A Walk out of Hell and the Women who Held my Hand

A story of family, unconditional love, alcoholism and drug addiction, forgiveness and redemption.

Bobby Ruiz, the grandson of migrant workers from Spain and Mexico. Grows up on the mean streets of San Francisco during the 1950’s and 1960’s a much different city than it is today. At a young age, he experiences his father being jailed and witnesses the vicious rape of his mother and the breakup of his family.

He took to the streets at an early age and quickly became one of the city’s dead-end kids. His mother and grandmothers encouraged school, hard work, and praying to God for guidance.

Bobby becomes one of the city’s elite youth athletes winning many awards and Athlete of the Year 1965 for the San Francisco’s Boy’s Club. However, his love for hanging on the streets takes over and athletics takes a back seat. He begins to deal marijuana at 16 years old and marries at 17. Away from the watchful eyes of his mother and grandmothers he dives deeper into alcohol and drug addiction and crime and the whole hippie Haight and Ashbury culture.

Bobby turns his back on God and family, deciding to become an outlaw after the death of his twin daughters in 1969. Blaming God for all the trauma he had suffered in his young life.

After two divorces and several rehab attempts, Bobby finds himself on skid row in Los Angeles' “The Nickel.” Picked up for drunk in public 35 times in 30 days, he becomes suicidal. He calls for help from an old friend Lenny. Lenny picks Bobby up on skid row in the middle of the night and helps Bobby enter a county-run rehab center. On January 22, 1986, Bobby's journey in sobriety and redemption begins and what happen in the years to follow is nothing short of a miracle. Bobby’s redemption and recovery were a gift placed before him. “God’s gift of desperation.”