Man rises from drugs to plumbing, taking the right path

SAN ANTONIO (AP) Anthony Cartagena was only an adolescent when he was faced with a choice that would have sent his life down one of two divergent paths:

He could follow his father, Angelo Cartagena, into what's known on the street as "the life" as a member of a notorious New York gang, the Latin Kings.

Or he could choose the path he took, one that eventually led him to a wife and family, a brand-new home in Converse and a good, steady job as a master plumber.

Neither path, neither choice, would be an easy one.

Cartagena was born in New York's crime-ridden South Bronx, just blocks from Yankee Stadium. But he grew up in California with his mother and older brother after his parents, who never married, separated when he was a toddler. He said he rarely thought about his father until he was 14 and an uncle died.

"I started thinking, what if my papi dies and I don't ever get to meet him?" Cartagena, who's 34 and has three sons, told the San Antonio Express-News (http://bit.ly/1CgwVW0).

Shortly after, and with his mother's blessing, he flew to New York to meet the man for the first time.

"Even I could see the physical resemblance," Anthony recalled of their first meeting. "And you could tell he was really happy to see me."

What Anthony didn't know was that his father, supposedly the superintendent of the apartment building where he lived, actually made his living dealing drugs as a member of the New York branch of the Almighty Latin Kings & Queens Nation street gang.

Formed in Chicago in the 1940s, the Latin Kings became the most widespread, predominantly Hispanic gang in the nation. For a time, it was New York's largest street gang, able to "strike fear into even the bravest of souls," according to the HBO documentary "Latin Kings: A Street Gang Story" (2003).

Read more:
Man rises from drugs to plumbing, taking the right path