HOW AN ANGEL FOUGHT TO ESCAPE HIS HELL ON EARTH

Drug addict Angel Valentin kicked the habit and now helps others as a
minister, writes Bob Harvey.

Addict, New York gang member, convict. Angel Valentin has been all of
those. But he's been a minister even longer.

Rev. Valentin, pastor of the Free Methodist Church in Smiths Falls,
grew up in the ghettos of New York City in the 1960s when gang wars
were deadly.

His mother was only 14 when she gave birth, and quickly handed him
over to her parents and disappeared. When he was seven, he and his
grandparents immigrated to New York from Puerto Rico in hopes of
finding a better life.

"We found nothing but the gangs, drug addictions, nasty cockroaches,
the whole slum thing," he said.

On their first Christmas Day in the United States, they had nothing to
eat until a Catholic church helped them.

"I hated everybody by the time I was eight. I hated my father; he was
gone before I was born. I hated my mother because she left me, and I
hated my grandfather because he beat me. I hated the white culture
because white was rich and Puerto Rican and black was poor.

"My friends were my gang. We were called the Young Suicides. You had
to belong. There was no choice. It was my family, because I didn't
want to go home."

Rev. Valentin began drinking alcohol at the age of eight, smoked
marijuana at 12, did hard drugs at 14, was arrested for larceny at 15,
and imprisoned later for selling drugs. He still has a scar, marking
the hole in his arm where he injected heroin into his veins.

Rev. David Wilkerson tells the story of that time and his Teen
Challenge outreach to the New York gangs in The Cross and the
Switchblade. The book has sold more than 15 million copies since it
was first published in 1963, and Rev. Valentin says it does mention a
youth named Angel, but he has never been able to confirm it was a
reference to him.

Today, he is 54, the father of three children, and in his 12th year at
the Smiths Falls church.

He says, "People ask me to tell my story. I say I'm an old guy, and a
lot of water has gone under the bridge. I'm working on my doctoral
degree now."

Rev. Valentin is in Canada, and part of the Free Methodist Church,
because of his wife, Linda. He met her in Rochester, New York, where
he was helping a predominantly Anglo-Saxon church to become bilingual
for its growing number of Spanish-speaking members.

She was in Rochester for a youth event, and one of Rev. Valentin's
friends pointed her out and said, "She is going to be your wife." The
friend was right.

Rev. Valentin completed his seminary education and came to Canada
first as a youth leader in a Toronto church, and later as a pastor in
Pine Grove, north of Kingston, and at Tillsonburg, in southwestern
Ontario.

Some members of his current congregation have had some trouble
believing their pastor was once a bad guy.

But a few years ago, he made a trip to New York City with adult and
youth members from Smiths Falls, and took them to a restaurant in a
junkie's paradise in the Bronx.

"We sat down, and the guy behind the counter looked at me, and said,
'I know you. You were the junkie that used to come over here and hang
out and everybody was afraid of you. Whatever happened to you?'"
recalled Rev. Valentin.

One of the women from the church asked: "You mean he was a
junkie?"

"And the man said, 'Oh, yeah, he was a nasty junkie.'"

When the group returned home, the story soon spread. "People learned
to appreciate me a little more," said Rev. Valentin.

He is leery about being photographed, however. "The reason is that I
sometimes go to this pub-restaurant in Ottawa, and they don't know who
I am. I have helped three or four waitresses and a young man whose
wife was ready to leave him."

Those servers and other people he has met in pubs didn't know he's a
minister, and he prefers to keep it that way. Rev. Valentin says
they're more likely to talk to him.

He said, "Just call me Angel. That's what my people call me."