A tattoo of the number 420, which reportedly has to do with smoking marijuana, led police to a juvenile tattoo ring in Baileyville, Maine.

A 17-year-old was questioned and police were seeking anyone who may have been marked by his crudely built tattooing machine, the Bangor Daily News reported Wednesday.

The investigation began a few months ago when a woman found 420 tattooed on her 13-year-old son's ankle.

"It supposedly represents 'it's time to go smoke a joint,'" Baileyville School Resource Officer Shawn Newell said. "I don't know why anyone in their right mind or stable mind would want to have 420 tattooed on their arm or ankle knowing what it means."

Police said the high school student built a primitive tattoo machine using batteries, a stripped down electric razor and black India ink. The teenager said he loaned the machine to friends who tattooed themselves.

washingtontimes.com

Baileyville police plan to warn students about the dangers of home tattooing after a group of teens used a home-made tattoo machine.

School resource officer Shawn Newell says he hopes to speak to health classes about the diseases that can be transmitted through dirty tattoo needles.

Baileyville Police chief Phil Harriman says a 17-year-old high school student built a primitive tattoo machine using batteries and an electric razor. They say the teenager lent the machine to friends who used it to give themselves tattoos.

Police say one of those was a 13-year-old, whose ankle was tattooed with the number "420," a marijuana reference.

Harriman says it's illegal for anyone under the age of 18 to get a tattoo in Maine. No charges have been filed against the 17-year-old.

www.wmtw.com

Taking off that final layer of her rose and scorpion tattoos, leaving hardly a trace, was the most painful for Rose Luerra.



The burning laser, like a torch against her soft skin, coupled with the emotional pain of permanently erasing her past — transporting illegal weapons, committing robberies, being sent to jail twice and overdosing on heroin — almost led Luerra to back out.

"It felt like I was betraying that lifestyle," said Luerra, 42, of San Jose, who recently participated in the tattoo-removal program for former gang members at Dominican Hospital. "It was embedded in me for so many years. I was never going to leave the lifestyle."

The program, started in 1997 by dermatologist Dr. Morgan Magid, helps about 300 former gang members a year, including Luerra, restore the dignity and self-esteem needed to land a job, program coordinator Sister Maureen Keeler said.

"Employment is a high priority for removing the tattoos," Keeler said. "It gives the person the respect they deserve as they try to change their lives."

Seven Santa Cruz doctors — dermatologists and plastic surgeons — volunteer their time and skills to remove visible tattoos from former gang members at reduced costs.

Clients are expected to contribute in accordance with their age and income. In Luerra’s case, she was required to pay $50 for each laser session, which totaled about $400 by the time she was finished. Normally, tattoo removal can range from $250 to $700 per session.

Participants are also required to perform at least 20 hours of volunteer community service, which must be documented in a letter and presented to Keeler before they are accepted into the program.

Depending on the tattoo’s size and color, it can take several laser sessions to completely dissolve what could be an eternal mark.

The laser uses powerful light energy to break down the colors of the ink into tiny particles, which are absorbed by the body and naturally dissolved over time, Keeler said.

For Luerra, the painful process to remove everything took two years.

"It felt like drops of fire," she said.

At first reluctant to wipe away her past, Luerra is now grateful not to carry the stigma associated with the permanent ink that had canvassed parts of her body. She remembers being turned away from applying for a job at a jewelry store because of the tattoos.

"They were stopping me from so much," Luerra said. "I knew people looked at me differently."

Now that the tattoos are mostly a memory, Luerra can clearly see the mistakes and self-destruction of joining a gang and helps others to avoid doing the same.

Gang life, in Luerra’s eyes, brings a false comfort zone along with "hardcore" crime and drug use.

Luerra was 14 and living in East San Jose when she joined the "Nortenas" and made her own tattoos of small dots on her hands. It was a bonding ritual with her "homegirls," she said.

"We did it together, unidos," Luerra said.

More time in the gang brought larger, more colorful tattoos to other parts of her body. She had a scorpion on her knee, a rose and the Roman numerals "XIV" on her chest, and across her back were hands in the praying position with "Nortena" written in cursive above.

For many years, the gang life provided a sense of family — albeit a dysfunctional one — for Luerra, who was raised by her grandmother and started cutting school and smoking marijuana before hitting the harder stuff like heroin and committing robberies.

She dropped out of school in 11th grade.

"The next thing I knew, I was deeper and deeper involved in the gang," she said.

It was comforting, she said, to know "someone always had my back."

It took several years and a near-death experience for Luerra to walk away and clean up her life.

Rock-bottom was a heroin overdose in the mid-1980s, during which Luerra’s brother and mother found her passed out on the floor inside her apartment with syringes strewn everywhere.

She was so sickly skinny at the time that her gang nickname was "Flaca" — Spanish for thin.

After the overdose, Luerra realized she needed to do a better job of raising her young son, who is now 23. It was then that Luerra promised to quit the gang and start a new life.

With help from a San Jose church league softball coach, Luerra pulled her life together when she was about 25 and began the track to the life she lives now as a counselor with California Youth Outreach in San Jose.

Luerra’s work involves guiding teens who are in the same situation she was in once — in a gang and struggling to get out and clean up. She makes sure they attend school, return home by curfew and get treatment for substance abuse.

Nearly all of the teens she works with have tattoos, and from personal experience she can tell them they’re not worth the price of being judged and second-guessed by others.

"It’s a dream I’ve waited for for a long time," she said of being tattoo-free. "This is it."