It’s all about the students
By MARISA MATA, Student Writer
“In Madera, I was called at about 11 o’clock in the morning. They give me an address, and it sounds like they’ve got a disturbance of some kind going on. I was, maybe, five, six blocks away, so I’m moving, but not too fast. Then, dispatch comes back and says it’s code three, red lights and siren — we’ve got a baby that’s stopped breathing.”
“I turned the lights on, zoomed through stop signs and everything. I go into the living room — grandma is sitting there, rocking the baby, and everybody, mother and siblings, are all screaming. I knelt in front of her and took [the baby], it was a little boy. He was beginning to turn a little bit. I gave him a little puff. Nothing happened. I gave him a little stronger puff. He goes, ‘WAAHHHH.’”
“The ambulance comes over and they took him from me. They’re gone, grandma’s gone. I walked out, got back in the car. I drove about four blocks and pulled over, just sat there for a little while. I got a call, the dispatcher said, ‘got a call from the hospital — he’s going to be fine,” Sergio Silva (1998) said.
Sergio Silva began his career as a police officer with the Madera Police Department, after leaving the Marine Corps in 1967. He was one of the first officers to implement the ride-along program, allowing officers to work with high school students. After this initial work with children, Silva continuously dedicated his career to helping kids and young adults.
One evening in 1997, Silva was working in his orchard when his wife ran outside and told him that she had gotten a call from Fresno State’s campus police, they wanted him at the department right away. When Silva arrived, still in his work clothes, dusty from being on the tractor, he was given the position of interim police chief.
Silva had been with the campus police department for 22 years when he became interim chief. The next day, in response to the questions he faced from other officers, he talked with the sergeants, saying, “we’ve got a job to do, and we need to do it — not for me, not for you, we need to do it for the students. Students are number one.”
Silva successfully ran the department, while a student at Fresno State, until a new chief was hired six months later. Silva graduated in 1998, and stayed with the department until retiring in 2001.
“After I retired, a friend of my wife’s said, ‘…why don’t you come over to the EOC in downtown Fresno? They’ve got a tutoring program for juveniles. They are incarcerated and…they come here and they need help with their homework and things like that.’ And that’s how I got involved with the juvenile hall tutoring program of the EOC.”
“It was sad to say that some of those kids didn’t really know how to read or write — we’re talking 15, 16 year olds.”
After six months, lack of funding caused the tutoring program to shut down. Silva began spending more time tending his orchard, and later joined the staff of the Clovis Young Marines.
“The Young Marines is kind of like an explorers’ organization. And the program requires that they learn a little bit of military — a right face, left face, march a little bit. I’ve been with them for — actually I was with the original staff — so I’ve been there for 11 years.”
“We’ve got a lot of [kids] that really need direction. Young people are willing to listen but they need someone to tell them ‘you’re doing this right’ or ‘you’re doing this wrong.’ I remember [when I was growing up] in Merced, there was an adult who took time from his work to come and coach our baseball team. [And our department] coached little league…I umpired for a little while. I got things thrown at me, got called different names, but it’s okay. It’s all about the kids. If we can keep one out of trouble, I think it’s well worth it.”
Related:
Helping children not give up on their education
You only need one person rooting for you
