From Gang Lord to "Yes, Lord"

By Dean A. Schiffman

Were I, as a criminal defense attorney, to tell you that I have studied the life of a former gang leader, you might get the wrong idea. My purpose in studying his life has been to learn from him and to better appreciate the benefits he brings to the San Diego community.


His name suits him, as a massive man: August Hunter. I have seen Hunter stand erect, feet apart, and ball his meaty hand into a fist. “When I was leadin’ the gang, I was like AT&T—I could really reach out and ‘touch’ someone, if I had to,” explains Hunter, swiping frighteningly at the air. Hunter’s shaved head would make him look menacing, were it not for his dark, discerning eyes set behind a delicate pair of wire-rimmed glasses. His lips—bedecked with a well-trimmed salt and pepper mustache—are usually closed in a relaxed way, giving Hunter’s face a serious but peaceful look.

I first met Hunter in 2002 when we worked together as volunteers at Otay Mesa’s Donovan Prison, where Hunter still counsels inmates. There I realized that Hunter’s language is effective for its plainness and just funny enough to make it stick. I remember one day when—in Hunter’s estimation—a large audience of men needed to be instructed on their speech and attitude. “Do you got a mouth problem?” he growled. “Do you need a checkup from the neck up?”

Born in 1960, Hunter’s descriptions of his childhood hint at the violence that would come into his life. “Growing up in New Orleans,” he says “I was an active kid, a fighter.” When he was 11, his parents divorced and Hunter moved with his mother to Long Beach, where he was quickly caught up in the local street gangs. Within a decade, he would be leading the Rollin’ 20 Crips, a predominantly black Long Beach gang. Back then, Hunter was one of the gang’s “youngsters,” as he calls them. “The youngsters in the gangs are vicious,” he says. “They’ll have a mother call her son to the door...to blow his brains out. They’re heartless!”

By age 20, Hunter was serving his first term in a California prison. “When I first got to prison, there was this one inmate—a big guy—who called the shots in the yard,” he recalls. “He started messin’ with me and I punched him. The whole prison watched him hit the dirt. That gave me a reputation.” Four years later, Hunter was headed back to prison, shackled to his seat on the prison bus. “The guy who testified against me was on the bus,” he says. “He saw me sittin’ there with all my homies. He was scared and told me, ‘Man, I’m really sorry.’ He knew I could have him ‘done’ in prison. But I gave him a pass.” Hunter’s third and last prison term ended in 1988, but only after he served three extra months for breaking another inmate’s arm. Yet things were changing, according to Hunter. “That time my father came from Louisiana to visit me in prison,” he explains. “So I knew he still cared. When I got out, I went back to New Orleans, and he baptized me.”

Yet Hunter stayed close to the gangs until the late 1990s, when his San Diego connection began to grow. His brother worked at a pharmaceutical company on Torrey Pines Road in La Jolla, so Hunter got a tour there. “Man, I could never do somethin’ like this,” he told his brother. But somehow the tour got Hunter a job interview at another company nearby, a week later. “Walking in there, I thought, ‘What am I doing here? They’re gonna laugh at me,’” he recalls. “Inside, the guy asked me, ‘What’s your name?’ When he said that, I almost turned around and walked out. But I said, ‘I’m August Hunter.’ Then he said, ‘We know about you, and the job is yours. We’ll train you.’ A week later I was working as an environmental-safety inspector in the labs, wearing a white coat. Heh heh...their human-resources people still can’t figure out how I got in there.”

Hunter’s year on Torrey Pines Road gave him a stable foundation on which to build. First, a co-worker invited him to counsel Santana High students after the 2001 shootings there (a few years later, Hunter and shooter Andy Williams would meet and talk). Around that same time, Hunter began attending the Rock Church, then in Mission Valley, getting guidance from pastors Miles McPherson and John Leeder. Leeder helped Hunter establish his work at Donovan Prison. Before long, the Rock hired Hunter as an associate pastor, a position he now holds.

One terrifying night in 2002 clarified the importance of Hunter’s ties to San Diego. He had gone back to his old Long Beach neighborhood to visit a close friend from his gang days. Standing in the friend’s front yard, Hunter became wary. Down the street was a specter-like figure in a black hooded sweatshirt and sneakers. Hunter tells the story in a solemn voice that still betrays the stress of that night’s events: “The guy started coming at us. Everything went into slow motion...like I was in a trance. He pulled up his sweatshirt and took a gun out of his belt. I could see it was a .45 automatic with an extended clip. I yelled, ‘Look out!’ BOOM! I remember yellow fire a foot long coming out the barrel. My friend got the first round in the face. I turned around and tried to run, but I fell on my stomach. I stayed down like that. Then, BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! I opened my eyes to see what was happening. My friend was next to me getting shot in the back. That gun was right there by me, and I thought about grabbin’ it. But I could see the guy’s eyes...they were red devil eyes. It felt like he had to use up all his energy and ammunition before he’d stop shooting my friend. When he did, he ran off. Right then I heard God say, ‘August, I can’t protect you if you don’t stay close. Look at what can happen in this world.’ That shook me up, bad. I got back to San Diego.”

In 2004, Hunter began attending a weekly men’s breakfast at La Jolla Presbyterian Church (LJPC). When the need arose, he stepped in to help 93-year-old La Jolla resident Harold Worrell with weekly coffee duty for the group. Now, on most Wednesday mornings, the former Long Beach gang lord and the frail World War II veteran can be found conversing in the church’s stainless-steel kitchen, where their two very different worlds mix amid the smell of fresh coffee.
Hunter’s relationship with LJPC continues to grow, and its people have responded. They began by tackling Hunter’s dire transportation needs—fixing up an old Chevy van provided by the Rock, with help from Miramar Auto Center—and then mustered financial support for Hunter’s day-to-day work with parolees. The parolees themselves began showing up at the weekly breakfast to share their stories and to simply enjoy their newfound friendship with the La Jolla community. In turn, Hunter is planning a day trip to Donovan for the LJPC deacons.

These days, when not with his fiancée, Becky, Hunter spends most of his time in Donovan Prison’s tiny cinder-block chapel. The chapel faces directly onto the main prison yard, so that hundreds of inmates pass by its open door each day. “I know how to talk to these guys. Some of them even knew me when I was in the gangs,” says Hunter. He attributes his effectiveness to solid support from the prison’s administration and to his leadership skills from the streets. “In the gang,” he says, “I learned how to ‘feel’ a person, how to sense if he was good or bad, fake or real. Now that helps me here, on a whole new level.”

Hunter’s work in the chapel mitigates the influence of the race-based prison gangs that dominate the yard. His palpable integrity works to draw in white and Hispanic inmates. “If I favor the black guys,” he says, “the other guys pick up on that right away.” Billy Phillips was one white inmate who flourished under Hunter’s influence. Phillips’ cellmate, Rick Slaton, followed. Slaton was a fearsome former street fighter and a leader among the white inmates. He credits Hunter’s humor-filled message of hope for his turnaround (see youtube.com for McPherson’s interview of Slaton). When Phillips and Slaton were released, the Rock hired Phillips to help manage its new Point Loma facilities. Slaton now splits his time between steady construction work and professional “mixed martial arts,” where he enjoys a 9-1 record in heavyweight competition. He trains at Unleashed Fitness & Training Center in La Mesa, where he donates time to teach the discipline of martial arts to kids off the street. Hunter comes by to watch, often with an impressionable youngster in tow.

Although Hunter is walking a new path, he is doing so in constant pain from a degenerating hip joint. His long treks to the prison chapel can be excruciating. Yet somehow the painful malady gives him a princely stride. Perhaps fittingly, another of Hunter’s recent parolees, Marcus Lewis, describes himself as “joined at the hip” with Hunter as he works to rebuild his own life.
Hunter’s particular story is faith based, but its lesson is general—that community matters. In his teens, having lost contact with his father, Hunter attached himself to the community of gangs. Later, with his ability to draw others to himself, Hunter brought community, of a sort, to his gangbanging “youngsters.” In prison, Hunter won community through conflict.

Yet in San Diego, Hunter has found lasting community. The people of its churches, businesses and even its prison have helped bring Hunter to faith, peace and purpose. Hunter, in return, is enriching that same community. The August Hunter I know has parolees breakfasting with parishioners, provides our own at-risk youth with true stories of hope, and causes our hearts to consider more carefully the value of those who share his past. 

Dean Schiffman is a San Diego attorney and expert witness. dean@LawAndNumbers.com

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