Rodrigo Mendo

== Early Life ==
Rodrigo Mendo (born June 7th 1990) was born in El Corona, Los Santos. He was brought up by a single mother whom was already looking after two daughters. Rodrigo was quickly brought up into being poor and struggling to actually go day-by-day on his mother's welfare funding. He often saw men come and go in his mother's life due to her going into prostitution to gain money for the family's whole subsistence, which made it hard for him to deal with seeing many men come by and then not having a steady, solid father figure which made him become quite jealous and quite bitter around other people his age whom did have fathers at the time.
As he was growing up he would see the kind of lifestyle that the kind of people in El Corona had to offer, which was the gang culture that grew around the whole area and was currently expanding at the time, this meant he was clearly exposed to the kind of ghetto life that was the norm in such an area. He had to learn the hard way about many things going through school, with kids starting fights about what set to rep or what clothing they might be wearing or dealing drugs in the playground and sooner or later he would get caught up within it. He would have to up his keep and stay maintained if he was to live in such a place.
At the ripe age of twelve, he was told to go around the corner to grab some groceries for his mother, this was a simple errand but with a twist that changed his perception on life in whole. As he was coming back around from buying the groceries he saw two Hispanic males badly assault a black male and then stab him repeatedly. As he got home, he was left constantly with seeing the sight of the act in his mind and was constantly wondering about the whole affair over and over. When he was in high school, he would spend a majority of time flunking away from class and began to hang out with a bunch of boys, one of them being Kasper Hernandez. Once he hung out with this group, they'd share what was in common with being bullied by African American groups in school and the same attitude to making money for themselves.
== The Beginning of It All: Welcome to Rifa 13 & Getting it Rolling ==
When Rodrigo hit sixteen, he and Kasper "Nova" Hernandez would set themselves up in the early foundations for what is now the prominent Boulevard Rifa-13 set. He was involved in many drug pushing operations, brutal fights with rival sets as well as the typical house burglaries, 24/7 heists and stealing items from vehicles. This would start to get Rodrigo respect amongst the set and raised a name for himself on the streets. He would be able to help his mother and family pay for things with the cash he'd make from doing such activities.
Rodrigo was starting to become known for his violent ways and would be easily triggered into an angered state, one known event was what got Rodrigo named for his ways of being overly violent and hasty. This said event occurred on a hot Saturday afternoon, whilst he was hanging out at the local corner, placed adjacent to the wall of the graffiti covered closed down cafe, keeping an eye out onto the street, two young white males on a BMX bike stopped by and aimed themselves at Rodrigo. At this point he thought these were two young teenagers looking to book some drugs for themselves, but as they went to approach him, one started to curse and throw insults at Rodrigo. Rodrigo slowly pushed himself off from the wall and threw himself at the male, pinning him to the floor and repeatedly beating him to a pulp. The other male was startled and went to brandish a pen knife, but as soon as Rodrigo had beaten up the guy on the floor and raised himself to his feet to get him, the male had begun to flee from the scene. At this point Rodrigo didn't see no point in getting even more flustered to chase after him and simply looked down at the bleeding male, spitting onto his face and returning to his former position.
Although he is notoriously known to be bitter and easily angered, Rodrigo is quite calm and collective in a majority of situations, where he would be visually seen to be kept quiet and observant during various drug deals or situations where Nova would be doing the talking to other gangs or doing deals and the so forth. Rodrigo would keep himself maintained and try to find more suitable ways around violence and mindless shootings, which led to him becoming Nova's right hand man when times got hard and with the demand for someone to be cool headed and street smart within the set. This earned him his name for being quite an odd, but an easy going person during meetings especially when he got older.
The current Boulevard Rifa-13 set was currently being run by Cabrera "Mendo" Mendez and Rodrigo firmly planted himself in the set with his longtime friend from school, Kasper Hernandez. At this time things were steady, with the gang keeping themselves on a steady reputation and on their feet as a notorious Sureno gang in . As Rodrigo pressed his name into the set's reputation, he got himself known with the higher ups and after a while he finally got his rag.
The day he earned his rag was the very same day he returned home from school for the weekend to begin, Rodrigo slowly appeared around the block of where he lived and spotted a majority of the members within Rifa 13, all hanging out and looking over at Rodrigo. They called him over where they were standing and briefly told him We're going to make you a man today, Rods. Once they spoke this they then told him what they're going to do and quickly threw him into the inner circle of the group. They all begun to viciously beat and kick him to the ground, where he huddled up and took each hit after hit. After a minute or so, they stopped and slowly one of the members broke the circle and chucked in a patterned, light blue rag saying Welcome to Rifa 13, 'ese. This is 'fo life now, you don't forget 'dat.. After this, Rodrigo become more and more known for his involvement for the faction as he stayed loyal and a steady, prominent member within the gang. Rodrigo was happy with this as he was beginning to get a steady income of cash and have a group of friends he knew he could fall back on.
Rodrigo was earning his keep and representing the gang's name everywhere he went. Shortly after being initiated in the gang, he'd get several distinguishable tattoos around his body to show off his gang's name, the most noticeable one is X13 RIFA 4 LYFE along the top of his chest and ACE ST. X13 SURENO. placed upon the top of his collarbone area.
== Keeping Yourself in Check; Life in The Corona ==
Life was going pretty well for Rodrigo; decent income of cash, people who he know whom always would have his back and the thought of being able to help out his family too. After a while, Rodrigo was helping around with the drug's crew within Rifa and repping the corners of El Corona with many others, setting up deals with passers by.
For a while things were of course, going swell for Rodrigo as he dealt drugs and just kept his feet on the concrete sidewalks of the barrio, once he was established and ragged, he would be brought on attacks on rival gangs; one moment that Rodrigo would never forget is the first time he ever shot and killed someone, someone who is the same age and living the same life as he was.
It was the beginning of June 2006, where both Rodrigo Mendo and several other Rifa members were driving through the Idlewood area and spotted a rival African-American Bloods set. The other members egged on Rodrigo to take a shot at the members, pushing him to finally peep the Colt M1911 Pistol out of the car's window, taking several shots at the members of the gang. The shots rang out the entire neighborhood, locals looked on in horror as kids on their BMXes shot off and lurkers on their porches ran back for cover in their houses. Rodrigo at this point shot and killed one Bloods member, badly injuring two others in the process.
After the drive-by, Rodrigo was patted on the back and became highly regarded from committing the homicide, but inside of him was the constant pressure to kill and thoughts of the death playing through in his mind. Time got on, with more murders between each sets and even people not involved getting shot; making Rodrigo being the one to just observe and not pull the trigger as fast as others would. He slowly felt inside that there are other ways to get back on these people and war wasn't it, in his eyes atleast.
Despite his less eagerness to commit murders and pull the trigger where he went, Rodrigo maintained his reputation by rolling with the crew to hit up brawls on the other sets or even amongst the younger Sureno members with Rodrigo coming out as a winner with two-hundred bets in his pockets. Sometimes this anger and determination to beat down people got too much to Rodrigo's ego and led to him beating up people who might have simply passed through; this also heated up the leads of such violent gang beatings, shootings and narcotic distribution to the Los Santos Police Department to conduct more regular patrols and searches upon the Hispanic population in the area.
To keep the area safe from the SWAT team raids that were sometimes even conducted every fortnight, weapons and drugs were kept in separate 'Safehouses' in the area, one was assigned to Rodrigo's house. He maintained a subtle way to keep the weapons from assault rifles like an AR-15 to smaller weapons such as 9MM Pistols and Colt M1911s in his bedroom, as well as sometimes in the house closet downstairs. His mother never really pried into his business and seemed to not care what he got up to as-long as the cash rolled in, this meant he was able to bring in dufflebags worth of guns and hide them with ease.
== The Short Hiatus: Gettin' Busted ==
During these said raids, Rodrigo got unlucky and the weapons held within his home were found by a SWAT team and he was paraded out of the door, his hands placed behind his back and his head down as his mother screamed out in protest to the arresting officers. Not only that, but a victim's account of a vicious beating days before matched up to Rodrigo's details and his name was accounted for that in court.
Rodrigo got slapped with [INSERT THE YEARS HERE LOL] and was placed within Los Santos Penitentiary. During his time there and his connections with Rifa 13 he was able to get work done for the La eMe inside, doing various activities that they needed done to get by. On the inside he could keep his eye on the business activities of Rifa 13, maintaining his reputation and keeping it on a steady flow.
(more lol)
== Time Goes On: The Death of "Mendo" & Gettin' Back on Track ==
Before Rodrigo was even able to get parole and get back out into the open, back with the set he was home with. The main leader Cabrera "Mendo" Mendez was.
(More to be done as time progresses and when I don't get my brain stuck))
Category:Character