Spanish Version

The Dying of Dino Zarate
Photography by Richard Wheeler

Where is home? A young man's life comes to a tragic end before he can find the answer.

On September 1, Dino's car was packed and he was ready for the drive back to Saint Mary's for the fall term. After he left Journey House, Dino ignored the advice of his longtime mentor and stopped in the community where he had grown up, the La Colonia section of Oxnard, a town on the coast in Southern California's Ventura County. In La Colonia, young people who are often the children of immigrants find themselves poor and marginalized in a new country and a new culture. Sometimes they isolate themselves further based on where their families came from in Mexico — Nortenos for those from the North and Surenos for those from the South. La Colonia is where Dino had tried to return to live with his father after his freshman year at Saint Mary's. However, a bullet hole in the hood of his dull blue Mustang was an ominous reminder that he could not yet go back home, so he spent the rest of his summer break living at Journey House.

On the drive back to Saint Mary's, something must have pulled Dino back to La Colonia and his old friends. Maybe he was saying goodbye. Maybe he was talking about his new life as a college student, as he did to Journey House residents when he visited there last year. Maybe he needed simply to go back home. According to accounts in the Ventura County Star, a ten-year-old boy who was skateboarding nearby said that Dino and his friends were sitting in his car when a teenager with a handgun came out of a building, crouched behind some bushes, and started shooting at them. The boy said that Dino's friends ducked when they saw the gunman aiming at the car; Dino didn't and was shot in the head. Police from a storefront substation a few steps away arrived quickly and found Dino slumped over the steering wheel. He was still conscious and aware that he was badly hurt. The officers took him to nearby St. John's Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead forty-five minutes later.

Dino Zarate was the kind of young person John Baptist de La Salle had in mind when he brought together the community of teachers that would become the Christian Brothers. Too often, however, students like Dino feel as though they don't belong on our campuses, that they are impostors who will be found out and asked to leave. Tammy Ramos described this feeling when she returned to Saint Mary's to speak to new students in the same High Potential Program that provided Dino and her with access to the College:

I am from Sacramento, California, and grew up in extreme poverty. When I arrived at school for my freshman year, I looked around this campus and thought, “What the hell am I doing here? It's only a matter of time before they realize that I am not one of them.”

Tammy went on to graduate from Saint Mary's, completed her studies at Notre Dame University Law School, and now teaches part-time at the College, while pursuing a career as a consultant.

When students experience themselves as being at the periphery, indeed, on the margins, of their schools, they are less likely to achieve the academic and social integration that is essential to their satisfaction, achievement, and persistence to graduation. Students like Dino and Tammy often report feeling culturally dislocated on campuses where they find themselves “minorities for the first time” or where they are poor in comparison to their peers, in a world where what you have often seems to determine what you are worth. Before young people like Dino can go back to their communities to make a difference, they first have to make it through our schools. Teachers and administrators have a special responsibility and opportunity to take conscious and concerted actions to create campus communities wherein all students feel valued and welcome. This responsibility includes actively modeling and encouraging welcoming behavior on the part of the students who are in the majority.

A few nights after Dino's death, hundreds of students, faculty, and staff gathered in the Saint Mary's College Chapel to remember him and to say goodbye. Those who knew him well said that he had finally found “a home” at the College and was fulfilling the potential that Journey House and Saint Mary's College had discerned in him. In a newsletter article written this summer entitled, “Awaken”, Dino wrote,

It turns out that college life is not as lonely as I anticipated. My first year at Saint Mary's has been one of the most exciting, challenging, and fun-filled years of my life. All the manipulation towards authority figures that accompanied my childhood has disappeared with the realization that I am now an adult. I am now responsible for whatever I do. As scary as it may seem, I am now my own person.... At this very moment, I am counting the days until the end of summer. I can't wait to get back to my classes, reading, and socializing with my positive friends....

In the Declaration: The Christian Brothers in the World Today, it is written that the Brothers will “take care to assist their students to become aware of human suffering [and] strive to awaken a greater sense of the universal brotherhood and sisterhood among all individuals and peoples.” As Lasallians from various racial, ethnic, and socio-economic backgrounds gathered to remember Dino and to support each other in their time of loss, it was yet another reminder that one of the things that Lasallian communities consciously seek is to bring together strangers who become friends, associates — indeed, brothers and sisters. The dying of Dino Zarate is an occasion to reflect on a community loss, a community legacy, and the power the Lasallian community has to change and save lives.

Question:

As you read this article, what other thoughts, people or stories came to mind? Please share your ideas with us (email signs@dlsi.org); we will publish responses in future issues of Signs of Faith.