FORMER JUNKIE TURNS MINISTER

'A Lot Of Water Under The Bridge'

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

Mr. Valentin, pastor of the Free Methodist Church in Smiths Falls,
Ont., 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, hoping to find a
better life.

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

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

"I hated everybody by the time I was eight," he said. "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."

Mr. 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 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.

"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."

Valentin is in Canada, and part of the Free Methodist Church because
of his wife, Linda. He met her in Rochester, N.Y., 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 Valentin's friends pointed her out and said
"she is going to be your wife." The friend was right.

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 congregation have had 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'. He said 'Whatever happened to you?'"

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

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."

The Ottawa waitresses and others he has met in pubs didn't know he's a
minister, and he prefers to keep it that way. Valentin says they're
more likely to talk to him.