Angel Gonzalez

Salinas Police Officer Angel Gonzalez is a Salinas native and longtime executive director of the Salinas Police Activities League. He says didn’t grow up thinking he’d become a cop, though he says “it always seemed like a cool job.”

His primary interests were in math and science, and he thought he was heading for something in the medical field. But a workplace injury in the family forced him to become a breadwinner at age 16. He got a job at a local Safeway, and was promoted to management when he was 18. Then a class he took at Hartnell College a few years later, on the laws of arrest and firearms, set him on another course: “I immediately realized this is what I want to do,” he says.

Gonzalez, who graduated from North Salinas High in 1995, joined Salinas PD in 1999, with thoughts of becoming a detective. But after being asked to join the PAL board about five years later, he soon became impressed by the impact of the program. He became executive director of PAL in 2009, a sometimes part-time, but often full-time job with SPD that offers programs for youth – from ballet to baseball – to give them a positive sense of community, and potentially, put them on a track to someday becoming a police officer.

He took over as commissioner of PAL’s biggest program, the Junior Giants league – which is funded by the San Francisco Giants – in 2012, and it has since grown from 250 kids to over 1,100.

The Junior Giants, a baseball league for ages 5-18 that incorporates a character-building curriculum, had its opening day in Salinas June 24. Before the season, in late March, Gonzalez was the 2017 inductee into the Junior Giants Hall of Fame. San Francisco Giants catcher Buster Posey presented Gonzalez with the award.

The Weekly sat down with Gonzalez to chat about the Junior Giants, and surprisingly, where his true sports allegiances lie.

Weekly: A lot of the media coverage about Salinas is related to crime. What are your thoughts about that?

Gonzalez: There are a lot of great organizations, not just for kids, but for seniors and everybody. But unfortunately, the warm and fuzzies don’t sell anymore. And because those things aren’t being put out there it gives Salinas a really bad rap. People don’t hear about the little league programs, the after-school programs.

What makes the Junior Giants program special?

The difference between us and other little leagues is there’s a curriculum that goes with the program. The coaches are asked to go over a word of the week – it can be confidence, leadership, integrity or teamwork – what the Giants call the four bases of character development. The coaches are using some of their practice time to go over all these things. And we have little things we do – we have every participant sign an anti-bullying contract. And the major reach of the [program] is definitely for those kids that may not want to join a traditional little league. Junior Giants is not competitive, we’re not keeping score, it’s literally about the fundamentals of baseball and these kids having fun. It’s all about keeping kids off the street, especially in the summertime, when they have idle time to go out and do stuff they shouldn’t be doing.

What are some special accomplishments of the Junior Giants in Salinas?

Part of the Junior Giants program is a reading program – they reward kids for the number of minutes that they read over the summer. The top level of reading they ask for is 720 minutes. If they do that, they’re invited to festival day [at AT&T Park]. They get to play on the field, bat from home plate, hang out in the dugout, and then they’re taken backstage into the stadium. Over the last three years, we’ve had 100 percent of the kids do the reading, so they all qualify.

The Giants are having a historically bad season. Does that affect morale?

(Smiles.)

Wait… are you a Dodgers fan?

(Laughs, nodding.) I just grew up that way. I do get a lot of ribbing from [the Giants] about that, but the bottom line is, I will stand on rooftops and say how great the Junior Giants program is. Because what they’re doing for these kids is really awesome.