Joee was so thin no one believed her when she said she was pregnant. When a tiny bump finally showed, it didn\u2019t stop her from using, although Santiago and her mother made a point of cutting down her dose: just enough to keep her from feeling sick.<\/p>\n
She never saw a doctor until the first day of December 2015, when she delivered a 5-pound, 5-ounce baby girl at University of New Mexico Hospital. Baby Girl Turrieta — she would have no name for several days — had big dark eyes, a full head of black hair and pursed lips.<\/p>\n
And just as assuredly as they had passed on their DNA, Joee and Santiago both contributed numerous risk factors that predicated a grim future.<\/p>\n
Joee had grown up in poverty and dropped out of school after sixth grade. Santiago, who had been given up by his teen mother at birth, was the victim of child abuse. He started using drugs at 10, dropped out of high school in ninth grade and ended up in juvenile lockup at Springer Correctional Center when he was 15.<\/p>\n
Social scientists call this bag of troubles Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs. When ACEs pile up, they create stress that is so toxic it actually changes the way a child\u2019s brain functions, resulting in behaviors — drug and alcohol abuse, depression, risk-taking — that set the stage for a life of failure and unhappiness.<\/p>\n
The more risk factors, the greater the likelihood the child will repeat the patterns. It\u2019s a theme of New Mexico\u2019s history and its stagnation in measurements of child well-being.<\/p>\n
That cycle takes interrupters to break. Luckily for Baby Girl Turrieta, she was to be surrounded by interrupters, from social service agencies to doting foster parents, a patient grandma and a dad whose determination and devotion are his new life\u2019s calling.<\/p>\n
![\"Santiago](\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/dju_20170801_Santiago_07-04-771x514.jpg\")
Don Usner \/ Searchlight New Mexico<\/p>
Santiago Turrieta with his daughter Mya Angel Turrieta.<\/p><\/div>\n
‘I love this little girl’<\/h3>\n
It surprised no one when a blood test revealed the baby had opiates in her system.<\/p>\n
Several days into her young life, Baby Girl Turrieta cleared the heroin from her little body and got a name: Mya Angel.<\/p>\n
Then the Department of Children, Youth and Families stepped in, and Mya went from the hospital into foster care.<\/p>\n
Joee, who had already given up custody of one child, would not be involved in the baby\u2019s life. She continued using and was arrested for possession of drug paraphernalia — needles — before Mya\u2019s first birthday. But Santiago wasn\u2019t giving up. When he looked into the dark eyes of his tiny daughter, something in him shifted.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe changed everything,\u201d he says. \u201cI love this little girl, man. I just can\u2019t get enough of her.\u201d<\/p>\n
He enrolled in drug treatment programs, attended drug court, and took every parenting visit required by CYFD. But give up heroin? He had been using it for more than 20 years.<\/p>\n
He passed some drug tests, failed a few and provided fake urine samples for others. He found himself using again on the second night out of inpatient treatment.<\/p>\n
After yet another failed drug test, his caseworker laid it on the line: \u201cYou stop, or she\u2019s going up for adoption.\u201d<\/p>\n
That night, he says, \u201cI had a dream that I was in this room with a grown girl, and I seen her eyes and it was my daughter. I said, \u2018Mya, Mya, it\u2019s me.\u2019 And I went to hug her and she pushed me away. And she goes, \u2018I don\u2019t want nothing to do with you.\u2019 And I said, \u2018It\u2019s me, your dad.\u2019 And she said, \u2018I know who you are. Just the way you didn\u2019t want nothing to do with me when I was a baby, and you chose drugs over me? I don\u2019t want nothing to do with you.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
He woke up crying.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t want her growing up wondering like I wondered: \u2018Who am I? Where did I come from? Why did they give me up? Was I not good enough? Did I cause a problem in their family? Was I an accident? Was I a product of rape? What\u2019s wrong with me?\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
Since that morning in April 2016, Santiago says, he hasn\u2019t put another needle in his arm.<\/p>\n
At first he thought he could do it alone, but he eventually gave in and sought help from a methadone treatment clinic. Now, he picks up his doses once a week and lines them up in the butter compartment of his refrigerator. Every morning starts not with a fix, but with a drink of methadone.<\/p>\n
After Santiago proved to the state he wasn\u2019t using and completed home visits, Mya came home to him that Christmas, a 1-year-old.<\/p>\n
And just like that, Santiago\u2019s life took a turn from robber, addict, convict and gangbanger to single dad trying to figure out nap schedules and bath times.<\/p>\n
He swipes through the pictures on his phone, pointing out Mya at Easter with her Hello Kitty doll. There she is, dressed as a leprechaun. Petting her cat. Finger painting. Blowing bubbles.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s my little doll,\u201d he says. \u201cShe\u2019s my princess. She\u2019s my snuggie monkey.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leaving behind gang life and criminal life is a struggle. One step has been a series of painful laser treatments to remove \u201cWeasel\u201d from his neck. But as a single father, he is isolated. Unemployed, he has long days to himself while Mya is in day care. His phone still pings with old friends asking if he wants to come out.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t,\u201d he says. \u201cI can\u2019t. I can\u2019t mess up and go back to prison. I\u2019m learning how to be a good person, not just a good dad. You know how many robberies I could have committed? It\u2019s not like I have to hold myself back. It just doesn\u2019t have that appeal to me. Like, the thrill is gone.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019ll always be a member of my gang, but there comes a time when you just \u2026 I\u2019m done.\u201d<\/p>\n
A reason for change<\/h3>\n
Santiago\u2019s mother, Maria Leyba, a preschool teacher and poet who adopted him when he was four days old, has been with him from the beginning, encouraging him to work harder, to do better and to win his daughter back.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you really want this child,\u201d she told him, \u201cthen you have to change.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leyba is sitting in the small home in Barelas where she grew up. Family photos and prison art cover the walls, and shelves are crowded with books about New Mexico.<\/p>\n
As a mother herself, she struggled as Santiago — so bright he earned a spot in a gifted class as a fifth-grader — rebelled against his adoptive father, clashed violently with him and, in his teens, chose gang life over life at home.<\/p>\n
![\"Santiago](\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/dju_20170801_Santiago_72-03-336x491.jpg\")
Don Usner \/ Searchlight New Mexico<\/p>
Santiago Turrieta with his daughter Mya Angel Turrieta.<\/p><\/div>\n
Eventually the parents divorced, but it was too late for Santiago. Leyba made countless trips to visit him in prisons and held her breath when he was paroled. When Mya came along, she told him, \u201cIf you really want this child, then you have to change.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe never thought he would,\u201d she adds. \u201cThat\u2019s the shocker.\u201d<\/p>\n
Today she supports son and granddaughter by offering a welcoming home. Toys are neatly stacked in a corner of the living room, and Mya-sized chairs are in the front and back yards. Mya has a crib there for afternoon naps and Santiago and Mya come every afternoon and stay for dinner.<\/p>\n
Santiago and Mya live just a few blocks away in a subsidized two-room apartment. He gets by on $700 a month in Social Security disability payments. He receives the support of a state-funded day care program and a weekly parenting class at PB&J Family Services in the South Valley.<\/p>\n
Now nearly 2, Mya is perched there on a little blue plastic chair looking at a plate of tortilla pieces, eggs and potatoes.<\/p>\n
Her father is perched on his own little chair. \u201cWant some more papas?\u201d he asks her and picks up a plastic spoon. \u201cI\u2019ll give you some more papas.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cassandra Walters, the parenting program supervisor, is meeting with Santiago to draw up goals for the next few months. Mya is starting to run and Santiago doesn\u2019t want her to fall. She needs to learn to use her words, to stop throwing stuff. Mya isn\u2019t a baby any longer, and her will and temper are starting to show. He says he wants to get her under control.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when Cassandra pounces, gently. \u201cWe can\u2019t control,\u201d she says. \u201cYou can show her and label it when she does it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Santiago circles back to a familiar lesson. \u201cYou can\u2019t control her. You can show her and guide her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Through these parenting sessions, he\u2019s learned to show Mya \u201csoft hands\u201d when petting their cat, patiently labeling and demonstrating the correct behavior instead of just telling her \u201cno.\u201d<\/p>\n
The weekly sessions are a place to practice healthy child-parent interactions. He learns to talk to Mya, work through his frustrations, and redirect her attention when she\u2019s veering toward mistakes.<\/p>\n
As he puts it, he\u2019s learning to parent through the child\u2019s eyes. \u201cShe can\u2019t talk, so she has to find ways to communicate with me,\u201d Santiago says, reciting some of the lessons he has learned. \u201cI have to adjust to that and be open to it and decipher: Is she dirty or is she hungry? Is she sick or is she just tired? What do her different cries mean?\u201d<\/p>\n
Santiago doesn\u2019t have it all figured out, but he\u2019s working on it every day. And as he celebrates Mya\u2019s second birthday and nearly a year as her full-time dad, he\u2019s proud of where he\u2019s come.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope that somewhere, a father that has walked along the same path of being in drugs, gangs, prison and is stuck with a child one day, I hope somewhere a father can learn and not throw in the towel and be like, \u2018Shit, if this guy can do it, I can do it.\u2019<\/p>\n
In an art therapy session at PB&J, Santiago patiently teaches Mya how to draw dots and then cap each marker after she has finished using it. Her hands, splotched with washable ink, make a fingerprint on a sheet of paper.<\/p>\n
\u201cMya made fingerprints!\u201d he exclaims.<\/p>\n
And then, a joke borne of the past, not the future: \u201cLet\u2019s hope she never has to do that!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mya Angel Turrieta was born with heroin in her bloodstream. Here are the people and programs helping to save her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":570975,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[234,142,146],"class_list":["post-570951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-children","tag-crime","tag-poverty","series-raising-new-mexico"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/570975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Santiago](\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/dju_20171105_Santiago_and_Mya_226-23-771x514.jpg\")