Rabbit in the Jungle: Back A Rabbit In The Corner And It Will Bite Its Way Out

By Anthony Alegrete and Holly Baker

Rabbit in the Jungle tells a classically American story of second chances, hard work and hope. Sometimes raw and gritty, the book traces Anthony Alegrete’s rise from the streets of Los Angeles, through the penal system, to the halls of academia and the competitive business world of Las Vegas. Along the way he had a lot of fun, a little trouble and learned a few lessons. This book shares his story in a way meant to be cautionary and inspiring. Alegrete wants others to know the important role that family, friends and education play in keeping their lives on the right track. The title for the book comes from Anthony’s ability to survive in multiple dangerous environments. With more tricks than Bugs Bunny and more charm than Roger Rabbit he navigated the street culture of Los Angeles during the heyday of West Coast hip hop; navigated safely through prison politics; built a reputation for himself at University of Nevada - Las Vegas and partnered up with local fitness experts to bring a trendy gym to the downtown area of Vegas. In all of these jungles, there were threats to be dealt with and Alegrete always met them head on. At an early age he learned not to let fear stand in the way of what he wanted. No matter what the problem, he’s a master at taking stock of his resources and plunging ahead. Anthony Alegrete portrays his struggles and achievements with heart in full view on the proverbial sleeve and his energy level locked in at ‘turbo-charged. With co-author Holly Baker he has crafted a must-read for anyone fighting their way through the jungle.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 27, 2013
• ISBN: 9780989352925

Book preview

RABBIT IN THE JUNGLE. Copyright © 2013 by Anthony Alegrete and Holly Baker. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information, address Jump Publishing, Inc.

Rabbit in the Jungle is a registered trademark of Jump Publishing, Inc.

JUMP PUBLISHING and its logo, a silhouette of a rabbit’s profile, is a trademark of Jump Publishing, Inc.

Visit our website at www.anthonyalegrete.com

First edition published 2013

Book design by William Wong

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Algrete, Anthony.

Rabbit in the jungle / Anthony Alegrete

p.cm.

ISBN 978-0-9893529-1-8

Table of Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Part 1: Breaking Bad

1. Eye Of The Storm

2. Rabbit In The Jungle

Part 2: Breaking It Down

3. Reading Lessons

4. Two Worlds Collide

5. Badge Of Honor

6. Representing The Green

7. Free Wheelin’

8. Scholastic Aptitude

9. Tatted Up

10. Missing In Action

11. Ace Of Clubs

12. Relationship Ricochet

13. Real Estate And Robin Hood

14. Calling Audibles

15. Compass Points

16. Go Hard Or Go Home

17. Livin’ Like A Bandit

18. It’s My Dream Too

19. No Rewind

20. Shattered

21. Fate Plays Favorites

22. Reading Lessons Reprise

23. Mind Over Matter

24. Baptism In Sin City

25. Wild Oats, Then The Harvest

Part 3: Breaking Out

26. Always Cook Them Breakfast

27. Getting Schooled

28. And Other Members of The Tribe

29. Breaking Two Taboos

30. Two Of A Kind

31. Run With It

32. Trading Health For Happiness

33. Throwing Stones At The Throne

34. Taking That Chance

35. Sum Total

Afterword

Photos

Works Cited

Acknowledgements

About The Authors

Find Anthony Alegrete

For The Reader

To my loving family,

Loriel, Anthony, Dominic, and Giana.

You are my inspiration behind everything I do.

I love you all more than life itself.

To the streets,

you chewed me up and spit me out, But you always kept me sharp. I married you when I was young and my divorce from you doesn’t mean I don’t love you anymore. It’s just time for me to move on and experience other ways of living. I will never forget our close calls, near death experiences, money we made, beautiful places you took me, and even the dark times behind bars. I will always remember the times we shared together. After all, you taught me to get my mind right and get myself up off of you.

Foreword

By William Wong

A friend and I were walking out of his house when two gang members pulled guns on us. The guys were yelling at us in Spanish at rapid-fire speed, demanding that we answer them. Gang signs were tossed around like sign language. Tattoos covered their entire body and their guns were flashing all over the place. I tried to remain composed and listen to my gut instinct, which was screaming at me to swing for the fences and run for my life. Then my body froze. Everything turned red. I struggled to speak.

But I couldn’t. It was impossible to even breathe. I couldn’t understand the guys because they were speaking Spanish. The words were entering my brain too fast for me to attempt to translate. Every few words they shouted were in English, Where did they go?…Don’t fuck with us!…We’ll kill you motherfuckers! They were looking for somebody, but we just walked out of the house and knew nothing about what they wanted. Suddenly, one of them raised their gun in the air: they were getting anxious. The two guys exchanged words angrily, patience was giving way to frustration. If I didn’t do something soon, their threats would quickly turn into action and my life would be in jeopardy.

I didn’t know what to do. If I tried to reason with them, I might be able to calm them down and gain control of the situation. But could the little Spanish I knew be enough to save me? Or would it make things worse?

The other option was to close the distance between us in a desperate attempt to overcome them by force; at a closer range we would have a better chance avoiding getting shot. Fighting them might allow us to disarm them and give us time to make a run for it, but if we couldn’t gain control of the situation, then both my friend and I would end up what homicide detectives call a Ten Seven, police radio code for out of service.

It was a nightmare. I was sweating profusely. My heart was beating through my chest. Adrenaline filled my veins. Tunnel vision paralyzed my ability to see and panic was taking over my body. Then the gun was lowered, now pointing directly in my face. I tried to think straight, but there wasn’t time. The severity of the situation was escalating rapidly. If I didn’t act at that moment, I would be shot and killed for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

That’s when I made up my mind: I didn’t know what they wanted or who they were looking for, but to save myself I would give them a false lead. Looking dead in their eyes I asserted they should go towards the alleyway around back. Some guys ran that way, I pointed with my hands up, ready to say anything to satisfy them.

They left as quickly as they came, running in the direction I gave them. Within seconds we heard shots being fired. Five unanswered rounds went off like fireworks. Everyone came rushing out of their homes to see the action. Police arrived almost instantly. A sense of relief and fear filled my lungs.

Just as I started to catch my breathe, I saw two police officers race past a man face down in the alley laying in a pool of blood–the first time I had ever seen a dead body.

The smoke eventually cleared and the questioning began. Testimony after testimony for hours on end, sitting there wondering if my cooperation with the police would come back to haunt me one day. Every second I was there talking with the cops made me wish I was never involved and for the first time I questioned the direction my life was heading in.

As much as I wanted to ask why I was still alive or how everything happened the way it did, I couldn’t help but repeat the question, Where is my life going? What was I doing to find myself in these situations time and time again? Twice before I was threatened with guns on separate occasions–gun to my chest during an attempted robbery and a gun wielding threat from another gang member. Was this a pattern? How could it be? Besides, each of the three occurrences involving guns were from being at the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s not like I was looking for trouble. I had never been a member of a gang. What was the cause of these close calls? Questions filled my mind and eventually I was overwhelmed with concern about my fate.

This book is about asking the right questions. It is about close calls and near death experiences. It is about the moment, right before a life-changing event, where you make a choice about who you are and who you want to be. It’s about rough neighborhoods, family, high school romance, stealing, dealing, snitches, prison, business, education, community, and how each of those things can be intertwined. If there is a unified theme in life, it is the fact that the decisions you make are what determine your fate. This book is about deciding your fate.

When I looked at my life while sitting on the edge of the curb, only feet away from a homicide victim, I made a decision to change. I knew I was going down the wrong path. I knew that I could be the guy ending up laying in a pool of my own blood. If I were to have the life I wanted, I would have to make some changes and become the person I wanted to be.

Throughout this book you will encounter experiences Anthony has gone through in his life from his upbringing, his first crime, prison, traveling the world, as an entrepreneur, and even stories about who he is now and what is coming next. We’ll venture out into the rough neighborhoods of Los Angeles, to interactions with gang violence, to police chases, and prison riots. He’ll also take you through stories about sacrifice, loyalty, family, and honor. You’ll explore the depths of drug dealing, and the repercussions of street snitches. You’ll meet rap artists, CEO’s, and celebrities who have helped shape who the author is today. Anthony will show you how he learned to make better decisions, face life’s challenges, and rewrite his destiny. The goal of this book is to challenge you to ask yourself the questions that most people have difficulty asking, from church pastors to college professors, from drug dealers to drug addicts and everyone in between: Where is my life going? And what am I doing to make my life better?

William Wong is the Director of Development for the Jump for Joy Foundation in Las Vegas, NV. He has used his story to motivate and encourage young people throughout the Clark County School District from high school to college and alumni. He is also the author of Get Ahead At 18!, a book about making life choices as a young adult. You can find him at www.willwong.me.

Introduction

How do you begin to think about calculus and biology when your stomach is growling from hunger or you’re hearing bullets from your bedroom window? The unfortunate truth: ghettos, bad neighborhoods, and lower classes exist in the United States of America. Many of us are born into poverty and some levels are deeper than others, but struggle is struggle—it’s relative to the person experiencing it. I was fortunate to have grown up in the upper levels of the lower class, so it wasn’t as if I was in the super ghetto or anything. My neighborhoods were rough and poor but not destitute. Nevertheless, the struggle comes in all shapes and sizes. It’s what you do that makes you who you are. These struggles are never excuses to be complacent and just do nothing about your circumstances. Get out there and make life happen! Don’t sit around idly hoping for change. An arrow can only be shot after it’s first pulled backward. When life is dragging you back with difficulties, it means it’s going to launch you into something great. Just focus, and keep aiming.

Every now and then, we wake and get the urge to just do something. Whatever it is, something suddenly turns your light bulb on. The deep passion that resides in your gut gets ignited like a forest fire. That light bulb came on for me during a morning in Winter 2012. I wanted to write a book about my experiences and struggles. I had to let the world know who Anthony Alegrete truly is and the situations I’ve gone through and continue to experience. With everything that I’ve lived, I felt I had a compelling-enough story and a blueprint for success. Even with my close calls and prison experiences, I knew, at the very minimum, I could tell the story of how I survived it and have turned negative into positive.

The sad reality is that many great individuals get sucked into the system. They allow it to overtake them and control their lives. If only we all had a guide, a drawing, a road map on how to live successfully. Our education system is so fragmented; it’s no wonder America has the highest population of prison inmates of any country in the world.

Growing up on the streets of Los Angeles, California, I’ve had my fair share of life lessons. My parents divorced when I was five years old. I became a rebellious youth and got into trouble that I couldn’t get out of. As a teenager, I started breaking the law and going to jail. I graduated to committing full-out crime as a young adult and ended up in and out of prison. After an extremely vulnerable moment inside the penitentiary, I realized I needed to make a change. Immediately following my second prison sentence, I moved from Los Angeles, California to Las Vegas, Nevada, and started over. In doing so, I knew I had to commit to a lifestyle change, so I entered the academic arena and enrolled in the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Pledging myself to a four-year commitment would show the world that I had genuinely made a change.

Since 2007, I have dedicated my life to health and fitness through The Jump for Joy Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on childhood obesity prevention, and Real Results Fitness, a fitness brand serving the downtown Las Vegas community. I’ve also earned a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Marketing, one of my proudest achievements.

Rabbit in the Jungle is my first attempt as an author. Please understand, I’m not a professional writer. I’m just a guy who wanted to tell his story and relate to the people reading it.

Now, buckle up for a ride through a journey of trials and tribulations, ups and downs, successes and failures, good and bad, and even the ugly.

Part 1:

Breaking Bad

A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.

— Mahatma Gandhi

1.

Eye Of The Storm

Violence is essentially wordless and it can begin only where thought and rational communication have broken down.

— THOMAS MERTON, Anglo-American Catholic writer and mystic

WINTER 2008, DESERT VIEW CORRECTIONAL FACILITY, ADELANTO, CALIFORNIA

Chow was over, and everybody was filing back into the dorms. The area didn’t have many solid walls, so the men could see through all four dorms enclosed within our pod. This open design allowed the conspirators to flash signs across the room to each other. It was time. The forty to fifty Mexican inmates moved so quickly their targets — twenty black prisoners — hardly had time to react. The weapons were crude but effective. Padlocks from storage lockers were dropped into socks and swung through the air like maces. Chairs, both broken and whole, served as clubs. Portable locker cases were launched like miniature bombs. The use of weapons wasn’t even necessary. The perpetrators could have overwhelmed their prey with nothing more than the imbalance in their numbers, but their goal wasn’t to merely defeat their enemy — it was to annihilate them. Racial tensions, boredom, and frustration had been pent up for too long and now found release in a storm of emotion and violence designed to destroy whoever stood in its path. War was breaking loose around me, and I was standing in the middle of the danger zone.

At the time, I was several months into my second stint in prison. I made careful choices when it came to friends and tried to focus my time, thoughts, and energy in productive ways. A private company ran the minimum-security facility, and it hadn’t felt especially dangerous when I arrived. I’m the type of guy who gets along with everyone. I had white friends, a few Mexican friends, and a few black friends, and a few people knew I was half of an interracial marriage. Because of the politics of prison, I primarily hung out with the whites and ran with