Jesus in a Mullet

Out front again, Chavez talks about his brother Johnny, one of 19 siblings in the family. Hendrixson has mentioned Johnny before: He was known as the "Thrill Killer" and was executed by lethal injection on April 22, 2003, as his family members watched. After apologizing for his crimes, Johnny smiled and winked at his brother and then lay back, closing his eyes. "OK, Warden, take me to heaven," he said. But as the automatic plungers fell, he lifted his head again and asked, "Is this thing working?"

"We thought he was going to beat death," Chavez says. They were wrong--but Chavez swears that all those present saw his brother's spirit rising to heaven shortly afterward, arms crossed in death and wearing a beatific grin. "The guard grabbed me on the shoulder," he says, "and said, 'We just killed somebody from God.'"

It was Chavez's love of art that led him into Hendrixson's shop in 2000, but it was years before he would trust her, and even longer before he would return her hug. Chavez remembers her first attempt: "I was like, 'Don't hug me, lady. I don't hug nobody.'" Since then he has appeared with Hendrixson on TV and at gang conferences. "Somebody should have told me a long time ago," Chavez says. "They should have said, 'You've got some talent there, you could do something different.' If someone had told me that when I was a kid, I wouldn't be in this chair now." Does that mean he is no longer a gang member? "No," he says, amused at the question. "We're a family."

Nevertheless, Hendrixson counts Chavez as a success story, as she does any gang member who will open up and talk honestly to her. It is this unquestioning acceptance that makes Hendrixson and Bajito Onda utterly unique. "Del isn't as judgmental" of her clients as other service providers, Ivory says. "When they've bombed out of everything else, a lot of people don't want to touch them."

Hendrixson, however, refuses to discriminate. "I had a skinhead live with me for 14 months," she says. "That guy hasn't changed. He's still a monster. He'll call me up and he'll say, 'Fuck you, you old whore,' and I'm like, 'Hey, what's up?'" Hendrixson's willingness to accept all comers has earned her a loyal adherent in Vicki Hallman. "I don't stutter when I say this: I'm around a lot of people, even in the churches, that talk a good talk but don't really do much," Hallman says. "I have yet to ask Del to help somebody with something--where she received no benefit whatsoever--where she has not risen to the occasion. For that I will always admire and respect her."

Hendrixson's goodwill is genuine, but so is her fascination with the criminal mind. "I work with a guy who committed a despicable crime--probably one of the worst crimes I've ever heard of," Hendrixson says, and pulls out an August 4 letter from Ramon Salcido. Salcido is on death row in California's San Quentin for the murder of six family members, including two of his three daughters. Hendrixson has made dozens of copies of the letter, in which Salcido offers his "sincere love, respect and prayers to all supporters of Bajito Onda..."

Days later, Salcido is allowed a rare phone call--and uses it to contact Hendrixson. "I asked him if he'd seen Scott Peterson," Hendrixson says. "I mean, what do you ask a guy on death row?" Yet she is thrilled that Salcido called. "It may cost me $25 for a phone call," Hendrixson says. "I don't care if it costs $150--I know what it means to him."

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Perhaps the most important new ally Hendrixson has acquired is Ivory, a tall, polished graduate of Austin College and Princeton divinity school. He gained national fame for his work with Fort Worth youth gangs in the '90s, pioneering the practice of having mentors actually move in with at-risk youth. He is also a veteran nonprofit administrator and a virtuoso at grant writing. Ivory has lent his expertise to various other causes in his spare time, but he sees a rare opportunity in Bajito Onda.

"Every program wants to do referrals, but Del does it all right here under one roof," Ivory says. "[Other programs] don't really serve the poorest of the poor, the hardest to reach. She does that."

Ivory has taken on the daunting task of getting Bajito Onda out of Hendrixson's head and onto paper. Before meeting Ivory, Hendrixson says, "I was like a mainframe without a keyboard." Ivory and Hendrixson have spent many late nights working to put her informal mentoring and training methods into presentable form. The next step will be to submit grant proposals to prospective donors.

During one late-night session, Hendrixson all but boasts about the funding opportunities she has missed out on. "I know a lot of people at the Meadows Foundation and they say, 'Del, apply for funding,'" Hendrixson says. "'We want to give you money.'" Ivory shakes his head as he listens. Hendrixson continues: "Just two months ago I had State Farm ask me to apply for money. 'Apply, and we will give you money,' they said." Ivory looks slightly ill.

"I try to share with Del that she has a great philosophy, but having a philosophy and having a methodology are two totally different things," Ivory says. "On a case-by-case basis, she's done a good job. What I'm trying to do is help her scale that up."