleaded guilty and all five have enrolled in parenting classes. “So far, they’re all doing what they have to do, and it’s positive,” Abe said. “If we don’t have the parents care, who else is going to care?”

That’s where the GRIP program steps in, said deputy district attorney Lisa Grossman. Technically, she and her colleagues, including Kevin Thomas—an investigator in the D.A.’s gang unit—and Abe, are part of what’s called GRIP 2, a series of volunteer teams that serve elementary and middle schools in San Juan Capistrano, San Clemente and Mission Viejo.

Their goal is to reach out to kids who are at risk of eventually becoming gang members, to show them someone at school cares, Grossman said.

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Thomas displayed a map of Orange County, with colored blocks to indicate where gangs exist in the county. No city escapes gangs, and the white-supremacy and Asian gangs are less territorial, so their members are found all over, he said.

The San Juan Capistrano gang members have adopted blue as their color and can often be seen in Dodger jerseys, Thomas said. They also like the Dallas Cowboy’s star and clothes that have items unique to San Juan Capistrano on them, such as the image of the or T-shirts from .

That gang-adopted attire is now part of the injunction that is placed on gangs in the area, Grossman said. The injunction is a civil action, kind of like suing the gangs. When members violate the injunction, it becomes a criminal matter.

The injunctions also prohibit the gang members from hanging out together and congregating in certain areas, she said.

“Every color, religion can be involved in gang activity,” Grossman said. Residents of “pretty” areas are not immune.

Even children as young as elementary age can become attracted to the clothes and graffiti of the gang lifestyle, Grossman said. Teachers at GRIP schools are trained to look for doodling on paper that looks like gang graffiti.

“Sometimes, they just copy things to copy things, even if they don’t understand it,” she said.

As part of the GRIP program, fourth-graders at Del Obispo on Friday will hear a presentation of their own. Principal Eric Gruenewald said a lot of schools choose to offer the student presentation to fifth-graders, but he wanted to expose the program to as many children as they can.

He said it’s already paid off.

Some students from his school, and Marco Forster were hanging out after school off campus last year when they overheard other kids talking about “jumping” another student Gruenewald said. All of them had been through the GRIP program and all went to their respective principals to report the incident.

But even before they become fourth-graders, GRIP uses parent volunteers just to greet the students each day and let them know there is a friendly face that looks forward to seeing them every day, Grossman said.

“It’s about getting connected to the school, whether it’s a mentor or somebody to say hello,” Gruenewald said. Gang members know how to “market” their lifestyle. GRIP markets an alternative.