This Bookstore Puts Boy on Path to Knowledge

Joel was the only boy in the bookstore Thursday night in downtown Santa Ana. Hidden in the aisles between shelves that towered over his head, the 10-year-old reached up to grab a story about Tarzan. Just then, the owner came up to him.

But the energetic man with the gray hair and mustache wasn’t interested in making a sale. He was interested in shaping a better future, at least for this one boy, at least for now.

“How about your homework?” asked Rueben Martinez, the hairdresser-turned-book dealer known for his motivational talks to Latino students.

“I finished,” said Joel, unconvincingly.

“That was pretty fast,” retorted the skeptical Martinez. “Can we go through it again one more time?”

Martinez led the boy to a cozy corner of his brightly lit shop adorned with colorful posters and artwork. There, facing large windows along Main Street with cars and pedestrians passing silently outside in the dark, Martinez sat down with the boy whose father had died of a heart attack before he was born.

For the past two months, Joel Carrillo, a fifth-grader at John Muir Fundamental School, has been spending three nights a week at Martinez Books and Art, a shop that offers Latin American literature in front and a haircut by the owner in the back room.

In a city of overcrowded schools and homes, this store has become the personal homework center for Joel, who struggles with weak eyesight and an attention deficit. How he got here is the story of a committed mother who can’t speak English, supportive older siblings, a caring teacher and a community leader who practiced what he preached.

It’s also a story of a boy who won their hearts with his bright smile, unusual self-confidence and big eyes that open wide with wonder when he listens. Joel is in some ways unique, a student who had to repeat fourth grade but who displays such natural intelligence that people are willing to go to bat for him.

But he shouldn’t be a special case.

“We should be doing this for a lot of kids,” says Martinez, a former Democratic Party activist, “because in Santa Ana we’ve got them by the thousands out there.”

I sat down that night to chat with Joel, writing in my reporter’s notebook. He was impressed that I worked for a newspaper.

“You know Bill Clinton?” he asked. “You already saw him in person?”

“Yes,” I said, “when the president came to Santa Ana.”

“You did?” he exclaimed with those wide eyes. “You’re lucky. I’ve never seen him.”

Joel and his mother live nearby, in a two-bedroom rental close to Fiesta Marketplace, the Latino shopping district along 4th Street. He loves to skateboard around the Northgate Gonzalez supermarket where the curbs are freshly painted red, “cool for grinding.”

He asks me not to reveal exactly how he and his buddies hide from “the securities” who chase them away. And he doesn’t want me to talk in detail about the problems he had at his previous school, where he “flunked fourth grade.” He confided in me about his teachers, but he didn’t want to say anything bad about them in public.

“Don’t write that down,” he commanded, pointing warily at my notebook. “You promise?”

As if to answer his prayers, my pen soon ran out of ink.

“Yeah, run out! Run out!” Joel ordered the pen with the excitement of a kid watching an action movie. “Because I don’t want to see you write all this stuff.”

Joel is willing, however, to admit he didn’t do his homework regularly or correctly at his previous school. At the time, before his adult sister moved out and he got his own bedroom, he would sleep in the living room, which doubled as his study.

“I would get my book and see the TV,” he said, describing his all-too-typical study habit.

Joel’s mother, Ramona Carrillo, works as a cleaning woman in a hospital. (“She’s the coolest mom ever,” the boy says unsolicited.) She worried that her son was losing ground in school. He wasn’t learning English and he was falling behind in regular subjects taught in Spanish.

On a long shot, the family put Joel on a waiting list for Muir, a much-in-demand fundamental school which stresses discipline and back-to-basics instruction in English. To their surprise, last year he was admitted, starting fresh in the fourth grade again.

Joel’s academic problems persisted. But at Muir, there was no tolerance for incomplete homework. Parents are required to sign the assignments every day. No excuses accepted, not even language barrier.

At parent conferences, teachers painted a disheartening picture. Maybe Joel didn’t belong at Muir. Perhaps it would be best for him to return to his neighborhood school. In fact, if he didn’t start turning in his homework regularly, he’d have no choice.

Mrs. Carrillo was heartbroken when the harsh reality was translated for her by her eldest daughter, Josefina, 34. After one particularly grim meeting, they huddled outside with Joel’s special-education teacher, Sharli Cartwright, a strong advocate for the boy, who receives most of his instruction in regular classes.

Mrs. Carrillo cried and pleaded for help. She even offered to pay for a tutor from her modest earnings. Anything to keep Joel at Muir, where his chances for success were better. Finally, she said something in Spanish that struck the teacher’s conscience and heartstrings when translated:

“I leave my son’s education in your hands.”

The woman’s words weighed heavily on Cartwright, a past state and national teacher of the year. “I want to be worthy of that trust,” she told herself. The teacher looked at this boy, one of thousands entrusted to her over the years. And she vowed to do something to salvage his talent and promise.

Cartwright could think of only one person to turn to. She had once heard Martinez speak about diversity during her studies at Chapman University, where she earned her master’s last year in special education. She had been impressed by his passion for improving education.

She hoped Martinez could use his community network to find a tutor for Joel. So in March, she wrote the busy book dealer a letter introducing herself and her dilemma.

“Occasionally, I find myself overwhelmed,” she explained before talking about “one of the sweetest students” she’s ever met. Joel doesn’t test well, she wrote, but he’s capable and highly motivated. This boy who loves basketball and has lots of friends even offered to give up his play time to stay in school.

“If I come in during recess and lunch, will you help me?” he had asked his busy teacher.

“I know that I cannot meet the needs of all the children to whom my heart responds, but I would like to make a difference to this one,” Cartwright said in closing her appeal to Martinez.

The shopkeeper didn’t respond right away. Joel kept asking his teacher if she had heard from the man who was going to help him. “Be patient,” she’d say. “He’ll get back to us.”

Then Joel suggested a move. “Why don’t I write him a letter?” the boy said.

And so he did. In his own handwriting, Joel thanked Martinez for offering to be his tutor, though he hadn’t offered yet.

But that did the trick.

“How can you say no to a kid?” asked Martinez.

The shopkeeper recruited his part-time staff of college students to help the boy. They fell in love with him too. And now even regular customers act as impromptu tutors.

Joel’s unusual study sessions at the bookstore have not worked miracles, says Cartwright. But they have helped.

“We don’t have a homework problem anymore, so that certainly has been fixed,” she said.

While I was interviewing Martinez and Josefina, who picks up her little brother from the store, Joel had been working his charm on our photographer. But before I left, the boy confronted me with a scolding, his arms crossed.

“You didn’t have the whole story about me,” he said. “How Mrs. Cartwright helped me and about Mr. Martinez.”

I do now, Joel. It’s the story of a boy who studies in a bookstore because people have faith that he’s going to make it.

Agustin Gurza’s column appears Tuesday and Saturday. Readers can reach Gurza at (714) 966-7712 or agustin.gurza@latimes.com.