KENNEWICK, Wash. – The Walk About Yakima Program, or WAY made its way to the Tri-Cities with a roundtable discussion about combating violence.The panel of speakers featured Yakima Law enforcement, former gang members, the King County Juvenile Division Chief, a Yakima probation officer and Dr. Eric Trupin from the University of Washington School of Medicine all with the same goal in mind reducing the involvement of youth in the Tri-Cities criminal legal system by providing a way out of gangs.Isaiah Munguia, a former gang member told a crowded room of people, that if it wasn’t for his mom he wouldn’t be here today.Munguia spent time in and out of Juvie as he says for “gun charges, theft and assault.Munguia said he also overdosed on Fentanyl.According to Munguia, he was able to get out, thanks to a push from his mother.”I say it today, if it wasn’t for my mom, I wouldn’t be here today,” Munguia said.Munguia eventually went to rehab and met a friend there who was living at a Yakima homeless shelter, where Mungia would eventually end up.At the shelter, he met Alfredo Orozco, a former gang leader and now a mentor of the WAY Program as well as a Pastor.Orozco said he used to tell his gang “It was either death or the prison system.”The WAY Program is an intervention program with the goal of reducing gun violence and gang violence in Yakima.Captain Shawn Boyle of the Yakima Police Department said since the program launched they’ve seen lower rates of violent crime, and one reason for that is a different way of going about it.”The idea of having identifying people and when they commit crime,” said Boyle. “What can we do to get them out of that lifestyle?” According to Orozco, this is what the WAY Program is all about. The mentors all have come from former gang ties, and they were able to break free.They have been trained in multiple ways to help.”When you sit in a room with someone who has lived the life and has walked the walk that they’re walking and are actually want to get to, that relationship really builds with that young individual,” said Orozco.Munguia is one of those relationships Orozco built.Munguia is now about to graduate from the program and become a mentor himself and is also going to graduate from the Perry Technical Institute in Yakima very soon.”I always said about Alfredo, he’s the father figure I always looked for, that I always wanted in my life,” said Munguia.When asked if this program could come to the Tri-Cities, Executive Director Carolyn Thurston said, they would love that, the only thing holding them back is funding.
