Joining a drug-dealing gang in Los Angeles usually leads to a lifetime of crime or an early death. One priest’s initiative to break this cycle has had remarkable success but the work is far from complete In the mid-1980s, gang-related murders in Los Angeles city and county began to spiral. The crack-cocaine epidemic was at its height and this illicit trade spawned new gangs eager to cash in on its lucrative returns. By 1992, the year of the infamous LA riots, sparked by the local police department’s violent beating of Rodney King, inter-gang violence was so pervasive that some parts of the city were deemed no-go areas and gangland killings were running at 1,000 a year. That same year, a small mustard seed was planted in the sprawling Californian city when Jesuit Fr Greg Boyle