After years in prison for attempted murder, he graduates from Cal State LA with honors

In a midnight-blue graduation gown, Raul Zarate pounded his chest and held a hand to the sky, waving and screaming, “I love you!”

A parade of 20 honking cars led by a police cruiser, just for him, rolled by Pasadena’s Walnut Street and Daisy Avenue. They held his parents, other relatives, Pasadena Unified School District officials, a pastor, co-workers, classmates, friends.

On Thursday, 28-year-old Zarate completed his final course at California State University, Los Angeles to earn his bachelor’s degree in sociology – with honors, accounting for the yellow cord hanging around his neck the next day during the parade.

Three years earlier, Zarate had been living inside a state prison in Blythe, serving a 16-year sentence for attempted murder for a 2009 shooting outside a Pasadena house party when Zarate was 17 years old. In August 2017, then-Gov. Jerry Brown commuted Zarate’s sentence, slicing off the final seven years of his sentence.

While in juvenile hall, Zarate had received his high school diploma to neither pomp nor circumstance.

Since his release, Zarate worked hard toward his degree. The coronavirus pandemic took away his dream of finally walking on a graduation stage. But his co-workers at Learning Works, a charter school that focuses on at-risk middle and high school students, where Zarate is a full-time coordinator and counselor, orgainzed the parade as a surprise stand-in.

They had told him to come to work for a meeting and instead handed him a cap and gown.

“The reality is, I’m not even supposed to be out,” he said. “It’s just surreal.”

The Zarates had lived in a poor, working-class part of Pasadena, his parents pulling long hours at work. Zarate spent much of that time in and around a culture of gangs and violence: “I truly believed that nobody cared, and so why should I care?”

Carlos Cruz grew up in the same neighborhood. They played in the same soccer league.

“Hey, go to school,” Cruz would say.

Zarate had already been kicked out of John Muir High School. Cruz had been working at Learning Works and introduced him to it and Zarate started taking school seriously again, this time at Learning Works. But seven months later, Zarate shot and wounded two others during an argument.

Days later, Zarate, like so many from his neighborhood, was led away in handcuffs.

“It wasn’t a series of bad behavior,” said Mikala Rahn, the founder of Learning Works. “It was one bad day.”

Rahn attended court hearings and explained the legal twists and turns to him. When Zarate’s attorneys came to an agreement with prosecutors, the lawyers asked Rahn to tell Zarate, so she drove to the Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Sylmar and told him his sentence was a lot shorter than expected but he’d still have to serve 16 years.

“It was the worst night of my life,” she said.

His Catholic confirmation at age 18, officiated by Father Greg Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries, was in Juvenile Hall. Rahn snapped a photo of Zarate and Father Boyle. She set the photo as her phone’s wallpaper.

“I said I wouldn’t take this off my phone until he got out,” she recalled.

At 21, Zarate was transferred to prison. He began to make sense of his life. He chose hope. Rahn, Cruz, and other mentors like Hollywood producer Scott Budnick, founder of the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, helped with his transfer to a prison that provided academic courses and certification classes.

“You can’t unring a bell, but you can help some people and prevent them from doing the same,”  Zarate said.

At Ironwood State Prison, he finished four associate’s degrees, worked as a teacher’s assistant, earned his certification to be a substance-abuse counselor and became a certified braille transcriber, transcribing textbooks for the visually impaired. Rahn and Cruz helped gather the paperwork to send to Sacramento to apply for Zarate’s commutation.

In August 2017, Cruz received a phone call. It was Zarate. He said he was using a cellphone – banned in prison. Cruz immediately urged him to hang up. Zarate assured Cruz it belonged to a guard and he was in his office.

“I’m getting out tomorrow,” Zarate said.

“This is not the type of game you play!” Cruz replied. “This is not a good joke.”

“This is not a joke,” Zarate told him. “I’m coming home tomorrow. I need you to pick me up.”

The next day, a gate at Ironwood State Prison opened, a car drove out, and out stepped Zarate.

“Get in before they change their mind!” Cruz said.

Their first stop: In-N-Out Burger, with Zarate sinking his teeth into a double-double burger.

The car ride home was filled with boisterous chatter, two friends catching up as well as serious talk about planning what comes next. There were quiet moments; Zarate staring out of the window, looking at the sky, thinking.

“It’s crazy, ’cause you have all these promises of hope, promises that you make that keep you looking forward to coming home,” Zarate said. “Now you gotta deliver.”

Zarate went home and surprised his mom with a bouquet of flowers. She began to cry.

“Just tears of joy,” Zarate remembered.

Still, that wallpaper on Rahn’s phone remains the same.

The first few weeks at Cal State LA, Zarate kept to himself. Then he began to share more of himself in assignments and papers. His professors lauded his work. Zarate began sitting closer to the front, adding more to discussions, and taking the lead in group assignments. He was studying sociology.

“I come from a background of gang violence,” he said Friday, after the parade. “So for me, understanding how things function and why things are the way they are, I could better help change things for those young ones coming up.”

After the parade, Zarate, who now lives in Los Angeles, chatted with Cal State LA classmates, others.

“He’ll take the shirt off of his back,” said Lamai Glenn, 37, a case manager at Homeboy Industries and a Zarate classmate. “He deserves this.”

“It’s just crazy I never got to walk the stage!” Zarate told them through his mask.

Someone suggested he get another bachelor’s degree – and then he would get his walk across a graduation stage.

“Nah, I’ma walk for my master’s,” Zarate replied. “I need the master’s, homie.”