For all the tough talk and thuggish bravado Ricky Martinez exhibited while running with the Shalimar street gang in Costa Mesa, the nickname he was given by his fellow gangsters was inspired by his heartbreaking past, not his exploits on the street:

They called him “Lonely Boy.”

The moniker stemmed from the fact that Martinez didn’t seem to have any family at all.

When he was 5, he and his two younger sisters were abandoned in a laundromat by their mother, Martinez recalled in a recent interview.


He and his siblings then bounced around from a group home to various foster homes until the girls were adopted together and Martinez was left on his own.

“I was a good kid back then,” Martinez said. “But they took everything I had from me. I really didn’t care anymore.”

He was then about 13, he said.

“I started to be real defiant, to yell back, to misbehave a lot,” said Martinez, who turned 20 this month.


Foster parents quickly got fed up with him. He moved from one house to another every few months, or so it seemed. He took a car for a joy ride and spent six months in juvenile hall. Then he fell in with the gang and “started doing a lot of bad things, " including vandalism, graffiti and petty theft.

At the core of Martinez’s rebellion, he said, was the sense that he was alone in the world. “I didn’t have nobody to turn to,” he said.

That changed two years ago when Martinez, fresh from a yearlong stint in county jail for escaping from a juvenile facility, was referred to an Orange County child welfare group called Canyon Acres. The nonprofit organization, established in 1980, provides a host of services for abused, neglected and emotionally troubled youths and their families, including foster care and adoption referrals and a treatment center on a 4.6-acre ranch in the Anaheim Hills.

Canyon Acres is one of a number of Southern California charities supported by The Times Holiday Campaign, part of the Los Angeles Times Family Fund. Last year, the organization received $20,000 for its residential program for abused children.


In Martinez’s case, Canyon Acres’ social workers attempted to locate relatives of the troubled teen through its Creating Family Connections program.

Lawrence Murray, who took the lead in conducting the search, found an old letter from Martinez’s father in the youth’s social services file. The father, who remains in prison, had requested that his sister look after the son he’d abandoned. All Murray had to go on was the woman’s name -- no address or phone number, not even the region of the United States in which she lived.

Using online databases such as those used by private investigators, he was able to track down Martinez’s aunt in Arizona.

Murray sent a message to Martinez through his probation officer and arranged to meet at a Mexican restaurant in Orange.


The social worker said that when he gave Martinez the news, the small but tough-looking youth was overcome with emotion. “He was trying to hold it in like a tough guy, but the tears were coming out,” Murray said.

A week or so later, Canyon Acres paid for Martinez to fly to Arizona, where he was greeted by about two dozen relatives he never knew he had.

“These people were coming up to him saying, ‘I’m your cousin. I’m your uncle. I’m your aunt,’ ” Murray recalled.

Martinez moved to Arizona and began living with some of his relatives. He got a job at a local Wendy’s restaurant and was thinking about enrolling in community college.


But his newfound family was not a cure-all. He began using drugs again and staying out late, both of which put a strain on the fledgling relationships he was trying to build. Back in California for a visit, he was arrested for shoplifting clothes, he said. His girlfriend became pregnant with his child and he is now preparing for his new role as a father.

“That made me open my eyes and realize I need to straighten the [expletive] up,” he said, adding that he hasn’t used drugs since October.

As he tries to get back on track, Martinez said he no longer feels the despair and emptiness that accompanied previous setbacks. “My situation is better but there’s always room for improvement,” he said. “And now I’ve got someone to turn to if I have problems.”

Murray said he’s noticed a huge difference in Martinez since he began establishing a relationship with his family.


“When I look in his face, he doesn’t look lost anymore,” the social worker said.

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scott.glover@latimes.com

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