Karlos Balderas proudly tells his story, a great American story, a story you're sure to see on prime-time TV during the Olympic Games.He starts with his grandfather, David, coming to the United States from Mexico, looking for a better life. In Mexico, their family had searched dumpsters for food. Their home had been a shed with a cardboard roof. They would put oil or grease onto the roof at night so that if it rained, the water would roll off it. Dreams were made in the United States, so David "went straight to the strawberry fields in California to look for a job, because that was pretty much the only thing he was able to do," Karlos says."He left five kids and his wife, my grandma, in Mexico. The only way to bring them was to work and save money, so my grandpa was living in the strawberry fields where he worked. He was living in the little ditches. He would sleep with cardboard and maybe a tarp on top of him."He had nothing."Eventually, he found a way to bring the family over, including Karlos' father, Zenon.Fast-forward two generations, and what do you have'The kind of neatly packaged story that's made for television: rags to riches, tugs at the heartstrings. Karlos Balderas, from the first American-born generation in his family, is a 19-year-old, good-looking, clean-cut, well-adjusted boxer. He will fight as a 132-pound lightweight on the U.S. Olympic team in Rio.Along the way, there are heartwarming anecdotes like these:"My dad sold his car so I could get to [one] tournament," saysKarlos(who will likely be referred to as "Carlos" at times during the Olympics but says he prefers his name be spelled with a "K"). "My grandpa sold a watch. My stepmom sold her necklaces and her earrings. She knew how important it was for us. She would rather see us happy than have her stuff."We didn't have much. I don't know how to put this: We were like 11 people in a two-bedroom house. My family made so much sacrifice for me. Heading into the Olympic Games, I'm going to keep that in the back of my mind."But this is not the full story.It's just not that simple. America's not. The characters are complex. The warts are often the beautiful part. Heroes are not always heroes, and villains are not always villains.And Balderas' story isn't about gloss and dreams; it's about texture and reality.This is not the story of the All-American kid who was born to be an Olympian or the down-on-his-luck kid who persevered to become an Olympian. It's the story of the kid who had the wrong pedigree, the wrong upbringing, the wrong training, the wrong gym, the wrong attitude. It's a modern and real American story in its perfect imperfection.Karlos Balderas is wearing red, white and blue, and you wonder if his story could happen anywhere elseand even if it could happen here, or if he was just a fluke.And he loves and recognizes and is eternally grateful for every flawed hero in his life."I say a prayer the night before my fights," Karlos says, "and as soon as I get into the ring, I get in my corner and say a prayer again."Karlos Balderas puts it plainly, simply: "Boxing saved my life. I was fighting too much in the streets."He was fighting in school, too. And he remembers even as a young boy what his grandpa would do to him on the days when he had been sent home."He would get me up at 4 or 5 in the morning," Karlos says. "He didn't want me home alone. He'd say, 'You're going to work with us today. Hard.' It would kill your back. The whole time bending over. It was hard. It was hard. I was a little kid. I'd carry those heavy strawberries."But I also used to like it because I'd be spending time with my grandpa. I was always with my grandpa. He has big love for me, and I have big love for him."David Balderas worked in the strawberry fields until two years ago, when he was already in his 80s. Long days in the sun hunched over, standing in the mud. He wants to go back, but the family won't let him."He still feels like he needs to provide for us," Karlos says. "We were in Santa Maria, [California], but he told us that he used to go anywhere. He would go anywhere where they had the best fields."The specifics of the Balderasstory aren't always very specific. Dates, times, situationsthese aren't recorded in record books. The family tells its story as an oral history, short on details, potentially short on some facts, but long on meaning.But the clear gist of it is that those fields changed David Balderasmade him a man."His only chance for a better life for his family was in the United States," Karlos says. "The only way to bring everyone back was to save money."Those strawberry fields mean something. They are the fields of dreams for the Balderas family. They are where Karlos got close to his grandpa. They are where he and his brother, Jose, learned how to work, work, work."Nobody works harder than we do," Jose says as he spars with Karlos at the Balderas family gym. Jose and Karlos plan to turn pro together after the Olympics.Jose says his grandparents raised Karlos and him until they were six or seven years old.So David is the ultimate family man. Except there is one little thing to know, according to Karlos and Jose's father, Zenon: When David left the family in Mexico to come to California, it was not actually to provide a better life for the family."Not at first, no," Zenon says. "At first my dad came to the U.S. and just forgot about us. He left us behind in Mexico, and my mom got a job. We had nothing to eat, so we'd go to the landfill. Our restroom was just...someone dug a hole. He was young and he worked a lot, but he also used to gamble and drink."Zenon says he didn't meet his dad until he was eight years old. At that point, Zenon says, his dad had grown up, taken responsibility and saved enough money to start bringing over family members.So which one is David' The guy who left behind his family, or the one who brought them to a better life' The one who raised his grandkids when they needed someone' The one who wanted to keep taking care of that family by working strawberry fields into his 80s'He is all of those people. And Karlos loves them all."He taught me how to be a man."On the Santa Maria Valley Chamber of Commerce website, it reads, "In the spring and summertime, the sweet fragrance of strawberries perfume the air all around Santa Maria."And this: "If you happen upon a double strawberry, break it in half and share it with a member of the opposite sex. Watch for Cupid, because legend has it you'll soon fall in love with each other. Believe it or not."It's funny because Zenon Balderas, father of Karlos and son of David, doesn't mention those things when he talks about working the fields as a boy, when his dad brought him from Mexico. His reality is different."You had to bend, like all day," he says. "Sometimes they had water on the ground or mud, and all day you have to bend in it. All day. All day. Sometimes you can't even get up at the end of the day because your back hurts so much. My dad used to wake us up at like 4 every day. I was like, 'Oh man, why did I come [to the United States]''"His perception has changed: "This beautiful country did what Mexico never could for us. We've got schools, good jobs and my son in the Olympics. I love this country more than my own."Zenon says his dad had him and his siblings working in the strawberry fields all day when he was nine years old, and then authorities stopped that practice and made them go to school. The fields, he says, were his dad's life and purpose. Zenon and his siblings wanted something different.Fast-forward, and Zenon says he has a sister who is an immigration lawyer, a brother who is a math teacher. He took a job in a laboratory.He tells the story of a young Karlos: "Karlos was active and always trying to do everything. Karlos got suspended from school for fighting. When he was seven years old, he was so little he looked like he was three. The bigger kids used to pick on him. But he made them bleed. He said, 'They were picking on me and calling me midget so I punched him in the eye.' Two months later he was suspended again; he made an even bigger kid bleed. I took my son home, poor Karlos, and I grabbed my belt and hit him a few times on the backside. I spoke to my brother, David, and he told me there's a boxing gym I should take Karlos to. Karlos was seven and Jose eight. The owner of the gym said to come back when they're 13."I saw another kid there who was nine, 10 years old, and I asked how can you let this kid be here' The man in charge said, 'He's my grandson.' I said what if we make him fight my son, and if your grandson beats my son (Karlos), I'll come back when he's 13. If my son wins, he can stay."You can guess what happened. So that's where it all started for Karlos, and also for Jose. They trained together every day, with their uncle and their dad. School in the day, training in the evening, homework at night. Repeat.But Karlos was never groomed to be an Olympian. He was groomed to change the course of his life. That's what Zenon says he was after. He was not going to let them go down the path they were headed for."After Karlos started boxing, he became more and more disciplined," Zenon says. "He started changing."A father spending hours a day, nearly every day in the evening, to break a family's cycle and make sure his boys had the right path. It sounds like a good story. But one thing: Where was Zenon when the boys were being raised by their grandfather' Where was their mom'Karlos says only that their mom left. One of the family members says Zenon spent time in prison, but no one will talk about it or give any further details.What does that make him in this story' Jose says that when he came back, that's when he became committed to making sure his family's path would change."It was a Toyota Corolla," Zenon says, answering the question about what type of car he sold so Karlos could get to a national tournament.Zenon says they were always running fundraisers, too. He had his daughter standing in front of the post office all day to sell candy and raise money for Karlos' boxing.They also had other problems. The gym they trained at kicked them out. The Balderas family wanted to train Karlos and Jose itself, not use the gym's trainers. That left them on the street again, and the training then moved to the Balderas' living room.No place for a future Olympian to train.The road along Karlos Balderas' journey has taken wild detours, swung perilously close to cliffs, bottomed out. You hold on for dear life the whole way, follow the paths of the loving and flawed heroes in your life, mix it with an unbreakable work ethic and a somewhat dysfunctional, deep family love, and that's the path to the Olympics'The great American story. What we see now, thanks to the incredible successes of the fathers of Tiger Woods and Venus and Serena Williams, is a path that starts by all but professionalizing young children. It's a cookie-cutter of travel teams and minivans and private coaching. The Balderas family was holding on for dear life, taking two steps forward, being pushed back one, two more forward and taking one back.And then they ran into Roy Baca.It is amazing that they found Baca, because it's amazing that there even is a guy like Roy Baca. He helped to put Karlos' life into a straight line that made the same amount of sense that the straight rows of strawberries made to his grandfather.Baca owns a gym in the town of Lompoc, about a 45-minute drive from Santa Maria. You might not be able to find his gym now, as he is in the middle of moving again. He has moved the gym nine times in 20 years as rent goes up, and he can't afford it. He moves to a bigger place, and then a smaller one. One time he was in his garage.No matter where his gym is, he posts the same sign: No Smoking. No Drinking. No Gangs."He was like, 'Oh, you guys are welcome in my gym,'" Jose says. "'You don't have to pay. I'll give you the keys.'"Strangers for free' Strangers given a key'"This gym is here to help anybody," Baca says. "Most of my clientele here is from people who work the fields. They don't have time to invest in their kids, so there's a gang problem here. In Santa Maria, where the Balderases are from, all it is is fields, fields, fields. Everywhere the industry there is truck farming."Mostly, it's immigrants, workers who come in from Mexico and have a houseful of kids. With the gym, we want to help keep kids off the street. These kids can be good kids if they just have somebody to help them along."Still, giving away your work product for free has to hurt."Oh," Baca says. "It costs me out of my own pocket $250 or $350 a month to keep the doors open. There's just no money in the town for any kind of thing like this. I've never gotten any money from it. Never. I don't make money; it costs me money."So what do you do for money'"I'm a retired painter. Seventy-five years old. I do little odd jobs around town, or whatever someone will pay me for. I use it to keep the gym open. If I do a job a month, it usually is enough to help me carry the gym. If you don't get a house a month [to paint], you struggle and find a way to make it work."Baca, a Mexican-American born in Colorado, tells his story: He moved to California in 1981. He was helping a friend at a landfill and found some boxing equipment that looked to be in good shape. So he took the equipment to a gym. The gym's owner, in response, volunteered to train Baca's grandson.Baca would work with them. And eventually a co-owner left, and then another one, and now it's all Baca's."If I don't do it, the kids who have money will have money," he says, "and the kids below them will be on the streets involved in drugs or whatever they are involved in.Did that apply to the Balderas family, too'"Oh yeah," Baca says. "They were already getting in trouble when they got involved in boxing. When I first got them, the uncle and the dad were keeping them focused, keeping them contained. They were both there daily with the boysthe two brothers and their cousinand worked daily with them. All three of them turned out to be good kids."He says there was always "something special" about Karlos. Zenon used the same words. Jose' He used the same words, too: "It was crazy to see the people he was beating and the people he was fighting."Jose speaks bluntly about how close they were to going another route. Two of the people he and Karlos were hanging around with several years ago were recently killed."One of the kids we stopped hanging around with was shot in the head," he says. "The other guy was attacked, and two guys cut his hand off with a machete. Even after that, he picked up a gun, but he got shot. That was about a year ago."It took Baca to help Karlos' path swerve around that. Baca won't be able to see Karlos in Rio, though. He doesn't have the money for it, but also, hedoesn't have the health. He says he has had a series of heart attacks.A 75-year-old retired painter donating his time and money and taking odd jobs despite seriously failing health to help the children of Mexican immigrants. The result: Karlos Balderas in red, white and blue.Karlos says that when he made the Olympic team, his stepmom broke down and started crying: "She remembered all the sacrifices. And my dad and my grandparents started crying as well."My grandpa is always with me at my fights and every day in training camp. He never leaves my side. My mom doesn't like watching me fight."In the past few years, Zenon says, they left Baca's gym for something a little closer: Their family raised enough money for a family gym. Thanks to fundraisers and barbecues, David and Zenon and Jose will all be going to Rio.Karlos says that no matter how many family members are able to get there, he takes the family and its history everywhere he goes. He wants to represent it well and also send a message to the people in the land of strawberry fields that there is hope."My family made so much sacrifice for me I feel it's only right if I do the same for them," he says. "I know people will look at us in different ways. But my family provided enough for me to really make it. We didn't have much."This isn't a fairy tale, but it may be better. Karlos says that if he has kids someday, he will take them back to the strawberry fields, especially "if they're misbehaving, yes," but even if not. It's a family tradition that tells the Balderases' real story.It might not be a neat enough story for prime-time TV. But it's a great one, and it seems headed for a happy ending. Greg Couch covers the Olympics for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter at @gregcouch. To donate to Baca's gym, go to LompocBoxing.com.
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