Mona Ruiz (with the aid of Geoff Boucher) tells a remarkable story. She grew up in a barrio in Santa Ana, a small barrio, but plagued by gangs nonetheless. The F- Troop was the biggest gang in Santa Ana, and two of her cousins had big reputations in the F- Troop. Indeed, they were two of the founders of the gang, back in their junior highschool days in the late 1960s. Ruiz remembers that she was “mesmerized by the colorful characters who strutted through the neighborhood with an air of confidence and menace” (no. 55: 29). Her law- abiding, blue- collar father's warnings wilted in the face of such dangerous glamour. She spent more and more of her time with F- Troop boys and their Trooper Girls. Their attitudes became her attitudes. She had her first fight when she was eight. She was small, but she fought with the abandon of a miniature berserker: “The world went red for me, washed away my anger. I held nothing back. It would become a familiar sensation that would carry me through many fights” (26).

Ruiz tells about going with some Trooper Girls to terrorize an impoverished family of illegal immigrants: “I felt like I watched the whole thing with somebody else's eyes” (50). She was just 15. She was cultivating warrior cool, the warrior's objectifying, detached response to suffering. “I was feeling invincible and intoxicated by the fear I saw in the eyes of others” (65).

But up until this point she was only an associate. She fought with the gang, she partied with the gang, she hung with the gang, she dressed as they did, but she was not officially a member. Finally, the Warrior Choice was forced upon her. She was at a party:

The girls were older, in their twenties. They had a hard look to them, streetwise, but also a proud beauty of sorts. Both had long hair and plenty of makeup […]. They were first- or second- generation Trooper Girls, the girlfriends of the Troopers from the early days, and the crowd of younger gang members spread to make way for them as they walked through the party's chaos. They made a beeline for me […]. I wasn't sure if they were looking for trouble, but I doubted I could win a fight with either, much less both.