Posted by Sanjiv Prabhakaran on Jun 07, 2019
 
Ken announced that the next BocceFest meeting will be at the Sutton's home on Sat June 8, 2019 at 10 am.
The Beer committee is pushing for a Gold Tap award to one brewery to increase participation.
 
 
We had a guest today - Matt Walker, Public Defender, who took over from Steve Binder. He gave quick updates on the veterans' Stand Down event coming up soon on June 28, 29 and 30. He indicated that out of the 8,102 homeless people about half of them get the needed support. At StandDown they get legal help, medical, dental, eye care, showers, etc. The Public Defender's office also does Homeless Courts once a month with the help of about 60 volunteers.
 
## "Juveniles and Adult Probation Population for next 5 years" by Gonzalo Mendez
 
 
Gonzalo Mendez grew up as an immigrant. His father was invited to the U.S. and later his brother went to the state penitentiary and they lived in the rough neighborhood of south east San Diego. He once went to the El Centro prison to meet his brother, who advised him to become a lawyer. At 19 Gonzalo volunteered in the Probation Department and he was sent to some bad areas. He soon got used to it. He worked hard and went to SDSU and paid for his college by working at various restaurants. He graduated with no college debt!
 
His first job was at Campo where there were 250 juvenile youths. In the first 6 months he was ready to quit. He had to sleep with roaches. But he pulled through and in 1995 he was promoted to Correctional Deputy Probation Officer (CDPO) and soon after that in 1997 he was promoted to Deputy Probation Officer and then in 1999 he became a Senior Probation Officer (SrPO). In 2001 he was promoted to a Supervising Probation Officer (SPO) and finally in 2012 he became the Division Chief! When he was a supervisor his brother died in a car accident after being hit by a drunk driver. That was a very disturbing moment for him and the family.
 
 
The probation officer has several tasks as shown above. He found jobs for many of the juvenile kids and changed their lives for ever. In the past 7-8 years he has helped reduce juveniles in San Diego by almost 70%. He is very proud of his team.
 
 
He created Collaborative Courts and helps to get felons into a rehab program that pays 90 days of living expenses and gived them financial literacy education so that they can go out and work and be financially responsible. They also have a human trafficking task force that prevents kids from getting lured into prostitution, etc.
 
 
In the end DMSB Club interim President Ken Barrett presented the speaker with the Joshua certificate that represents our club DMSB donating school supplies to schools in Malawi in the name of the speaker.
=============