Cover
story Disappearing tattoos
By ARTHUR JONES
NCR Staff Mission Hills, Calif.
Jeff Scott was 13 years old, on a
weekend pass from a boys home when his uncle was paroled from prison. The
uncle, at home when the boy arrived, broke up a Walkman radio and converted it
into a tattoo gun.
He got us both high and did these, said Scott,
indicating a right arm filled with tattoo scrollwork, and this. On
his left hand was a swastika with a lighting bolt through it. I wear a
glove when I work, he said, so people dont see it. I clean
carpets and this nice Jewish lady, a real sweetheart, she gave me a tip. She
said keep it covered. Im getting rid of it so people dont get
offended by me.
Scott is having the tattoo erased at a Saturday morning clinic
created by Sinsinawa, Wis., Dominican Sr. June Wilkerson at Providence Holy
Cross Hospital here. Gradually, with a laser, the swastika is being zapped
away.
Two dozen people waited their turn. Some were seated on the carpet
in the corridor. Others stood. Still others were being prepared to be
zapped.
Susana wants a small tattoo removed because she thinks it harms
her image. After one laser treatment, the tattoo, above the bone at the base of
the first finger on her left hand, is fainter. One or two more treatments will
remove it.
Susana had the tattoo done originally, she said, because of
peer pressure, nine years ago. She was 15. Im having it
removed because people automatically judge you, she said. They
think youre involved in a gang, and its not so. Its
degrading.
Theres nothing cute or funky about what Wilkersons
established at the hospital. She got the idea from a Los Angeles police officer
who saw it as a way of fighting gang violence. Tattoo removal is expensive, but
Wilkersons genius is that Hoffman -- and all the other Providence Holy
Cross clients -- pay with community service.
Shes making tattoo removal possible for people with no money
to spare. These are people whose tattoos get in the way of employment, of
relationships, of life itself. In extreme cases, they are tattoos that inspire
hatred, sometimes enough to kill.
Its painful having the treatments. Hurts like
hell, said one man with bandage-swathed arms. But the signal the tattoos
send can hurt even more. One of Wilkersons 200-plus clients thus far, was
standing at a bus stop. His gang-related neck tattoo had not yet completely
faded. He was jumped at a bus stop by a rival gang member and stabbed.
Wilkerson is saving lives and jobs. I had a young man, 22,
married, wife and two kids in my office, crying, tattooed up to his neck,
said Wilkerson, 76.
He was working as a butcher, and wearing turtlenecks to hide the
tattoo. One day he couldnt tolerate the turtleneck and took it off. His
boss saw the tattoos, and he was out.
Wilkerson was obviously still moved on the young mans
behalf. He was getting $10 an hour, too, thats pretty good money
for unskilled work. She can help him get the tattoo removed, but she
couldnt get him his job back.
One man waiting his turn for the laser treatment explained:
Employers are offended. No, not offended, theyre intimidated, like
Im not a trustworthy person. They get this idea from the tattoo. When
they get to know me they change their minds. He had the tattoos done when
he was a much younger man. Now theyre coming off, because of my
children and because I want a better job.
Lots of stories come through here, said Wilkerson.
The theme that runs through them all is family background.
Once a high school teacher
For the Dominican sister, this is a world and a work far removed
from the high school teaching she started out in more a half century ago.
Though she originally had no intention of entering religious life -- It
seemed fairly dowdy -- she read that the Dominicans had started a street
preaching team, and that attracted me. I thought Id like to go out
and see some activity in terms of spreading the gospel and Jesus
message.
Wilkerson entered the order right out of Fontbonne College in St.
Louis. But there was no Dominican street preaching. The year she read about it
was the only year the Dominicans did it, she said.
Her St. Louis connections remain strong. They include a twin
brother, Msgr. Jerome Wilkerson, who has served as a priest in the St. Louis
archdiocese all his life.
After 27 years of teaching, she switched to social justice work.
With Catholic Charities in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn., she gave
conscience-raising parish talks on the connection between social justice and
the gospel, and then connected parishes to feeding programs in poverty areas,
particularly for Native Americans. She was in community organizing, too,
helping set up the South Minneapolis Coalition, and working part-time at St.
John Vianney Seminary in St. Paul.
To expose the students to poverty -- and help provide material for
the papers they would write on social justice -- she would take them to
Guatemala for a week. I knew the Notre Dame sisters working down there.
They had what looked like a 1930s motel so they were able to accommodate
visitors. The students learned a lot because they could go into houses and see
what wasnt there. They came back anxious to talk to youth groups and
people about their experiences.
From Guatemala Wilkerson shifted to work with the Sanctuary
Movement in the early 1980s at Little Flower Parish in South Bend, Ind., a
major church in the underground movement sheltering Central American refugees
fleeing persecution and violence.
I had a lawyer, Wendell Walsh, on my peace and justice
committee and he gave talks, homilies almost, explaining why someone who was a
lawyer would get into this kind of work, she said. We sponsored
three or four people.
Wilkerson called the Indiana state authorities and told them the
parish intended to harbor the illegal refugees and defend them. The guy
who answered the phone said, Oh no, we just cant deal with
that. So we were never bothered, she said.
In 1989 Wilkerson went down to Bolivia and became involved in
political issues, but that ended when she broke her leg in a motorcycle
accident and was shipped back to the States. Next came California. I was
on crutches, I was 65 years old, but the Parish Nurse Program out of Providence
Holy Cross Hospital here hired me. I like putting things together. I did staff
support, staff education. The hospital had tapped into the Parish Nurse
Program, now nationwide, that was founded in Chicago by a Lutheran minister,
the Rev. Granger Westburg.
Anti-violence work
Wilkerson met with pastors, helped set up parish nurse visits and,
while operating out of Queen of Angels Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital,
volunteered for the hospitals violence prevention coalition in the San
Fernando Valley. The valley has its share of violence. If the area, currently
part of Los Angeles, were a separate city -- which its pressing for -- it
would be the nations seventh largest city. Gang-related violence is a
constant source of trauma patients at Providence Holy Cross, which operates one
of the valleys two trauma centers.
Through the anti-violence coalition, Wilkerson met Sgt. Belinda
Robinson of the Los Angeles Police Department. One day she told Wilkerson that
she saw a great need for a tattoo removal clinic. Such a clinic, she said,
would be one way of reducing violence.
With Wilkerson at the helm, the hospital set up a committee. The
program is now in its third year. Queen of Angels Hollywood Presbyterian liked
what Providence Holy Cross was doing and now it has a tattoo removal clinic,
too.
Money is a major factor in tattoo removal.
Commercial tattoo removers typically charge $250 a treatment to
work on a small tattoo, which means up to a $1,000 or more before the vein-blue
skin picture disappears. For a huge tattoo -- and Marc Hoffman is covered neck
to navel and all the way down his back -- it has been two years so far and
another four years to go.
Hiring the laser machine and its technician, Freddie, takes money.
The hospital gave $25,000 to start and the Providence Health System gave
$75,000 last year. This has been followed by a three-year $300,000 grant from
the California Endowment Foundation, which manages the monies Blue Cross-Blue
Shield put in public trust when Blue Cross changed into a for-profit
corporation.
The professional staff is volunteer, people like Dr. David
Friedman, who does a Saturday morning every six or eight weeks. Another
Saturday regular, Evelia Garcia, a volunteer who is a junior at Providence High
School, Burbank, was applying the post-laser salve. After treatment, the tattoo
area is covered with salve and cling wrap, taped tight to keep air out.
Friedman was ready for the young woman on the table. With a
tattooed butterfly above her bra strap on her upper back, shed already
had her lidocaine shot to numb some of the pain. Everyone in the room wore
special glasses as the blinding laser hummed -- and burned. During the laser
operation, tears come to the patients eyes, they wince, they might cry
out a little. The burning pain lasts at least 24 hours. But when the bandages
come off, the tattoo has faded to a lighter shade. For most its one down,
two or three more to go.
Far more than that in Marc Hoffmans case. Whats
remarkable about Hoffmans muscular torso and arms is not the complexity
of the tattoo and, in its own way, the artistically interwoven scrollwork that
remains, it is the fact that there is absolutely no trace on his neck and
shoulders of the tattoos he once shrank from.
Hoffman, now 31, was a very young man serving a prison term when
he was tattooed. Part of turning his life around was the determination to take
the long road to removing what must have been nearly a square yard of tattoos.
Around his neck, above the collar line, he had racially offensive symbols --
and the name of a former girlfriend.
His fiancée of today, said Hoffman, handled it very
well. I was ashamed to walk into a party with her. Not any more --
its gone. Hoffman had an uncle who served in Hitlers SS. And its
symbol is still plain on Hoffmans left forearm. Already, with a long
sleeved shirt, Hoffman had reduced his tattooed visibility. Looking down the
road, Hoffman said that by the time he and his wife have children, the tattoos
will be gone.
Two days ago, said the private investigator, a
client came in and handed me a large check. That wouldnt have happened
with tattoos coming out of my shirt collar. Hoffman tried a commercial
tattoo removal service, but they didnt use lidocaine. It hurt worse than
having the tattoo done, he said. He pays his tattoo removal clinic bills in
volunteer service with middle school boys and girls clubs.
Its an easy tradeoff for clear, clean skin.
Jeff Scott, with the swastika on his hand, agrees. Its
gotten me into trouble, into fights. People get offended and challenge me over
it. Sometimes people see it and just totally dont want to deal with me.
They dont get to know me. People who do know me know Im a nice
guy.
For Wilkerson, walking through the clinic, talking to Susan and
Marc and Jeff and Javier, Its like Im watching all these
transformations right in front of me.
Theres a coffee/waiting room. Not long ago, said Wilkerson,
she looked in and saw a young man with a big P (for Pacoima) on his
neck, and another young man with SF (for San Fernando) on his.
Out on the streets, said Wilkerson, the Pacoimas and San
Fernandos are killing each other. Here they were talking, having coffee
together, she said. I loved that.
The people waiting understood.
National Catholic Reporter, April 27,
2001
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