This story was written a month after the murder of 16-year-old Rogelio Bautista, on the last day of 2004. Four 14-year-old kids who grew up with Rogelio in Southwest Santa Rosa, California created and voiced this piece. David Velediaz, Julio Hernandez, Maria Marquez, and Luis Vargas painstakingly pieced together their memories of him to create the story of his life and death. They wove together their voices to speak as one, to speak as Rogelio. In this piece they chronicle his life through his voice, from his experiences as an immigrant to his initiation into a gang, and finally to his death. The piece also documents the community as they grapple with Rogelio's death and the questions that it raises.
(This excerpt is the last half of a 22 minute story. The complete work can be heard at KRCB's Voices of Youth page.
[Elvia Bautista, Rogelio's older sister, is presently creating a longer piece about her response to the death of her brother, with the help of Voice of Youth producer Tatiana Harrison and Transom creator Jay Allison.]
Behind The Scenes Essay
By Luis Vargas
 It all started out when I met Tatiana Harrison and my life changed.
I was at school reading a newspaper article titled "SR Teen Shot On New Year's Eve." I guess Tatiana'd been to our school before but at the time I didn't pay attention to much happening at school. The day everything changed Tatiana walked into my school, Roseland University Prep, and she asked me "How was your Christmas break?" But then she saw me crying. She asked what was wrong and I said my homeboy just passed away. She gave me her number and she said – "Call me, we could do a story on this."
After that I called her the next day telling her that I would give making the story a shot. I don't even really remember why I wanted to make it. I don't know what I wanted to say exactly. Anyway, I got some people together from school that knew Rogelio Bautista, the teen that passed away. To be honest, most of the people just wanted to get out of class at first. There was David, Rogelio's cousin, and Julio, a kid who grew up across the street from Rogelio, and Maria, whose brother was friends with Rogelio.
 When we got down to writing, it took us about two or three weeks to write the whole script. It took us that long really because we didn't know how to write the script. The time would be pretty much us laughing and remembering him, little stories and fun times, and Tatiana would type everything we said. She would come in almost every other day, get us out of class, and bring us different ideas on how we could make the story. One day, she said, "Why don't we write it as if it's him talking?" After that we were just telling the story of his life in his words, fitting in all the memories we had in the timeline of his life.
We were stuck how to end the script and David finally gave us a perfect ending from a religious saying our parents tell us: "La vida es prestada. Nunca fue tuya." Life is borrowed. It was never really your life to begin with. With that, we had the ending. We each had our scripts. We divided up the parts and began rehearsing the script.
I felt so weird working on this story because it was such a new experience. "Why do we have to go over the script so much?" I was thinking. As we went along rehearsing, we would change the words if they didn't feel right. It was also a very hard time doing this story because we were practically always mourning Rogelio Bautista.
After the script was done, written and edited for mistakes, we began recording at the station. Recording was one-on-one with Tatiana. While one person was recording, the rest of us would be doing homework and eating lots of popcorn. I remember when I was recording my parts of the story. It was so frustrating. Tatiana and I would always have arguments about the story. But that was a small price to pay for the story coming out great.
 So the story was done and it was about time that our story had to be aired over the radio. It was very hard to air it because we had to protect our identities from people who knew us. We didn't even tell anyone that it was airing. I just listened to it alone in my room. Then I called Tatiana and left a message- "That was tight!" I said.
Elvia Bautista Rogelio's older sister heard the story and thought it was magnificent. She said we captured every aspect of her younger brother's life from birth to death. She called crying and three or four other friends and homeboys called too. We decided to replay the story in a week and go public with it. The Press Democrat newspaper gave us some major props on the story with an article about it in the newspaper. But there were problems- teachers at school said I was making trouble for myself by talking about gangs. But it wasn't all bad. My friends had said that we made them feel like Rogelio was there with them and at the same time made them sad that he was gone.
This experience was the beginning of the end for me being affiliated with a gang. I've now been hired to work as a Pro Tools engineer for the station. I also make my own beats on Reason. I spend a lot of time at the station, sometimes on Friday and Saturday nights. If it wasn't for the station, I don't think my parents would ever let me out of the house, because it's a dangerous neighborhood where we live. Now all I'm focusing on is getting on in school and my music career ahead of me. Like I always say- what doesn't kill me makes me stronger and that's just what this story did for me.
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