March 28, 2024 • 27 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Vincent “Rocco” Vargas shares his unique perspective of becoming a Border Patrol Agent after his own grandmother came to America illegally. He is now an actor who has played the role of Gilberto “Gilly" Lopez on Mayans MC, a spinoff of the FX original hit series, Sons of Anarchy.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
To search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Vincent rock O Vargas is a former Army ranger turned
(00:31):
US Customs and Border Protection agent. He's now an actor
who has played the role of Gilberto Gilly Lopez on
Mayan's MC, a spin off of the FX original Hits
series Buns of Anarchy. Vargas is the author of Borderline
Defending the home Front, a book printed under retired Navy
(00:51):
Seal Jocko Willinks Publishing Company. Here's Vincent Vargas with his story.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
I was born in Los Angele was, California, in eighty one.
My grandmother wasn't a legal immigrant. She actually was born
in Mexico, just on the other side of the border.
Her sister was born on this side of the border,
on the American side, and was an American citizen by birth,
(01:19):
and she died at a very young age, and my
grandmother took her identity just so she can be a
legal citizen. And my mother she wanted more for herself,
and so when she turned eighteen, she had a family
member out in Los Angeles. She had a change of
clothes in a paper bag, toothpaste, toothbrush, and I think
(01:41):
it was fifteen dollars and a bus ticket to La
My parents met. When my mom she stated in an
apartment building that my uncle, by chance, was a manager
at he was managing. He was like making sure everything
was good, and he calls my dad, who was in
the Marines at the time. My father was forced to
go to the Marines. It was either to go to prison.
He got into a gang fight moving to La the
(02:03):
Puerto Rican kid joined a Mexican gang because that's what
you do. He was part of that era where the
fights were more with belts and chains and pipes and
nothing else. Kind of the greasers versus the socials kind
of thing. They settled right there in the La area.
You know, they struggled for a little bit. My father
(02:23):
got out of the Marines and got into construction. He
was a framer. He just was a hard working person.
During a rainy season. As a framer, he had a
file for unemployment and when he went to the unemployment office,
he saw a big poster for La City firefighters, and
he applied, And I remember our life completely changing dramatically
(02:46):
one year from selling a small house, a two bedroom house,
four kids sleeping in one room, two bunk beds, the
boys on one bunk beds, the girls in the other
bunk beds, and my dad's in my mom and dad's room,
to buying a house with three bedrooms and me and
my brother's sharing a room, and my sister's sharing a room.
And it's just like I saw our life change dramatically,
and my dad getting a solid job for the family.
(03:10):
I played baseball since I was four, travel ball, well,
travel like year round ball since I was seven. It
was a way to stay out of the gangs. The
gangs was very prevalent, from my dad's air of gangs
to my brother's air of gangs. It turned into drive
bys and shootings quite often. We had friends who would
succumb to gang violence. You heard a drive by shooting,
(03:31):
you're like, oh, that was probably on Figure Roll or
that was probably on Oryan. We were scared, you know,
sometimes walking around at night, hanging out with friends, even
if it was had anything to do with gangs. It
was just being in the area at the time. If
a vehicle was driving slow, we always dropped to the
ground and stayed low until it drove by, and we'd
pop back up and continue a conversation like nothing ever happened.
I didn't know myself to be good at anything other
(03:53):
than baseball. I wasn't good at reading. I was dyslexic
as a kid. It was undiagnosed for a long time,
so I didn't know I had a problem. I just
thought I was dumb. Got out of high school. I
didn't pass an SAT, so I had to go to
junior college for baseball, which was the path I wanted
to go anyways, because I believed I can get drafted
faster that way. So I went to La Valley Community College,
(04:14):
and eventually academics got the best of me. Again, just immaturity,
I decided to join the military. I'm watching the news
and I'm seeing this marine put the American flag over
the statue of Saddam as they pull it down. It's
a very iconic visual. I think we've all seen it.
And I remember them interviewing his family and how proud
of him they were. They were crying and they were
(04:37):
just so they were so proud of their own son.
And I sat there watching this thinking, I don't know
if my family has ever felt that way about me.
I don't know if I've ever given them something to
be that proud of me, and that idea hurt. I
had lost the one thing that I thought I was
(04:58):
good at. I have a daughter on the way who
I want to be a dad like I want to
be a dad, and I have no money to support her.
The next day I showed her to the Army recruiting
I showed the recruiting station try to figure out which
one I wanted. Eventually I settled on the Army the
Special Operations. I saw the movie Black Hawk Down and
inspired me to think, if I would ever have the
(05:21):
guts to take the fight to the enemy, I would
like to test myself and see if I do. To
watch these young men fight for something that they believe in.
It felt like a baseball team, but with a different mission,
you know. It felt like the camaraderie again, And I thought, well,
if I die serve in this country, all things are fulfilled.
My daughter gets money. At the time, she would have
got four hundred thousand dollars. My parents would have had
(05:44):
a son who's a hero and I wouldn't have to
continue facing this world where I don't have baseball in it.
And so I joined during a time of war, knowing
that I was going to war as an infantryman with
a ranger contract. And after six months of waiting and
two credit cards maxed out because.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Thinking I'm gonna die anyway, so I ain't never gonna
have to pay this back, I went to the military
and thirty days after all my training, I find myself
in Afghanistan.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Fast forward. You know, in the four years of my
military career, I lost a few friends, sarm Bras and
sarm Brim and a who gets me when I say
their names, who are two of probably the best in
our career field to ever do the job. Which puts
(06:37):
things into a weird perspective where you see life and say, well,
they're the best and they were killed, and where does
that put me? And maybe question if there was more
out in the world that I could accomplish, and that
if I need to get out before it's my time
as well to be killed.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
And you've been listening to Vincent rock O Vargas story
and his family's story, and there's that moment he sees
the statue of Sodom Mussein topple. These marines are holding
up a flag and the family is so proud of
their son, and he's wondering, have I done anything in
my life to earn such regard, to respect from my
(07:17):
own family. He joins the army and his life begins
to change. When we come back more of Vincent Rocovargas's
story here on our American Stories. This is Lee Habib,
host of our American Stories. Every day we set out
to tell the stories of Americans past and present, from
small towns to big cities, and from all walks of
(07:39):
life doing extraordinary things. But we truly can't do this
show without you. Our shows are free to listen to,
but they're not free to make. If you love what
you hear, go to our American Stories dot com and
make a donation to keep the stories coming. That's our
American Stories dot Com. And we continue with our American
(08:11):
Stories and Vincent rock O Vargas's story. Let's pick up
where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
While in the military and seeing it all and seeing
what I could do, I realized I wanted to live
and I wanted to accomplish more. And I wanted to
be in my kids' lives at that time getting out.
I had three kids and I just wanted to be
better for them. And so after the four years of
Special Operations, three deployments, eventually I got the call to
be a Border trou Asian in two thousand and nine.
(08:40):
And you know, up until this point, my race and
culture wasn't a topic of discussion. It was my race
and my culture. I grew up in La the Melting Pot.
Even though I was Puerto Rican, I didn't know what
that was. I was the only Puerto Rican there. I
knew what perto Rican was from my grandmother, my cousins
and uncles. But like Jane, I was Mexican by the
(09:01):
way I was raised. I was Mexican by the culture
my mother presented. But it wasn't something that we pushed
on to people or I felt I needed to I
need to be so proud of that, I just shared it.
I don't know. It wasn't a thing for us, and
not that I'm not. I'm super proud of being I'm
super proud of being Latino. I'm proud of being Mexican
and Puerto Rican. I'm proud of both of those. Cultures,
(09:21):
and I'll never deny them. But it wasn't that I
ever had to. You know, I was in a world
where everyone was a different race. In la and in
the military, I don't care about color. We cared about surviving,
you know what I mean. So it wasn't as prevalent.
When I went to Kentucky, I saw a bit of it.
I thought it was funny when someone said, Hey, those
guys are called the amigos when they're washing dishes in
(09:41):
Texas roadhouse. I'm like, do you mean amigos? What's their name?
And they're like, I don't know, they call them amigos.
I'm like, what the so I say, what's your name is? Jose?
I was like, okay, what's your name? Luise? Okay, cool
Jossein Luis. And I was like, that's so weird they
call them amigos. But it was I was so distant
from this this race thing that everyone jumps on. But
(10:06):
then they didn't weren't raised like me. In my clouds.
There's Asians, there's blacks, there's whites, there's everything, and no
one really cared. We just kind of existed, and sometimes
we use our color of our skin or our cultures
as a joke of connection, you know, and it was
this really beautiful thing. And then the military is no different.
So and in baseball it's no different. So to see
(10:27):
it outside of it, and I didn't think anything of it.
I'm just like, all right, well whatever, Now I'm a
border trajan and I'm starting to get these comments of hey, dude,
you're a Mexican. Where are you stopping your own people?
And I was like, ah, what. And I don't think
I was articulate enough and had enough education on the
(10:50):
topic to even speak on it. I was just confused.
And so I found it fascinating that people didn't understand
the difference of like being an American citizen, but as
well as wanting to protect America, you know, after nine
to eleven, this homeland security push, and then on the
other side of also being proud of being Latino in Mexican,
you know what I mean. And yeah, I remember my
(11:12):
first apprehension, and in getting this job, I learned more
about my culture. I asked my mom about my grandmother, right,
I asked about how they were raised. I asked about her,
you know, working in a field if she needed to. Right,
I asked about all, and I was fascinated. I was
actually the way I saw it, well, my perception of
it was what a beautiful thing to see my family
(11:34):
come from that to continue to grow. I saw it
in a perspective of growth, and I saw that as
the American way, the opportunity of what America presents, and
so I was very proud of being American. I was
very proud of my Mexican and puert Rican culture and
what my parents have been able to provide for us
(11:55):
and what I turned around want to provide for my kids.
But then I'm getting the backlash of saying, hey, Vodigas,
kip Us all Fargus, what's up? What are you doing? Vodagas?
You know what I mean? You're Hispanic too, And it
made me really, you know, I apprehended a woman, a man,
and a little girl, and I saw a reflection of
my own grandmother in there, and I thought like, wow,
(12:17):
this is a This is an interesting and very complex
topic because my grandmother came over illegally. Huh. But here
I am stopping those dreams. The duality of being a
Border Troy agent is being human enough to see the
empathetic side of this immigration situation, but also being protective
(12:40):
enough of your own people, your own family and friends
to understand the security aspect needs also be upheld. You know,
the interesting perspective of the border is that there's some
people that say that why do we even have borders
right now? Other people say lock all the borders And
it really comes down to like, if you want to
stay in the border, and why we need a border.
(13:01):
It's like, well, why do you need doors? You have
a front door, I have a front door, But why
do we choose to have a front door? Because we
want to feel protected? And I'll take it even deeper
that everyone chooses how much protection they choose to have
on their own house, right. Some people have alarms, some
people have gated communities, and we all choose that why
because we all want to feel secure in that, you know,
(13:23):
in that micro version of like us personally in the macro,
it's the border in that same version of you wanting
to have a front door in your house and that
you want to be able to address anyone that comes
to your door and whether you allow them into your
house or when you can tell them they can leave. Right,
No one comes over for a party and stays for
twelve days, you're like, oh, it's time to go home,
big guy. You know what I mean. But with us
(13:45):
in our own house, we choose who we allow in
our house and who we don't, right because of sometimes
the fear of safety security. And in that same thought process,
it's no different than our borders. We should know who
comes across borders, what's their intentions, how long they choose
to plan to stay, and if we don't, well then
(14:05):
we open ourselves up for some serious risk. And I
fear these outliers who don't believe in the American way
of life. It's just the reality of it. And so
when there's an argument about the border, I'm always like, well,
you choose to protect your house, we should be allowed
to protect our own country, which inverently is our house.
(14:27):
And so I hope that when people hear that perspective
they kind of understand it a little bit better. When
you're in the Border Patrol Academy, there's a portion of
it where they want to make sure you know how
to swim. There's some like basics to that because you
work potentially in the Rio Grande River where we have
a lot of drowning deaths, of the year, not the
(14:48):
bordertrol per se, but illegal migrants attempting to cross. One day,
it was like man house, pretty new in the border patrol,
and I was with a senior guy and we're dry.
We see a group try and cross, and we hear
the commotion. Someone's drowning. Someone someone lost their footing in
their starting to drown. And I looked at my shower.
I was like, well, go we do. He's like nothing.
(15:08):
I'm like, what do you mean nothing. He goes, well,
I'm not gonna go in there. And I was like, well,
do you mind if I do. He's like, I don't
recommend it. Fargus, I don't recommend it. I said, well, look,
I'm a really good swimmer. I grew up in La
I swim since I was four. I did the whole
beach thing, so I know what I'm doing. He said,
if you want to. I took off my gun belt,
I took off all my stuff. I actually rip my
top off so fast that the sleeve cuff stayed on.
(15:29):
And so I'm in my underwear, a green shirt and
a cuff still on, and I jump in there to
try and save this dude. I jumped into the water
was cold. It took my breath away for a second,
and I I knew that was coming, so I was
prepared for the mental I said, Okay, let's go boom
and star swim swims and get closer him. Eventually, as
I get closer and I'm thinking like, all right, I'm
gonna grab him, and I'm the one will pull me down.
We get washed up upon a short spot and we
(15:52):
stand up and look at each other, and it was
a really odd moment of in the middle of the
real Grande River where he hadn't crossed any thing where
he's illegal, and I'm not crossing any further. So we
kind of looked at each other. He said, and I said,
for what. I didn't do nothing, but okay, I turn
around and walk back. And it was a really weird moment.
But you know, it raises the question, why is he
(16:16):
crossing a river if he can't swim, Why did any
of these people do it? And that's what most I
think people who don't understand this, they don't get to
see and so they I think they lose the context
of the human aspect of this. Their lives are in
a position where they're willing to risk their life for
(16:40):
a chance at America. There's people in America that don't
even appreciate our country that much.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
And we've been listening to Vincent Rocco Vargas. He's a
former Army ranger turned US Customs and Border Protection agent,
and he's been sharing with us the story of his family,
his family, heritage, his time in Iraq, and his time
just seeing carnage, seeing friends killed, coming back wanting to
do something for his family, wanting to be a good father,
(17:09):
wanting to be a good provider, and also wanting to
serve and describing the border situation in a way that
very few people in America can is both a man
of Mexican and Puerto Rican heritage, but yet also explaining
that we have to protect not just our borders, but
our house, the American house, and yet having that empathy
(17:31):
to connect to those people who were coming across the border,
coming across the Rio Grande and risking their lives to
come here, and that appreciation for what the American dream represents,
the magnet that it is. When we come back more
of Vincent Rocko Vargas's story here on our American stories,
(18:07):
and we continue with our American stories and Vincent rock
O Vargas's story. Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
There's people in America that take it for granted. They
crap all over our own country, but they don't realize
people are losing their lives just the attempt for an
opportunity to work, to make money for safety so they
don't get killed from cartel or the corruption. And that
same exact river where I was my buddy working boat
crew and a lady sees his boat pull up and
(18:39):
they're trying to pull up a couple of people who
are stranded, and she throws a baby at him and
he luckily catches the baby, and he was so mad.
He's like, why would she do this baby? And he
starts telling her Spanish, like hey, what's wrong with you?
And she looked and says, you don't know my life.
In that moment, he said, you're right, I don't. We
(19:00):
can't sit here and try and make a determination of
like why are they coming to our country. We know why.
They're scared for their lives. They want opportunity, they want
a chance at a life, and they're willing to throw
their baby at you just so that baby can have
a better opportunity at this at what this is, this
beautiful country that gives opportunity. It's no different than my mother,
(19:20):
my grandmother coming across and creating this world that's put
me in the position I am today. It's no different,
and it put me in a really odd position as
a border tuagent. And I said, you know what, I
really love this job and what it does and what
it can do, and what more can I do? I thought,
if I became a medic and saved as many lives
as possible, I'd be paying off a debt of guilt
(19:43):
that I can face my God in heaven and say,
was that enough? Then I earned my way back. And
I know that's not how my God would see it,
but that's how my heart felt. I felt I had
(20:03):
had I had to pay back. I had to save
as many souls as I possibly could to feel worthy
of heaven. And I became a medic and I was
able to save a lot of lives for the Special
Operations side of the Border Patrol, a side of the
(20:24):
Border Troy that most don't know, the humanitarian side of
us saving as many lives as possible daily on the border.
The Bordertrol Special Operations Group saves more lives than any
other organization on the border. The Bordertow as a whole
stops more drugs than any other organization in the nation.
And so the humanitarian side of this job, this really beautiful, delicate,
(20:47):
complex job, was what I did for the last portion
five years in my career. You know, the border Patrol
has to deal with a lot of the cartel situation.
The cartel is more like drugs smuggling organizations, multiple different cartels,
but they're all drug smuggling organizations as well as human
(21:08):
smuggling organizations. And then there's always a fear that the
cartel is going to do something on our side of
the country, on our side, to slow us down, to
hurt us. You hear threats about it. But you know,
there's this weird, copesthetic kind of balance that happens on
the border with us in the cartel. It's this it's
(21:30):
not any kind of written law or anything, but it's
essentially the cat and mouse game of this. All they
get enough of cross that they're happy, and we stop
enough that we're happy that checks and balances are good
to go for both sides and not intentionally, it's just
the way the nature of the beast. But if at
any point a smuggler gets out of hand, if they
(21:53):
decide to bring a gun and they engage on one
of our bordertal agents, which has happened, everything changes. Will
we will bring in a massive amount of security personnel
bodies and we will shut down that border better than ever.
And that hurts the cartel even more. And so in
(22:15):
this really weird balance of it all, the cartel doesn't
allow that. If someone does step out of hand, you'll
see them not directly message border patrol, but public news.
You'll see that they will either kill whoever did it,
or they'll bring them and drop them off at the
border and say, hey, these are the guys. They try
(22:35):
and correct that wrong because they want Homeo stations on
the border, their version of Homeo stas is on the
border as much as possible so their business can be
could run as usual. It's this very weird dynamic that
it's like, like I said, it's not a written rule.
It's just this weird version of a balance at the
border that is kind of managed by the cartel on
(22:58):
their side, and as well as if it gets out
of hand on our side, they tend to clean that
up themselves as well. It's interesting with apprehensions on the border.
I think, you know, most people talk about, you know,
Mexicans across the border, but you know, because of proximity,
there's a lot of Mexicans who do right. But the
(23:19):
biggest thing you see is OTMS. They call it is
other than Mexicans, and that's kind of a term that
that name has kind of been determined by the cartel
actually and their smuggling efforts and how they label them.
But as well as outside of OTMS or other than Mexicans,
you have exotics as well, and so we have currently
(23:40):
right now, I think there's more other than Mexicans and
exotics coming across the border daily. Uh. You know, at
one point there was more Venezuelans, Haitians, Asians who are
coming across the border currently as time. So you know,
it's it's really it's just any kind of illegal immigration
has to be kind of identified as that because it's
(24:03):
random who crossed that border, and random so much so
that you know, it wasn't uncommon for us to catch
people on the terrorist watch list or the FBI's most
wanted list. You know where else can you circumvent a
system by crossing the southern border by trying to get
away or not be detected through you know, ports of entry.
This job is a lot more intricate than the world
(24:26):
really knows, and I think it's important for people to
kind of get more educated on it. John like Guizamo
did a one man show once and I was probably
thirteen at the time I saw it. In an hour,
he made me laugh, cry, smile, question everything, and that
was that was heavy for a thirteen year old kid
(24:48):
to feel all that. It was like, Wow, what a
special thing. And I knew I wanted to try and
do the same for others, and so I resigned from
the border patrol and I said, it's time to focus
on my family, my four kids. I was a single
father of four kids, and my career that would give
you more time with them. And so I have committed
(25:10):
back to my family. I've committed back to my God,
and I've committed to the pursuit of being an actor
and writer in a way that is valuable for society.
It's been a challenge, you know what I mean, because
the entertainment industry is is a fight. It's a dog fight,
you know. And I was fortunate enough to show up
(25:32):
to La at the right place, at the right time
for an audition and landed a role in Mayans. I
started off as a guest star, then became a season
regular in season three, and then became a writer in
season five and currently working on a few other projects
that I hope I can continue to be a messenger
(25:54):
of valuable content and telling stories that inspire and motive
like the people who did that before me.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
And a terrific job on the production editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler, and a special thanks to
Vincent Rocco Vargas, former Army ranger turned US Customs and
Border Protection agent turned medic turn actor. And of course,
when you're an actor and then you start to write,
you're what we are. You're a storyteller. And we love
(26:23):
sharing stories of every dimension of American life, old and new.
And we never do issues here on this show. And
this was not an immigration issue.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
In the end.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
It was a human issue, and it was it was
a human story, not an immigration story. And being on
the border, as he said, is a beautiful, delicate and
complex job. The boy must it be, especially when you're
seeing those kids coming across the Rio brand, some of
them whom you know, are being trafficked by cartels, and
(26:53):
yet having to do your job, which is protect the
American house, and how to do that with dignity, and
how to do that with honor and with self respect
in need. That's why he became a medic, because in
the end he wanted to just focus on that humanitarian
side of being a border patrol agent, and then of
course leaving that, recommitting to his family, to his faith,
(27:14):
and becoming an actor and in the end becoming a storyteller.
The story of Vincent rock Ovargas here on our American
Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
To search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Vincent rock O Vargas is a former Army ranger turned
(00:31):
US Customs and Border Protection agent. He's now an actor
who has played the role of Gilberto Gilly Lopez on
Mayan's MC, a spin off of the FX original Hits
series Buns of Anarchy. Vargas is the author of Borderline
Defending the home Front, a book printed under retired Navy
(00:51):
Seal Jocko Willinks Publishing Company. Here's Vincent Vargas with his story.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
I was born in Los Angele was, California, in eighty one.
My grandmother wasn't a legal immigrant. She actually was born
in Mexico, just on the other side of the border.
Her sister was born on this side of the border,
on the American side, and was an American citizen by birth,
(01:19):
and she died at a very young age, and my
grandmother took her identity just so she can be a
legal citizen. And my mother she wanted more for herself,
and so when she turned eighteen, she had a family
member out in Los Angeles. She had a change of
clothes in a paper bag, toothpaste, toothbrush, and I think
(01:41):
it was fifteen dollars and a bus ticket to La
My parents met. When my mom she stated in an
apartment building that my uncle, by chance, was a manager
at he was managing. He was like making sure everything
was good, and he calls my dad, who was in
the Marines at the time. My father was forced to
go to the Marines. It was either to go to prison.
He got into a gang fight moving to La the
(02:03):
Puerto Rican kid joined a Mexican gang because that's what
you do. He was part of that era where the
fights were more with belts and chains and pipes and
nothing else. Kind of the greasers versus the socials kind
of thing. They settled right there in the La area.
You know, they struggled for a little bit. My father
(02:23):
got out of the Marines and got into construction. He
was a framer. He just was a hard working person.
During a rainy season. As a framer, he had a
file for unemployment and when he went to the unemployment office,
he saw a big poster for La City firefighters, and
he applied, And I remember our life completely changing dramatically
(02:46):
one year from selling a small house, a two bedroom house,
four kids sleeping in one room, two bunk beds, the
boys on one bunk beds, the girls in the other
bunk beds, and my dad's in my mom and dad's room,
to buying a house with three bedrooms and me and
my brother's sharing a room, and my sister's sharing a room.
And it's just like I saw our life change dramatically,
and my dad getting a solid job for the family.
(03:10):
I played baseball since I was four, travel ball, well,
travel like year round ball since I was seven. It
was a way to stay out of the gangs. The
gangs was very prevalent, from my dad's air of gangs
to my brother's air of gangs. It turned into drive
bys and shootings quite often. We had friends who would
succumb to gang violence. You heard a drive by shooting,
(03:31):
you're like, oh, that was probably on Figure Roll or
that was probably on Oryan. We were scared, you know,
sometimes walking around at night, hanging out with friends, even
if it was had anything to do with gangs. It
was just being in the area at the time. If
a vehicle was driving slow, we always dropped to the
ground and stayed low until it drove by, and we'd
pop back up and continue a conversation like nothing ever happened.
I didn't know myself to be good at anything other
(03:53):
than baseball. I wasn't good at reading. I was dyslexic
as a kid. It was undiagnosed for a long time,
so I didn't know I had a problem. I just
thought I was dumb. Got out of high school. I
didn't pass an SAT, so I had to go to
junior college for baseball, which was the path I wanted
to go anyways, because I believed I can get drafted
faster that way. So I went to La Valley Community College,
(04:14):
and eventually academics got the best of me. Again, just immaturity,
I decided to join the military. I'm watching the news
and I'm seeing this marine put the American flag over
the statue of Saddam as they pull it down. It's
a very iconic visual. I think we've all seen it.
And I remember them interviewing his family and how proud
of him they were. They were crying and they were
(04:37):
just so they were so proud of their own son.
And I sat there watching this thinking, I don't know
if my family has ever felt that way about me.
I don't know if I've ever given them something to
be that proud of me, and that idea hurt. I
had lost the one thing that I thought I was
(04:58):
good at. I have a daughter on the way who
I want to be a dad like I want to
be a dad, and I have no money to support her.
The next day I showed her to the Army recruiting
I showed the recruiting station try to figure out which
one I wanted. Eventually I settled on the Army the
Special Operations. I saw the movie Black Hawk Down and
inspired me to think, if I would ever have the
(05:21):
guts to take the fight to the enemy, I would
like to test myself and see if I do. To
watch these young men fight for something that they believe in.
It felt like a baseball team, but with a different mission,
you know. It felt like the camaraderie again, And I thought, well,
if I die serve in this country, all things are fulfilled.
My daughter gets money. At the time, she would have
got four hundred thousand dollars. My parents would have had
(05:44):
a son who's a hero and I wouldn't have to
continue facing this world where I don't have baseball in it.
And so I joined during a time of war, knowing
that I was going to war as an infantryman with
a ranger contract. And after six months of waiting and
two credit cards maxed out because.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Thinking I'm gonna die anyway, so I ain't never gonna
have to pay this back, I went to the military
and thirty days after all my training, I find myself
in Afghanistan.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Fast forward. You know, in the four years of my
military career, I lost a few friends, sarm Bras and
sarm Brim and a who gets me when I say
their names, who are two of probably the best in
our career field to ever do the job. Which puts
(06:37):
things into a weird perspective where you see life and say, well,
they're the best and they were killed, and where does
that put me? And maybe question if there was more
out in the world that I could accomplish, and that
if I need to get out before it's my time
as well to be killed.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
And you've been listening to Vincent rock O Vargas story
and his family's story, and there's that moment he sees
the statue of Sodom Mussein topple. These marines are holding
up a flag and the family is so proud of
their son, and he's wondering, have I done anything in
my life to earn such regard, to respect from my
(07:17):
own family. He joins the army and his life begins
to change. When we come back more of Vincent Rocovargas's
story here on our American Stories. This is Lee Habib,
host of our American Stories. Every day we set out
to tell the stories of Americans past and present, from
small towns to big cities, and from all walks of
(07:39):
life doing extraordinary things. But we truly can't do this
show without you. Our shows are free to listen to,
but they're not free to make. If you love what
you hear, go to our American Stories dot com and
make a donation to keep the stories coming. That's our
American Stories dot Com. And we continue with our American
(08:11):
Stories and Vincent rock O Vargas's story. Let's pick up
where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
While in the military and seeing it all and seeing
what I could do, I realized I wanted to live
and I wanted to accomplish more. And I wanted to
be in my kids' lives at that time getting out.
I had three kids and I just wanted to be
better for them. And so after the four years of
Special Operations, three deployments, eventually I got the call to
be a Border trou Asian in two thousand and nine.
(08:40):
And you know, up until this point, my race and
culture wasn't a topic of discussion. It was my race
and my culture. I grew up in La the Melting Pot.
Even though I was Puerto Rican, I didn't know what
that was. I was the only Puerto Rican there. I
knew what perto Rican was from my grandmother, my cousins
and uncles. But like Jane, I was Mexican by the
(09:01):
way I was raised. I was Mexican by the culture
my mother presented. But it wasn't something that we pushed
on to people or I felt I needed to I
need to be so proud of that, I just shared it.
I don't know. It wasn't a thing for us, and
not that I'm not. I'm super proud of being I'm
super proud of being Latino. I'm proud of being Mexican
and Puerto Rican. I'm proud of both of those. Cultures,
(09:21):
and I'll never deny them. But it wasn't that I
ever had to. You know, I was in a world
where everyone was a different race. In la and in
the military, I don't care about color. We cared about surviving,
you know what I mean. So it wasn't as prevalent.
When I went to Kentucky, I saw a bit of it.
I thought it was funny when someone said, Hey, those
guys are called the amigos when they're washing dishes in
(09:41):
Texas roadhouse. I'm like, do you mean amigos? What's their name?
And they're like, I don't know, they call them amigos.
I'm like, what the so I say, what's your name is? Jose?
I was like, okay, what's your name? Luise? Okay, cool
Jossein Luis. And I was like, that's so weird they
call them amigos. But it was I was so distant
from this this race thing that everyone jumps on. But
(10:06):
then they didn't weren't raised like me. In my clouds.
There's Asians, there's blacks, there's whites, there's everything, and no
one really cared. We just kind of existed, and sometimes
we use our color of our skin or our cultures
as a joke of connection, you know, and it was
this really beautiful thing. And then the military is no different.
So and in baseball it's no different. So to see
(10:27):
it outside of it, and I didn't think anything of it.
I'm just like, all right, well whatever, Now I'm a
border trajan and I'm starting to get these comments of hey, dude,
you're a Mexican. Where are you stopping your own people?
And I was like, ah, what. And I don't think
I was articulate enough and had enough education on the
(10:50):
topic to even speak on it. I was just confused.
And so I found it fascinating that people didn't understand
the difference of like being an American citizen, but as
well as wanting to protect America, you know, after nine
to eleven, this homeland security push, and then on the
other side of also being proud of being Latino in Mexican,
you know what I mean. And yeah, I remember my
(11:12):
first apprehension, and in getting this job, I learned more
about my culture. I asked my mom about my grandmother, right,
I asked about how they were raised. I asked about her,
you know, working in a field if she needed to. Right,
I asked about all, and I was fascinated. I was
actually the way I saw it, well, my perception of
it was what a beautiful thing to see my family
(11:34):
come from that to continue to grow. I saw it
in a perspective of growth, and I saw that as
the American way, the opportunity of what America presents, and
so I was very proud of being American. I was
very proud of my Mexican and puert Rican culture and
what my parents have been able to provide for us
(11:55):
and what I turned around want to provide for my kids.
But then I'm getting the backlash of saying, hey, Vodigas,
kip Us all Fargus, what's up? What are you doing? Vodagas?
You know what I mean? You're Hispanic too, And it
made me really, you know, I apprehended a woman, a man,
and a little girl, and I saw a reflection of
my own grandmother in there, and I thought like, wow,
(12:17):
this is a This is an interesting and very complex
topic because my grandmother came over illegally. Huh. But here
I am stopping those dreams. The duality of being a
Border Troy agent is being human enough to see the
empathetic side of this immigration situation, but also being protective
(12:40):
enough of your own people, your own family and friends
to understand the security aspect needs also be upheld. You know,
the interesting perspective of the border is that there's some
people that say that why do we even have borders
right now? Other people say lock all the borders And
it really comes down to like, if you want to
stay in the border, and why we need a border.
(13:01):
It's like, well, why do you need doors? You have
a front door, I have a front door, But why
do we choose to have a front door? Because we
want to feel protected? And I'll take it even deeper
that everyone chooses how much protection they choose to have
on their own house, right. Some people have alarms, some
people have gated communities, and we all choose that why
because we all want to feel secure in that, you know,
(13:23):
in that micro version of like us personally in the macro,
it's the border in that same version of you wanting
to have a front door in your house and that
you want to be able to address anyone that comes
to your door and whether you allow them into your
house or when you can tell them they can leave. Right,
No one comes over for a party and stays for
twelve days, you're like, oh, it's time to go home,
big guy. You know what I mean. But with us
(13:45):
in our own house, we choose who we allow in
our house and who we don't, right because of sometimes
the fear of safety security. And in that same thought process,
it's no different than our borders. We should know who
comes across borders, what's their intentions, how long they choose
to plan to stay, and if we don't, well then
(14:05):
we open ourselves up for some serious risk. And I
fear these outliers who don't believe in the American way
of life. It's just the reality of it. And so
when there's an argument about the border, I'm always like, well,
you choose to protect your house, we should be allowed
to protect our own country, which inverently is our house.
(14:27):
And so I hope that when people hear that perspective
they kind of understand it a little bit better. When
you're in the Border Patrol Academy, there's a portion of
it where they want to make sure you know how
to swim. There's some like basics to that because you
work potentially in the Rio Grande River where we have
a lot of drowning deaths, of the year, not the
(14:48):
bordertrol per se, but illegal migrants attempting to cross. One day,
it was like man house, pretty new in the border patrol,
and I was with a senior guy and we're dry.
We see a group try and cross, and we hear
the commotion. Someone's drowning. Someone someone lost their footing in
their starting to drown. And I looked at my shower.
I was like, well, go we do. He's like nothing.
(15:08):
I'm like, what do you mean nothing. He goes, well,
I'm not gonna go in there. And I was like, well,
do you mind if I do. He's like, I don't
recommend it. Fargus, I don't recommend it. I said, well, look,
I'm a really good swimmer. I grew up in La
I swim since I was four. I did the whole
beach thing, so I know what I'm doing. He said,
if you want to. I took off my gun belt,
I took off all my stuff. I actually rip my
top off so fast that the sleeve cuff stayed on.
(15:29):
And so I'm in my underwear, a green shirt and
a cuff still on, and I jump in there to
try and save this dude. I jumped into the water
was cold. It took my breath away for a second,
and I I knew that was coming, so I was
prepared for the mental I said, Okay, let's go boom
and star swim swims and get closer him. Eventually, as
I get closer and I'm thinking like, all right, I'm
gonna grab him, and I'm the one will pull me down.
We get washed up upon a short spot and we
(15:52):
stand up and look at each other, and it was
a really odd moment of in the middle of the
real Grande River where he hadn't crossed any thing where
he's illegal, and I'm not crossing any further. So we
kind of looked at each other. He said, and I said,
for what. I didn't do nothing, but okay, I turn
around and walk back. And it was a really weird moment.
But you know, it raises the question, why is he
(16:16):
crossing a river if he can't swim, Why did any
of these people do it? And that's what most I
think people who don't understand this, they don't get to
see and so they I think they lose the context
of the human aspect of this. Their lives are in
a position where they're willing to risk their life for
(16:40):
a chance at America. There's people in America that don't
even appreciate our country that much.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
And we've been listening to Vincent Rocco Vargas. He's a
former Army ranger turned US Customs and Border Protection agent,
and he's been sharing with us the story of his family,
his family, heritage, his time in Iraq, and his time
just seeing carnage, seeing friends killed, coming back wanting to
do something for his family, wanting to be a good father,
(17:09):
wanting to be a good provider, and also wanting to
serve and describing the border situation in a way that
very few people in America can is both a man
of Mexican and Puerto Rican heritage, but yet also explaining
that we have to protect not just our borders, but
our house, the American house, and yet having that empathy
(17:31):
to connect to those people who were coming across the border,
coming across the Rio Grande and risking their lives to
come here, and that appreciation for what the American dream represents,
the magnet that it is. When we come back more
of Vincent Rocko Vargas's story here on our American stories,
(18:07):
and we continue with our American stories and Vincent rock
O Vargas's story. Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
There's people in America that take it for granted. They
crap all over our own country, but they don't realize
people are losing their lives just the attempt for an
opportunity to work, to make money for safety so they
don't get killed from cartel or the corruption. And that
same exact river where I was my buddy working boat
crew and a lady sees his boat pull up and
(18:39):
they're trying to pull up a couple of people who
are stranded, and she throws a baby at him and
he luckily catches the baby, and he was so mad.
He's like, why would she do this baby? And he
starts telling her Spanish, like hey, what's wrong with you?
And she looked and says, you don't know my life.
In that moment, he said, you're right, I don't. We
(19:00):
can't sit here and try and make a determination of
like why are they coming to our country. We know why.
They're scared for their lives. They want opportunity, they want
a chance at a life, and they're willing to throw
their baby at you just so that baby can have
a better opportunity at this at what this is, this
beautiful country that gives opportunity. It's no different than my mother,
(19:20):
my grandmother coming across and creating this world that's put
me in the position I am today. It's no different,
and it put me in a really odd position as
a border tuagent. And I said, you know what, I
really love this job and what it does and what
it can do, and what more can I do? I thought,
if I became a medic and saved as many lives
as possible, I'd be paying off a debt of guilt
(19:43):
that I can face my God in heaven and say,
was that enough? Then I earned my way back. And
I know that's not how my God would see it,
but that's how my heart felt. I felt I had
(20:03):
had I had to pay back. I had to save
as many souls as I possibly could to feel worthy
of heaven. And I became a medic and I was
able to save a lot of lives for the Special
Operations side of the Border Patrol, a side of the
(20:24):
Border Troy that most don't know, the humanitarian side of
us saving as many lives as possible daily on the border.
The Bordertrol Special Operations Group saves more lives than any
other organization on the border. The Bordertow as a whole
stops more drugs than any other organization in the nation.
And so the humanitarian side of this job, this really beautiful, delicate,
(20:47):
complex job, was what I did for the last portion
five years in my career. You know, the border Patrol
has to deal with a lot of the cartel situation.
The cartel is more like drugs smuggling organizations, multiple different cartels,
but they're all drug smuggling organizations as well as human
(21:08):
smuggling organizations. And then there's always a fear that the
cartel is going to do something on our side of
the country, on our side, to slow us down, to
hurt us. You hear threats about it. But you know,
there's this weird, copesthetic kind of balance that happens on
the border with us in the cartel. It's this it's
(21:30):
not any kind of written law or anything, but it's
essentially the cat and mouse game of this. All they
get enough of cross that they're happy, and we stop
enough that we're happy that checks and balances are good
to go for both sides and not intentionally, it's just
the way the nature of the beast. But if at
any point a smuggler gets out of hand, if they
(21:53):
decide to bring a gun and they engage on one
of our bordertal agents, which has happened, everything changes. Will
we will bring in a massive amount of security personnel
bodies and we will shut down that border better than ever.
And that hurts the cartel even more. And so in
(22:15):
this really weird balance of it all, the cartel doesn't
allow that. If someone does step out of hand, you'll
see them not directly message border patrol, but public news.
You'll see that they will either kill whoever did it,
or they'll bring them and drop them off at the
border and say, hey, these are the guys. They try
(22:35):
and correct that wrong because they want Homeo stations on
the border, their version of Homeo stas is on the
border as much as possible so their business can be
could run as usual. It's this very weird dynamic that
it's like, like I said, it's not a written rule.
It's just this weird version of a balance at the
border that is kind of managed by the cartel on
(22:58):
their side, and as well as if it gets out
of hand on our side, they tend to clean that
up themselves as well. It's interesting with apprehensions on the border.
I think, you know, most people talk about, you know,
Mexicans across the border, but you know, because of proximity,
there's a lot of Mexicans who do right. But the
(23:19):
biggest thing you see is OTMS. They call it is
other than Mexicans, and that's kind of a term that
that name has kind of been determined by the cartel
actually and their smuggling efforts and how they label them.
But as well as outside of OTMS or other than Mexicans,
you have exotics as well, and so we have currently
(23:40):
right now, I think there's more other than Mexicans and
exotics coming across the border daily. Uh. You know, at
one point there was more Venezuelans, Haitians, Asians who are
coming across the border currently as time. So you know,
it's it's really it's just any kind of illegal immigration
has to be kind of identified as that because it's
(24:03):
random who crossed that border, and random so much so
that you know, it wasn't uncommon for us to catch
people on the terrorist watch list or the FBI's most
wanted list. You know where else can you circumvent a
system by crossing the southern border by trying to get
away or not be detected through you know, ports of entry.
This job is a lot more intricate than the world
(24:26):
really knows, and I think it's important for people to
kind of get more educated on it. John like Guizamo
did a one man show once and I was probably
thirteen at the time I saw it. In an hour,
he made me laugh, cry, smile, question everything, and that
was that was heavy for a thirteen year old kid
(24:48):
to feel all that. It was like, Wow, what a
special thing. And I knew I wanted to try and
do the same for others, and so I resigned from
the border patrol and I said, it's time to focus
on my family, my four kids. I was a single
father of four kids, and my career that would give
you more time with them. And so I have committed
(25:10):
back to my family. I've committed back to my God,
and I've committed to the pursuit of being an actor
and writer in a way that is valuable for society.
It's been a challenge, you know what I mean, because
the entertainment industry is is a fight. It's a dog fight,
you know. And I was fortunate enough to show up
(25:32):
to La at the right place, at the right time
for an audition and landed a role in Mayans. I
started off as a guest star, then became a season
regular in season three, and then became a writer in
season five and currently working on a few other projects
that I hope I can continue to be a messenger
(25:54):
of valuable content and telling stories that inspire and motive
like the people who did that before me.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
And a terrific job on the production editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler, and a special thanks to
Vincent Rocco Vargas, former Army ranger turned US Customs and
Border Protection agent turned medic turn actor. And of course,
when you're an actor and then you start to write,
you're what we are. You're a storyteller. And we love
(26:23):
sharing stories of every dimension of American life, old and new.
And we never do issues here on this show. And
this was not an immigration issue.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
In the end.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
It was a human issue, and it was it was
a human story, not an immigration story. And being on
the border, as he said, is a beautiful, delicate and
complex job. The boy must it be, especially when you're
seeing those kids coming across the Rio brand, some of
them whom you know, are being trafficked by cartels, and
(26:53):
yet having to do your job, which is protect the
American house, and how to do that with dignity, and
how to do that with honor and with self respect
in need. That's why he became a medic, because in
the end he wanted to just focus on that humanitarian
side of being a border patrol agent, and then of
course leaving that, recommitting to his family, to his faith,
(27:14):
and becoming an actor and in the end becoming a storyteller.
The story of Vincent rock Ovargas here on our American
Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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