Magazine profiles lives reclaimed through after-jail scholarships

Magazine profiles lives reclaimed through after-jail scholarships

CHRISTINA GRAY

CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO

Trung Tong had a hard time adjusting to a new country, racial discrimination and poverty after he and his family left Vietnam for San Jose when he was 9-years old.

After being called names like “gook” and “chink,” Tong started hanging out with kids who had gang ties, and drinking and taking drugs. Crime and violence soon became a secret part of his world.

“I was living a double life” he told Deacon Dana Perrigan in the first issue of Excell Network Magazine launched this May by Julio Escobar, founder of the Excell Network. The nonprofit raises scholarship money to help formerly incarcerated men and women turn their lives around through education and mentorship.

Tong, a Boy Scout working on his Eagle Scout rank killed a man and let his look-a-like brother take the rap for two years. He eventually turned himself in and was sentenced to seven years in prison.

The fledgeling magazine profiles Tong and other young people who have been able to reclaim their lives through reentry scholarship grants financed through a grant to the California Catholic Conference restorative justice programs from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD).

Escobar is the longtime coordinator of the Archdiocese of San Francisco’s Restorative Justice Ministry and the founder of Communidad San Dimas, a nonprofit Catholic restorative justice ministry.

By founding the cleverly named Excell Network and launching the magazine filled with dozens of stories of lives reclaimed, Escobar hopes to provide more scholarships to the formerly incarcerated.

Network breakfasts will be held the second Saturday of each month at St. Agnes Parish in San Francisco, where community members can meet scholarship winners and help fund scholarships that are helping them rewrite their stories.

Tong, now 25, was accepted into the Project Rebound program at San Francisco State University and is majoring in psychology. He applies to graduate school this fall and plans to become a licensed clinical social worker. He also works as a substance abuse counselor and serves the homeless in Alameda County.

His conversion from prison inmate to graduate student began with attending Christian worship services in prison. Tong enrolled in the the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults and entered into the Catholic Church at Easter.

“I should have been dead,” says Tong. “Somebody was telling me that there is more for me.”

Visit excellnetwork.org.