The Streets Were My Father

This is Our American Stories, and as you know, some of our favorite stories and some of your favorite stories on this show are redemption stories, comeback stories about people who turn their lives around, which brings us to our next story. It comes from the documentary “The Father I Never Knew,” a movie that tracks the lives of former gang members who were raised without a positive father figure, which you can find on Amazon Prime. The director Don Albert graciously gave us the interviews to tell these stories, and now we bring you the story of Carlos Cologne.

I was born in Chicago, Illinois, being Humble Park from the seventies, on through the nineties. It was pretty drastic, growing up with a single mom. You know, the gangs were pretty bad in the neighborhood, and poverty was at its worst. I would think about it now; I think about my upbringing, and there were a lot of empty lots. So there were no playgrounds. There were just empty lots—no, you know, where no buildings were and where they used to be. So a lot of times, you know, we turned to the streets. And, you know, you come from a dysfunctional home where you see drug abuse from different men in my mom’s lives and domestic abuse. I would turn to the streets. I spent most of my life in prison, from juvenile on through my adulthood. Single mother, never knew my dad, and my mom was in two abusive relationships, so that had its toll. I was missing the father’s love, you know, for his son, and not only that, but a complete family. Something, you know, a father’s supposed to be, you know, a sense of security. He’s supposed to be the one to provide, and we didn’t have that in my house. So I never knew what it was like to grow up a man. I pretty much was playing the guessing game and going off of a lot of bad examples in my life ahead of me. And so the—streets from my father.

In my teen years, I joined a gang, you know, and I clung to that. And what attracted me to the gang was actually just the unity. We all had something in common. A lot of us were miserable. We had no fathers in our lives, and so it’s like a pack of dogs, you know. They, we hung together, and we clung together, and I spiraled real fast. We would steal a car in the city, a beat-up car, go to O’Hare Airport and look for a nice car—something with rims and speakers and sound system—and we would try to bring it back to Chicago and sell it. So we were doing this for a while now, and we got caught. And when they caught us, it seemed like they were investigating. So there was like…six or seven cars that they charged us with, which, trust me, we did take. But I ended up going, fighting the case out as best I could, and I ended up getting probation. The rules were too much for me. I couldn’t handle. They had house arrests, and I had to do all…these crazy things just to stay out of jail, which I violated. So I eventually ended up going to juvenile detention center, which is like juvenile prison, and that’s where I spent a lot of time in and out of until, you know, I got out at about—I think I was seventeen when I got out. So from fifteen to seventeen, I spent most of my time in and out of juvenile detention. And once I went into juvenile, I was being trained for when I got out. To be worse. We were a small gang, so by being a small gang, we had more to prove than these big gangs. You know, it’s not like, ‘Oh, you know, we were well established in Chicago.’ No, we were a small gang. We had one corner, and in that corner, it was only, if there were fifty of us—which some people might think fifty is a lot of people—but there are hundreds and thousands of gangs out here. There could be no war going on, because a lot of times we’ll go into war and we’ll fight with each other. I remember I would be driving with my buddies, and we would see someone’s car and would say, “Hey, that’s So-and-so’s car from this neighborhood,” and it’s someone we don’t like, and we would already know, “Okay, his car’s parked here tomorrow or tonight, in the late night, we’re going to burn his car.” And we would burn cars, break windows, even to the point where sometimes we would go to other neighborhoods and jump out on people and jump them and act like we were a different gang, just because for the thrill of it, because we wanted to instill damage. And I would say, even at twenty, it got to the point where, now, if we could catch you but no one was around them, and we had a gun on us, we would actually try to kill you. You know, we would see if we could get away with it, or at least shoot you or something without you knowing it was us. That’s how bad it was, you know. It just escalated from, you know, stealing cars in my life to knives, bats, guns, and murder eventually. And I remember getting into a shootout with somebody, getting away, telling a friend of mine about it, and after I spoke to him about it, shortly afterwards, they came back. I got shot. I got shot in the hand and in the leg, and I did about a month or two in the hospital recovering, and during that time, the war was still going on. Pretty much. It started because I got shot; my buddy got killed, so that took its toll on me too, you know. He’s a friend of mine who he, his dad passed away and got killed, so he grew up without a father, and so I was bringing him up into the gangs, and next thing, you know, he’s dead. So I thought that was my responsibility, and I wanted to take—I wanted revenge, you know. For so much, it was like just a pot of so much boiling and brewing, and I wanted to get revenge. So I got out of the hospital, and, you know, when I got shot, I got shot because I ran out of bullets. So I didn’t want that to happen no more. And I remember saying, “Well, I’m gonna buy two guns, and I keep one on me, and when I’m walking with somebody, I let them hold the other one just to be safe.” And as I was healing and recuperating, and, you know, I couldn’t run, I was still walking with a cane, I ran into one of the guys who was involved in my shooting. I shot him five times, and shortly afterwards, they pronounced him dead at the hospital, and the cops were looking for me. It’s funny because he was his only witness. But what happened was the cops actually grabbed one of the guys from my neighborhood, and instead of being a stand-up guy, he actually ratted me out. And so once I knew that the cops were looking for me, it was over with for me. I had to leave the neighborhood. Chicago wasn’t an option no more. So I fled, and I ended up from, you know, Ohio, to Florida, Puerto Rico, Ohio, back to Florida. For about, about eleven months, I was a fugitive. I was working at this furniture warehouse under a different name. I just made the union and everything. So I was meeting a lot of people, the bigwigs from the warehouse corporate. And I remember my supervisor walking up to me with this man, and I’m thinking, “Okay, I’m going to meet another supervisor.” And when I shook his hand, he actually was an Orlando police officer, sir, that the extradition came over, and they actually—the warrant came, and they arrested me there, and then the Chicago police came and got me and took me back to Chicago. And it wasn’t easy because I had a child on the way myself, from a previous relationship, and so this will be my first, my firstborn. It was my son. That was crazy because I grew up without a father, knowing who my real father was. I found out he grew up without a father, and now I’m going to have a son who’s going to grow up without a father, and I wanted—I didn’t want that to happen. So that’s pretty much how I ended up getting caught because as I tried to keep a relationship with him.

And you’re listening to Carlos Cologne, and my goodness, as he said about life in Humboldt Park in Chicago from the seventies to the nineties, it was pretty drastic. What a tragic story thus far. When we come back, more of Carlos Cologne’s story here on Our American Stories. And we continue with Our American Stories. In Carlos Cologne’s story, he had joined a Chicago gang at a young age, killed a man, and was on the run from the cops. Let’s get back to Carlos with the rest of his story.

They sentenced me to do twenty years in prison, you know. During that first ten years, all I would think about is trying to occupy my time, try to make it up the hill and over the hill to get home. And, you know, we would make homemade wine and smuggle in drugs and smoke reefer, or weed, however you want to call it. And I remember when I was twelve. I want to make sure that you guys know this. When I was a kid, I got saved. I found Jesus. The problem was, I would go home, and Jesus was not preached to me because my home was domestic abuse, struck violence, and so we were poor; it wasn’t like God was in the house. But no seed returns void, so the seeds were in me. I get to prison, and, you know, they say blessings and curses come out the mouth. And I would always speak these curses, like, “If I ever see this one person, I’m going to try to kill them; I’m going to try to do this and that.” And one of them was the guy that actually killed a friend of mine, my buddy Frado, and he ended up in the same prison as me. And, like, he was in a big gang, but his game turned down him, and now the numbers are in my favor. So I wanted this guy, and we got into a big fight, just me and him, and it got really bad where we ended up going to segregation, which is like a prison in the prison, and he actually witnessed to me, believe it or not, he actually shared the Word with me, and, you know, I didn’t take him as serious. But no seed returns void, so the seeds were planted again. So that’s when I said, “Enough is enough.” You know, I just wanted something different. You know, I talked about the void in my life. Well, you know, I went to prison with a void in my life. I figured it out. I realized it. It was Jesus. I was missing God in my life, even though he was always there. I never willingly recommitted myself to him. I never willingly said, “Okay, Lord, I need you to go through this with me.” You know, I needed him as my Father. I was looking for a father, and he was always the one. So I remember making a prayer in segregation, and I started praying, and I asked God, “Listen, Lord, I know I’m in trouble; I know I’m going to go to a worse prison. I’m not trying to give you one of these prayers where if you get me out of this, I’ll be good,” because a lot of times we say that prayer, and it’s never the case. I just asked God to go with me and to, you know, watch over me, and to surround me with believers, and to make it where I can convince my wife to change her life, and I can have a home at home, when I get home, ready for me, a church waiting on me. And, you know, I wanted to totally change my life. I just wanted to turn away from who I was and become something new. And so that started the next ten years, which were the best ten years of my life. In prison, I was able to not only recommit my life to the Lord, but, you know, God was preparing me to come home. I was raised with bitterness and rage and anger, and God was showing me the root of it. And God reminded me that if you want to be truly forgiven—and I’ve done some things; I was in jail for murder—if you really want to be forgiven, you have to forgive. And so that’s when I was saying, “Okay, Lord, I released that unto you. Show me how to forgive.” And so no longer am I mad at the abusive men in my mother’s life or my mom for the way she raised me, even though times were tough. You know, she probably could have learned how to do things better. The past is the past. So I got to the point in my life, I said, “Okay, no more bitterness, no more anger, no more raise. Let’s, let’s fill that with peace and joy and happiness.” And I was hoping that He can make a way in my life. You know, to be forgiven by the families that I had took their son away, their brother away, their father away. You know, that was my prayer for the next ten years. God was really spiritually getting me ready and motivating me for life outside of prison, a new life. There was this one man I remember. He was bold. His name was William Flores, and I would see him lead Bible studies. And, you know, I knew him. Okay, God sent me here to meet this man. And you’re gonna always run into two people in your life at certain times in your life that were real influential. And this was a key moment because this was the beginning, and it looked like I was going to become a closet Christian. I seen his boldness. I needed that boldness. And I know what boldness was about because in my life before Christ, I was always trying to be bold. So I seen this boldness—true boldness, by the way—no shame in speaking about Jesus. And I started attending his Bible studies whenever we would get recreation time, and I started picking his ear, and he would pray with me and teach me things of the Bible. And we would have prison Bible studies where people from outside of the prison would come in and freely spend time voluntarily, by the way, fellowship with us, share the Word with us. And we even had a Spanish preacher that would come and be bilingual and speak the Word in English and Spanish, just so more people could attend his Bible studies. These are people who have different personalities, and they fed into my heart, into my life, where now I could pick their brains and figure out how to install these good qualities in my life, in my walk, when I come home.

Now I’m back in Chicago, and I worked for my church. Not only do I work for my church, I’m in the same community that I did damage in it. I remember going to many mills in Glen Ellyn. It’s called Radical Timeout, and it’s a time where everyone gets together and they pray radically. It’s a place where they can pray and fellowship together and break bread together and hear the Word together, worship together. And I remember going that. You know, I had to go there. To must I went there, and I’ve been going there every chance I get, and I gave my testimony there. I remember I had spoke about forgiveness, and I wanted God to restore what the enemy had broken. And shortly after my testimony, I spoke to Nephtali, who he was pretty much many mills’ right-hand man, and I found out that somebody was there giving their testimony who happened to be Nelson Vargas, the father of the man that I killed. And I spoke to Nephtali about that, and I let him know, “Hey, you know, you just had a man here recently, and he just gave his testimony.” I, I want you to know that that’s the man whose son I killed. And Nephtali went and through prayer, he spoke to Nelson, and he set up a meeting where we met at Midwest Church with Pastor David, and him, his family, met me and my wife, and he forgave me, you know. And this is something that was in my heart for the last ten years in prison. Not only did he forgive me, but we have a relationship, and he’s wonderful, you know. And he tells me, “Now I’m your father,” you know. “Now you’re my son,” he tells me. And knowing that I killed this man’s son, he would say that. And I think we both are embracing that, that relationship that’s going to grow and mature and nurture between him and I and both our families, actually, you know. And so I thank God because nothing is impossible for the Lord. And, you know, if he can restore this between me and Nelson, just imagine what else he’s going to do, you know. Since I’ve been out, I work for my church now, and I’m working on trying to visit the prisons as well, because I want people to see life beyond the walls. But how it’s possible through Christ, you know, to maintain a relationship with Him and to have a life after jail. You know, other than prison. I want people t