Quincy student bringing speaker to schools

QUINCY — A Quincy High School senior is working to bring a speaker about gangs to area schools.

Danielle Talley discussed her plan to bring Guillermo Lopez for presentations in Quincy on April 29. She told the city council Tuesday the speaker is scheduled to talk to junior high school and high school students during the day, and parents in the evening. The evening presentation will be in Spanish.

“When I first got to Quincy, everybody was (asking,) ‘What are you going to do for your senior project?’” she said. “So I decided to bring a guest speaker that I had seen previously to Quincy because even though I’ve only been here for a couple of months, I’ve noticed Quincy has quite the gang problem.”

She chose to bring Guillermo Lopez, a former gang member who eventually entered the medical field, becoming a trainer for the state office of AIDS in California, according to Homeboy Goes to Harvard productions.

“He is a nationally-known motivational speaker,” Talley said. “He is skilled at reaching out to parents of all backgrounds and possesses professional expertise in areas such as drugs, alcohol, gangs and parenting skills. I think he would be really, really good for this community and not only the students, but the parents as well.”

For the parent presentation, Talley collaborated with 10 other students who are talking about alcohol education benefits, peer pressure, drugs and the different clubs the high school offers, she said.

“The presentation is going to be focused on the Hispanic population. It is in Spanish, but everyone is invited,” she said. “I’m providing the keynote speaker for this parent night.”

She collected all but the final $335 needed for him to come to Quincy through donations from various groups, including the Quincy Lions Club, the Washington Migrant Council, Quincy High School and Quincy Junior High School.

“So far I think I’ve been doing pretty well, and I just wanted to come here because I presented to Rotary and Councilman (Scott) Lybbert asked me to come here and present this to you,” she said.

Lybbert said the speaker was phenomenal, describing a video clip where Lopez comes out wearing gang clothes, and tells a story about the different changes he had to go through in his life.

“It’s kind of neat, he then discards all of these clothes and he’s pretty sharply dressed and a very good speaker,” he said. “Anyway, I wasn’t sure what we had in our police fund to be able to go towards this.”

Police Sgt. Dan Dopps, who was filling in for Chief Richard Ackerman, said he was taking notes to present to the chief, and would see if the police union could donate.

Councilmember Jose Saldana suggested to see what the police union could do first before the city tried to find funding. The city is presently re-evaluating city construction projects after the state Department of Revenue requested a $1.3 million refund.

“The Quincy Lions, we have a meeting this week, we can talk about it too and we might be able to help,” he said.

Councilmember Jeremy McCreary asked if this would be a permanent event, saying it would be a good annual event.

“That’s been almost part of the problem, it seems like you get a good speaker and then we go through three, four years with periods of nothing,” he said.