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I first met Mario Landes in 2017 when his daughter, Alexa, was four months old. When we spoke in Alexa’s room surrounded by pink decorations and baby gear, Landes was reflected in her childhood home.
“It wasn’t like this, it was quiet and peaceful,” he said. “There were people who came and went all the time. There was always alcohol and there was a fight.”
Lundes was about seven years old when his father was sent to prison, and his mother was left to raise him and his siblings in a cold garage in South Los Angeles.
“I can say they both missed it,” he said of his father. “He missed us, and we missed him.”
Looking back at his youth, Rundez said, “My parents didn’t give me that attention, or that love, you don’t know what I mean? It’s all, I found it on the street by my old homeboy.”
Mario Lundes and his four-month-old daughter Alexa are climbing the portrait in her room on November 18, 2017 in Los Angeles.
He was about 13 years old, he remembers when he jumped into his gang. “They showed me love, that respect, what I needed,” he felt happy as he strolled around with them. He finally found his family.
Lundes told me eight years ago. We reconnected this spring, and Lundes reflected once again on the surprising transformation in his difficult past.
He was gang raped in middle school and “I thought someone was big because my friends protect me,” he said. Sometimes older gang members “use their younger partners to work.” It was clear what was expected of him. “You bump into the enemy and fight,” he said.
Following the fight, the weapons and robbers were imprisoned. Lundes went from boys’ camps to boys’ camps and to youth authorities in California.
The juvenile prison only made his situation worse and strengthened his loyalty to the gang’s life.
Lundes spent years in a correctional facility, but was released to be greeted again on the streets. “At the time I was probably going to live in prison or not reach this era,” he told me recently.
Mario Landes plays with his daughter Alexa at his father’s house.
With each release from prison, it turns out that many of his friends were killed or sent back to prison. Feeling helpless and lonely, he began to drink a lot.
One day he woke up in a hospital bed, and the tube was shoved into his throat. He was consuming so much alcohol that it kept him in a coma for days. He felt like everyone was giving up on him, and imagined what the few people who visited him were thinking: “If you want to die, move on. You know. We’re tired of you. You’ll never change.
Lundes was scared and had time to think about his life. He decided to get help. He went to Homeboy Industries, a well-known programme founded by Father Gregory Boyle to help former gang members turn their lives around. Something was clicked in a group therapy session. When he heard the elderly talk about their stories, sometimes tears, how they wasted their lives, he knew he had to change. And then he began his long journey of recovery and self-love.
“I had to understand life. It was tough. All trauma, all drama, all violence, all negativity, and every year in jail,” Lundes emphasized the importance of treatment and mental health. “That doesn’t mean you’re crazy. It’s just connecting your thoughts, from childhood until ever.”
Before taking her to school, Mario Landes irons her daughter Alexa’s clothes into clothes in the house room.
Then he was given a beautiful gift, and suddenly he had a real sense of purpose.
As he told me in 2017, “I had my little girl and I got married. All that trust, I made it little by little with my family,” he said. “I’m grateful to be alive. I’ve made some really bad decisions in the past, but it’s not too late. I regret a lot of what I did.
As Alexa grew, his life as a gangster slipped further into the past. I chatted with him again in 2023, and he seemed to be somewhat clear about his journey in life, the love he lacked as a child, and the importance of being a good father.
“I’m grateful for this kind of love, the feeling that my unconditional father felt love for my daughter,” he said. “I am so happy and blessed as I am a plain, aggressive father and guardian of my princess. Alexa Sky Landes is now six years old and I enjoy every minute of spending with her. It has changed my entire life.
I recently visited Lundes, his wife, Milna and Alexa at my home in South Los Angeles. Early in the morning before school, he ironed Alexa’s school clothes on a La Dodgers towel spread across the floor of her bedroom surrounded by pink toys and Serena’s posters.
Mario Lundes’ daughter, Alexa, is sitting in her lap while watching TV with her family at her parents’ house. (Ivan Kashinsky/for the Times)
Alexa, now nearly eight years old, was bounced from room to room, bubbly in braids rocking the air. She had a huge smile, a contagious laugh, and an attitude that allowed her to escape anything.
On a drive to school, Lundes blows up his favourite musician, Kendrick Lamar. When we arrived at school he walked her to the entrance, kissed her and watched her until she entered the classroom.
Lundes later went to his parents’ house in South Los Angeles. There, Alexa stayed between the end of school and the end of Rundes Day, staying at Homeboy Industries.
Her grandma cooked spaghetti and brought Alexa a cup of Arroz con leche. Her granddad, a friendly old man who was paroled decades ago, reached out to say hello to me. Lundes still has bitter memories of his childhood, but he has found a kind of peace with his people, allowing him not to be there for him when he was a boy.
They were watching an old Mexican film on the couch as Alexa attacked her father’s shoulder, showing him her studies and dragging him into the yard to play the tag. Lundes froze when she asked him to walk around the block with him. He knew it was not safe to roam the neighborhood with a tattoo. They walked a little in the secluded alley before entering.
Mario Landes plays with her daughter Alexa at her parents’ house in South Los Angeles.
“She hasn’t seen all of this,” he said. “She’s watching Mario, my dad, with her.”
I asked him what it means to him to be a father. Lundes, now 46, had two other children before Alexa. He said he loved them so much, but admits that he was never there for them. He was too busy or put in prison. He deeply regrets it. He decided that things would be different from Alexa.
“Being a dad is such a surprising feeling to show what’s right from what’s wrong. You take her to school and go to parent meetings. When she’s having a bad day, I’ll talk to her.” He hoped in the future that he would say, “My dad was a really nice guy. Even if he had tattoos, he had a good heart.”
He then continued, “I just want her to be a good mom later, and to give to her children whatever I gave her.
Lundes walks with her daughter in the alley behind her parents’ house.
Kasinski is a special correspondent.
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