The story of a neighborhood hero

Suzette Hackney never met Jose Refugio Quezada Jr. and never will.

His community in Wilmington, California, called him Coach. They knew him for the nearly 30 years he spent coaching youth baseball and basketball and leading fundraisers and other local events determined to build up his neighbors.

In their world of "Wilmas," where gang members sling and guns fly out of trunks and trap houses, a few hundred dollars apiece, Coach played an essential role keeping kids from falling into cycles of gun violence.

But the deadly world he worked so hard to stop would ultimately end his time in our world. On July 27, a bullet took his life.

👋 Nicole Fallert here, and welcome to Your Week, our newsletter exclusively for Paste BN subscribers (that's you!).  I hope you had a restful Thanksgiving holiday. Before normal life revs up again, let's take some time to hear from Paste BN reporter Suzette Hackney about her reporting about a seemingly random act of violence that stole a community leader.

But first, don't miss these stories made possible by your Paste BN subscription (and keep scrolling for more subscriber-exclusive content!):

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Another neighborhood hero fallen victim to an American contagion

Suzette Hackney has been working through the year to report the stories for Paste BN about people who make a difference in their communities through mentoring, coaching or activism, those who are anti-gun and anti-violence yet ultimately are killed themselves. Her portrait of Jose's life stresses his humanity, his spirit for giving and compels the reader to pause with his story and think about the nature of neighboring.

"It's important for us to write about these neighborhood heroes like Jose because for many years, decades, we have not told the stories of everyday people, particularly people of color, who are working to change/improve the fabric of their communities," she said.

Telling stories like Jose's raise big questions about how our country will address gun violence, she said.

"What are the solutions?" she said. "How do we ensure that people like Jose aren't killed with the same weapons they worked so hard to keep out of the hands of those in their communities?"

For now, someone else in Wilmas will follow Jose’s example, pick up his barbecue tongs and bear the mantle of leadership in the face of death. "Because that is the meaning of community," Hackney writes in her article. "Because there is a neighborhood hero in every city and on every corner in America, if you’re willing to see."

Read more from Suzette Hackney's series about heroes taken too soon:

• His friends believed he could have been the next MLK. A bullet took his life.
• This football coach spent years saving his city's kids from gun violence. Then someone shot him.

Thank you

This Thanksgiving weekend, I have so much to be grateful for: safety, health, joy and learning. Suzette's reporting serves as a stark reminder of the fleetingness of life and the precarity of our world. I hope you find her reporting as inspiring of gratitude as I did. Thank you for supporting our journalism with your subscription. Our work wouldn't be possible without you. 

Best wishes, 

Nicole Fallert