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02/03/2006:

"'It's Like You're Climbing Everest'"

...We a family
the Outsiders will always be
remember who we are
we're making history
no one understands how we stay together
I tell them we're brothers
and life isn't the same without each other.
— Rap lyrics by Outsider Mark Cevallos

They called themselves the "Outsiders": a bunch of spiky-haired, barely teenage boys from Van Nuys whose families came from Mexico and other parts of Latin America.

Eleven of them entered Birmingham High as freshmen in the fall of 2001.

There was Isaac, a tough guy the girls adored; David, a gifted student and a baseball player; and Polo Morales, a fatherless boy who loved football. There were others: An eloquent rapper, a fearless skateboarder, a rock 'n' roll drummer. The boys break-danced together and spent hours writing lyrics to rock and rap songs.

Navigating the streets of their neighborhood, they had learned never to walk alone.

Belonging to a group meant they didn't have to. The Outsiders were not a gang. Gangs killed people. They simply watched one another's backs. If one needed a dollar, another spotted him. If one got punched, another punched back.

As students, none was exceptional. Half of the boys had earned too few credits to participate in graduation from junior high, but the Los Angeles Unified School District's social promotion policy allowed them to move on to high school anyway.

They expected to graduate together.

By late spring of 2005, only four of the 11 were left.
latimes.com