Bringing light to Salinas in more ways than one

While the city of Salinas moves forward with literally bringing light to dark streets on the East Side, a former mafia member is trying his approach to help those wrapped up in the dark lifestyle of gangsters.

“What I was years ago was a terrible man in darkness,” said Art Blajos. For the last 15 years, he’s been taking his story, “Blood In Blood Out,” across the country and abroad.

It details his criminal past played out on stage.

“What took me off heroin, what took me off coke, what took me out of prison, 17 years in prison, and what’s going to be portrayed in this drama of how I beat the death penalty,” Blajos said.

Sunday night, he’ll be presenting his story to Salinas.

“We have to take this to the dark violent places,” he said. “You know the corrupt places, the perverted places of our city and hit them with reality.”

At the same time, there is reality of darkness as the sun sets on Acosta Plaza in East Salinas.

“At nights, there’s not enough light even like to close the store. It’s scary,” said Esmeralda, who works at a video store there. She also declined to give her last name.

Help is on the way because the Salinas City Council approved a $100,000 state grant to improve the lighting on Acosta Plaza and ultimately curb the violence.

“For all the violence that’s around here, I think it’s going to be safer with having more light,” Esmeralda said.

Whether it be the darkness of Blajos’ past or Acosta Plaza, the former gangster is using his story to illuminate the hope in Salinas.

“It’s one thing to stop the violence, put it behind bars or prison walls, but it’s quite something else, and it takes a supernatural grace, to turn a messenger of death, which I was, into a messenger of life,” Blajos said.

Doors open for “Blood In Blood Out” at 5 p.m. at Sherwood Hall in Salinas. Admission is free.