Trejo

In this memoir, Danny Trejo recounts his life from a childhood steeped in violence through decades of addiction and incarceration to a career as one of Hollywood's most recognizable character actors and a lifelong advocate for people in recovery.

The book opens in 1949 with five-year-old Trejo and his cousins discovering a dead cat in the alley behind his grandmother's house in the San Fernando Valley and holding a funeral for it. That same evening, their uncle returned bloodied from a bar fight, and the Trejo men grabbed weapons to retaliate while the grandmother made the children kneel to pray the rosary. Every one of those children, Trejo reflects, would eventually go to jail or prison.

The narrative then jumps to 1968. Trejo was three years into a 10-year sentence at Soledad State Prison when, on Cinco de Mayo, a baseball game between inmates and a college team erupted into a riot after his crime partner, Ray Pacheco, attacked a player. Only Trejo, Ray, and one other inmate were charged with capital crimes. In solitary, detoxing from drugs and alcohol, Trejo prayed to God, promising that if God let him die with dignity, he would say God's name every day and help his fellow man. The charges were dropped when witnesses refused to cooperate.

Trejo traces the events that brought him to Soledad. Released from Youth Training School at 21 in 1965, he shot heroin at the bus station within hours. He briefly tried 12-step meetings through his sober friend Frank Russo but quit after 29 days, fell in with a young acquaintance named Dennis whose car held sawed-off shotguns and a hand grenade, and embarked on a 45-day crime spree. Dennis arranged a drug sale that proved to be a federal sting, then became an informant. Trejo received a 10-year sentence.

Flashbacks reveal Trejo's earlier incarcerations. As a juvenile, he fought the 1961 Bel Air-Brentwood Fire on a crew of young offenders, one of the first times he was recognized for something positive. At San Quentin, he survived through boxing skills honed under his uncle Gilbert, who had introduced him to heroin at 12. He had won lightweight and welterweight titles at Jamestown and continued fighting at San Quentin, where he also collected debts for the prison's heroin dealer. His friend Tyrone saved his life by killing a man whom Trejo had wronged and who tried to stab him on a stairwell. Trejo grew so desensitized to violence that when a man was stabbed to death beside him during a dominoes game, his first thought was about losing his winning hand.

After his spiritual awakening in solitary, Trejo returned to general population transformed. He gave up dealing heroin, became chairman of the prison's 12-step group, and was released on August 23, 1969, the first anniversary of his sobriety date.

Reentry proved difficult. Trejo returned to his parents' house in Pacoima, a working-class neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley, to a cold reception. His birth mother had been banished by his father when Danny was three, and his stepmother raised him without warmth. Frank Russo kept him tethered to sobriety and connected him with Recovery in Freedom, a program for young people facing drug charges, where Trejo's prison background gave him credibility with teenagers.

Through the 1970s, Trejo built a career in drug counseling, opening clinics through Western Pacific Med Corp. He married and divorced twice more, each marriage destroyed by compulsive infidelity rooted in a childhood wound: At seven, he witnessed his mother receiving a visit from his uncle David and innocently mentioned it to his father. Both parents turned their fury on him. The affair continued for decades, and when it was finally exposed, Trejo's father was devastated. He was critically injured in a car crash and died the next morning.

His uncle Gilbert, the man who taught him boxing and the codes of prison life, cycled through incarceration and addiction. When Trejo fired him from a clinic job for using drugs, Gilbert reflexively pulled a knife before catching himself. He returned to prison and later died of an overdose, leaving Trejo feeling that half of himself was gone.

His girlfriend Diana gave birth to their son, Danny Boy. When Diana relapsed, Trejo placed the boy with an older woman they called Nanny. He later met Maeve at a recovery meeting; she became his most significant partner, and together they had a son, Gilbert, and a daughter, Danielle.

Trejo's entry into Hollywood came when a young man in recovery called from a film set, afraid of the cocaine around him. Trejo drove to the location, which turned out to be the production of Runaway Train (1985). There he reconnected with Eddie Bunker, a criminal-turned-writer who wrote the screenplay. Eddie arranged for Trejo to train star Eric Roberts for a boxing scene, and director Andrei Konchalovsky cast Trejo when he saw the visual contrast between them. Eddie became Trejo's champion in Hollywood.

A pivotal test came when two films about the Mexican Mafia, the dominant Mexican American prison gang in California, competed for his involvement. Trejo read the script for American Me, directed by Edward James Olmos, found dangerous inaccuracies about real people, and chose Blood In, Blood Out instead, returning to San Quentin to film. At least eight people connected to American Me were later murdered.

Trejo's career grew through roles in Heat, Con Air, and Anaconda. In 2000, director Robert Rodriguez cast him as Uncle Machete in Spy Kids, transforming his image from villain to a figure children admired worldwide. Rodriguez later developed the character into the standalone film Machete (2010). On the first day of shooting, co-star Robert De Niro, whom Trejo had befriended on earlier films, called him number one on the call sheet. The film gave Latino families a superhero of their own.

Health crises shadowed these triumphs. Trejo contracted hepatitis C from years of sharing needles and endured a punishing treatment regimen while hiding his condition from the industry. He was later diagnosed with a large liver tumor, and he survived a massive double subdural hemorrhage, a type of brain bleed, that required emergency surgery and forced him to relearn to walk.

His personal life remained turbulent. His relationship with Maeve ended after years of conflict and infidelity, and a subsequent marriage to Debbie Shreve also dissolved. The deepest pain came through his children: Both Gilbert and Danielle began using drugs young, repeating the cycle Trejo knew too well. Gilbert became homeless, and Danielle nearly died from an overdose. Trejo, renowned for helping thousands of strangers get clean, was powerless over his own children's addictions.

Their recoveries came in stages. Danielle achieved lasting sobriety after entering rehab. Gilbert remained on the streets for years before reaching out to Trejo's friend Mario Castillo for help. He got clean and went on to direct From a Son, a film drawn from their shared experience. During filming, Gilbert pushed Trejo to access buried emotions, and Trejo cried on camera for the first time. Gilbert told his father that his worldview stemmed from toxic masculinity, and at 74, Trejo recognized that the machismo of his upbringing had driven decades of destructive behavior.

The book closes with Trejo opening Trejo's Tacos in Hollywood and lobbying for juvenile sentencing reform. January 31 was officially named Danny Trejo Day in Los Angeles. His children are healthy: Gilbert directs films, Danielle runs a vintage clothing store in Ohio, and Danny Boy lives in Lompoc, California. Maeve, though they never reunited romantically, has become one of his closest friends. On the eve of his 76th birthday, Trejo distributed food to 500 families during the Covid-19 pandemic, drove home, and settled into his recliner surrounded by dogs, thanking God for his life.