It's 1 a.m., and the 12-year-old girl sneaks out of the bedroom window. She searches for friends or even a fight. The Las Vegas gang life awaits.
The streets enthrall her. The scuffles enrich her. Rival gangs chase her home and threaten to kill her family. She shows no sign of weakness until she tries to kill herself. Even that doesn't deter her from the thug life.
Something had to change for Claudia Meza.
Little did she know, but the path of change included a loving grandmother, a hard- headed teacher and a tennis racket. Little did she know that she would attend upscale Stetson University and her story would give at-risk kids in a poor Arizona community a glimpse of hope for deep inside this partially deaf teen, an athlete and role model was just chillin' for the right time to emerge.
"Sometimes you doubt whether a person can actually change so much, but Claudia is a good example that it can happen," said Meza's mother, Maria. It's something that's almost hard to believe. It's as if I'm living a dream."
"I was a girl, and I thought I was so damn tough," Meza said. I would hang out with the guys, and I would be the only girl with a big-ass rock and thinking, I'm all that.'"
Meza needed that rock to throw at enemies or to attack from behind. She didn't have to bring it home and worry about her mother finding it in her pocket. She already had lost a switchblade that way.
The kid needed a weapon to accentuate her toughness, especially on days after a rival gang beat her up.
"It came to the point to where if they jumped me, I would come back the next day and it wasn't like I was all scared," Meza said. It didn't matter if I got my butt whipped, I fought them again.
"If they talked bad to me, I stood up to them, guaranteed. Even if I was alone, I didn't care if there were 10 of them."
She found trouble, but always seemed to get out of it. Meza can't explain why police cruisers would take her home instead of to jail.
"People have always said that I have an angel taking care of me," she said.
That angel might have saved her life.
Drunk one night, Meza grew depressed that rival gangs might attempt to kill her, her mother and sisters. The 13-year-old went to the bathroom with a razor to slit her wrists, but her cousin intervened.
"I had seen it on TV, and I didn't even know which veins to do it on," Meza said. I made some really light scratches. It never got deep enough."
Maria Meza knew she had to do something. She worried that her daughter would die by suicide or homicide.
She sent Meza to live with her grandmother, Guillerma Merancio, in Tucson, Ariz. Maria couldn't secure an open-ended leave of absence from her employer, so the Caesar's Palace housekeeper surrendered 10 years of seniority to move to Tucson for five months.
"I wasn't just going to send her away without making sure everything was going to be OK," Maria said in an interview conducted in Spanish. "I didn't care about quitting my job because what mattered to me most was my daughter."
Meza did not go without a fight.
"I kicked, I screamed," Meza said. "I was so strong in my belief of being with my (gang). Who was going to stand up for them? I just hated my mom for it."
At first sight, Merancio just stared at Meza, decked in her gangster clothing complete with eerie dark eyeliner that Maria said made her daughter "look like the devil."
"She wore long, baggy pants, a long T-shirt and black lipstick," Merancio said in an interview also conducted in Spanish. "My heart ached when I saw her. Tears rolled down my face."
Meza's family hoped the new environment would help her, but that alone wouldn't do it. Although gangs didn't own the Tucson neighborhood, drugs and poverty still ruled.
"There are times here when we hear gunshots, and we hardly go out at night because we don't think it is safe," Merancio said. "I think five people have been killed at a convenience store nearby."
Meza attended Desert View High, a school with a 55 percent dropout rate and a curriculum designed for at- risk children.
During Meza's freshman year, a student died in an on- campus shooting. Last year, gunfire near the school didn't interrupt tennis practice, even when the bloodied victim ran by the courts.
Meza acted tough at the tough school.
"She scared people," Desert View tennis coach Stacy Haines said. "She'd look at people walking down the hall and they would get out of her way."
Her edge gradually softened with a steady diet of modeling classes and church. The modeling classes gave her a new outlook on dress. The church gave her a new outlook on life.
"Many relatives wonder what I did, but I only cared for her and loved her," said the grandmother, who scraped up money buying clothes in Mexico and selling them in Tucson. "I taught her that if she felt scared or nervous, she should pray and ask God for help.
"Claudia was also willing to help herself. She attended modeling school and learned the proper way to walk, sit and dress."
One day when the church choir director gave Meza a ride home, a man stepped in front of the car and pointed a gun at it.
"He laughed and got out of the way," Meza said "It freaked me out. He could have fired it right through the windshield."
Meza found a way out of that poor neighborhood.
The path?
"A sport for the rich," as her mother put it.
Meza suggested they go out for track because she wanted to run the hurdles. Her friend suggested they go out for tennis. The girl with the car keys won.
"I was hesitant at first," Meza said. "It was a wussy sport."
An uncle gave Meza an old Prince racket with no grip so she could join the squad. A week later, her friend got kicked off the team for skipping practice to make out with a guy. Meza either had to quit tennis or find a new way home.
Coach Haines offered to chauffeur, and Meza accepted, although she hugged the door the entire way and didn't respond when Haines joked.
"I didn't think much of him," Meza said. "I didn't think much of people."
But Haines saw something in Meza. More athletic and taller than most of her teammates, she worked hard and grasped the basics. The stubborn coach set the bar high, and Meza practiced into the night to improve her tennis and avoid going home.
"You know how psychologists say get a pillow and beat that pillow up until you calm down?" said Meza, who played mostly junior varsity as a freshman. "The tennis ball was therapy for me. It felt good and let me let everything out that I had inside."
Early in her career, Meza won more with toughness than skill. Playing No. 3 singles as a sophomore, Meza posted a 10-5 record. She applied to various clubs and tennis academies, only to get turned away because of her unrefined skills and poverty.
Meza settled for lessons at the Tucson Racquet Club, which required an hour's bus ride each way. The former gangster, who just one year earlier didn't trust strangers, made friends on the trips.
"They were interesting people," Meza said. "I know they ride buses and look like bums, but some of them were very interesting people.
"It was cool. I love people like that."
Meza didn't always love life at the club, where her dark Mexican skin attracted stares and puzzled looks. She also dealt with little kids who had more tennis experience. She threatened to beat them up, not because she would really do it, but out of anger for her inability to beat them.
"I was completely frustrated, humiliated," Meza said. "I knew these little 8-year-olds had played longer than me. It was just the fact that they were 8 years old that totally busted my ego. But I just kept going."
A recruiting letter from West Hills (Calif.) Community College coach Jesse Cota provided the ego boost Meza needed in the fall of her junior year.
"It was weird because I never had anybody want me before," Meza said. "It didn't even cross my mind that I would play in college. It was really hard for me to accept it. It also motivated me."
With a 1.9 grade-point average, Meza needed the motivation of a college scholarship to better her grades. Haines offered to tutor her, and the former lazy student found that studying led to A's and B's.
"There were teachers in my high school who gave up on her. One teacher said, `She's not very smart, is she?'" Haines said. "People had low expectations."
Meza also continued to progress in tennis. Playing No. 1 singles, Meza went 11-5 and 13-3 in her last two seasons, and each year she cracked the all-Southern Arizona first team a first for any female tennis player from the south side of Tucson.
She still faced an uncertain future. Her early grades repelled most four-year colleges.
Then her angel smiled on her: Grand Canyon University, an NCAA Division II power in Phoenix, had a couple of recruits fall through.
"My experience made me hesitant to take her," Grand Canyon coach Ruth Ann Gardner said. "Most of our players have a lot of training.
"She had a different type of background, and character is very important to us here. (I thought) it would be nice to take a chance and see what she could do."
Meza played at No. 4 singles her freshman year and at No. 2 singles her sophomore season at Grand Canyon. She earned a No. 17 ranking among Division II players in the West.
After two seasons, Meza decided to look for another school. Haines believed she could compete on the Division I level and she attended the Rick Macci Academy in Pompano Beach last summer. Stetson scouted her there, looking for a solid tennis player, regardless of background or experience.
"I was concerned first about her tennis ability," Stetson women's coach Maria Zavala said. "Of my recruits at that time, she was the best.
"What I liked about her is the hard work she shows on the court. When she talks to herself, she talks in a positive way."
Meza played in the middle of the Hatters' lineup in the fall and still has a lot to learn. And she has the added pressure of high expectations coming from more than 2,000 miles away.
She has a better relationship with her mother, who has reunited with Meza's father since his release from prison. She also looked forward to seeing her nephew, born to one of Meza's sisters at 14.
But before visiting her family, Meza had to visit Desert View, where the tennis team attracts more than 40 girls.
They compete on new, lighted courts built on the wave of Meza's leading Desert View to its best two seasons in school history.
"Everything that has happened in my program is because of her," Haines said. "What she has done, everybody knows about it.
"Kids admire the heck out of her. I've had kids who weren't here when she was in high school who can't wait to see her when she comes home."
Those girls have read the profiles of Meza in The New York Times and Latina magazine. Meza provides proof they can succeed even if they weren't born holding a tennis racket like most of their opponents.
"If she wouldn't have succeeded and she wasn't where she is now, a lot of people here wouldn't go out and try to play," Desert View senior Sophia Fierro said. "If I didn't see her success, I wouldn't be out there trying as hard."
Senior Maria Canizales couldn't wait for Meza's visit. Canizales had big news about a possible tennis scholarship to Western New Mexico University.
That scholarship might not have happened without Meza. When Canizales joined the team with no experience as a freshman, it was Meza who drove 20 miles out of her way to give Canizales a ride home.
"She would talk to me about her life and how hard she had to struggle," Canizales said. "She talked to me about how people didn't believe in her.
"She said, `If I can do it, you can do it.' She gave me a lot of confidence."
Meza would like to have that type of impact on more kids. She spent part of her Christmas vacation in Las Vegas working with a group of at-risk tennis players from the Andre Agassi Boys and Girls Club.
She plans on using her life experience and her anticipated Stetson degree in education to accomplish that task.
"If you go to my high school, you have 40 girls out there and I don't know half of them," Meza said. "They all know me. They all want to play tennis.
"Why? Because of me. I feel like if I fail, I fail all of those 40 girls."
News-Journal staff writer Claudia Moscoso contributed to this story.
NOTE: This article won Bob Pockrass the Florida Press Association's "Sports Feature of the Year award." Congratulations, Bob!
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