It makes sense Celeste Fremon would be the godmother of two children whose parents were former gang members.
The freelance journalist has dedicated the last 14 years of her life to the gangs of East Los Angeles, chronicling the trials and tribulations of Father Greg Boyle in the book G-Dog and the Homeboys.
Boyle, a priest who mentored hundreds of gang members over the years, is known as G-Dog to the homies. In 1990, Fremon heard about his work and wanted to do an article on the alternative high school he had set up for gang members.
She said she was hesitant at first.
"I thought, 'This is really stupid. I am a middle-aged white woman,'" she said.
She saw Boyle for the first time at the funeral of a girl killed by gang violence.
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"I walked into this church, and you see all the guys in their commemorative sweatshirts," she said. "They were all sobbing. They would leave her casket and then collapse in Father Greg's arms."
Fremon had a realization on that first encounter.
"I thought, 'Oh my God, they are just kids," she said.
She also saw the powerful effect Boyle had on the gang members.
"I saw the way these supposedly tough, scary guys would do anything to please him," she said.
She wrote an article, but was so interested in them she stayed around to write an entire book.
Years later, Fremon and Boyle have seen it all. They've attended the funerals and weddings of gang members. They've helped former prisoners find jobs. They became intimate characters in the lives of troubled kids.
"I kept in contact with most of the main characters in the book," Fremon said. "I became the unofficial auntie to a lot of them."
A decade later, an updated version of G-Dog and the Homeboys is out on UNM Press, with an epilogue that revisits the characters of the original edition.
"We were able to sit down and talk about people who had made it and those who had not," she said.
Fremon said when she first began her research, she became a fixture at Boyle's side. Slowly she began to know each gang member, either through interviews in Boyle's office or by taking them out to countless lunches.
"Gang members have never been salad people," she said. "Now they are, because I got them interested in it."
In the book, Fremon chronicles the lives of several gang members.
One is Spanky, who was abused by his mother growing up and was eventually diagnosed with clinical depression.
Fremon said this summer Spanky attended the funeral of a former rival gang member and paid for the tribute ribbons.
"It blew me away," she said. "It showed how much Spanky had changed."
There's Joanna and Silent, whose daughter Fremon is godmother to. Silent is currently serving life in prison for a murder Fremon said he didn't commit.
"I am hoping to do a big feature on him, because I think I can prove that he didn't do it," she said.
Then there's Turtle, a man who would have committed suicide if it hadn't been for Boyle and Fremon.
"It was absolutely terrifying," she said. "We were the people holding on to the person dangling from a cliff, and we couldn't let go."
Fremon said although the joy she gets from being part of the gang members' lives outweighs the sadness, helping bury the fallen never gets easier.
"I've helped bury a lot of kids," she said. "I don't think you ever recover from those wounds."
Fremon has also published work about the justice system and police. She said trying to combat gangs by throwing people in jail is part of the problem.
"We tend to pour more money into incarceration than we do into prevention," she said.
She said despite the lowered crime level, gangs still exist in California.
"It's just a little more part of the landscape now," she said. "It's less on the evening news."
Since the original publication, Fremon has seen many once hardened gang members grow into responsible adults and parents. Many work for Homeboy Industries, a business Boyle created.
Fremon said she learned from Boyle never to cross someone off.
"Someone like Father Greg has planted a seed inside them, and they were able to find themselves against all odds," she said.
