Larry Rising

Summary

The Brothers Ortiz — Episode 2: "Larry Rising"

Release Date: December 17, 2025
Host: Campside Media & iHeart Podcasts
Writer/Host: Sean Flynn

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Episode Overview

This episode of The Brothers Ortiz peels back the layers of Larry Ortiz’s adolescence and the family dynamics that set him on a path vastly different from his older brother Gabe. Through interviews with family and childhood friends, the episode explores Larry’s evolution from a charismatic, mischievous teen into an aspiring gang leader and drug dealer in small-town Texas. By tracing the family’s struggles, personal choices, generational trauma, and unavoidable circumstances, the podcast reveals how environment, community, and lost connections shape the destinies of the Ortiz brothers.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Sibling Dynamic and Family Void

• Leaving Home: Gabe leaves for Air Force basic training in 1992, creating a physical and emotional void for Larry (03:53).
• Larry’s New Role: Larry becomes the “idol” and mentor to their younger sister Alicia, stepping into Gabe’s shoes (04:56).
  • Alicia on Larry:

    “I was always kind of just following in his footsteps. If Larry was on top of the roof at my grandma’s, hey, I was gonna go climb the roof too.” (04:56, Alicia Ortiz)

• Impact of Distance: In the era before cheap communication, the siblings’ relationships are strained by long periods apart (03:53-04:44).

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2. The Origin of Larry’s Gang Involvement

• Pop Culture Influence: Inspired by the movie South Central, Larry forms a fantasy gang, “Deuce,” with neighborhood friends (05:18-05:39).
  • Alicia explains:

    “We’re going to start a gang called Deuce. Him and his friends, Scooter, Manny... blood in, blood out.” (05:39, Alicia Ortiz)

• Play Turns Real: The gang begins as adolescent imitation, but quickly edges into real mischief and escalation, including fighting and shoplifting (13:46, 14:05).
  • Scooter:

    “It was a stupid game we started playing at school and it just spilled over, that’s all.” (13:57, Scooter)

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3. Early Signs: Charisma, Popularity, and Trouble

• Larry’s Magnetism: Friends recall Larry as popular, charming, and “cool,” able to move between groups and attract admiration (10:05-10:18).
  • Wade (pseudonym):

    “His demeanor, his personality, his energy... if it was hot and he came around, it just — it felt like it just got a little cooler.” (10:18, Wade)

• Home Environment: Despite neighborhood dangers, Larry’s home life was stable, with caring parents—unusual compared to his friend group (11:31-11:58).

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4. Family Fractures and Rebellion

• Father-Son Conflict: Larry clashes with his strict father, especially after Gabe leaves; his father becomes the focus of Larry’s rebellion (12:21-12:47).
  • Gloria (mother):

    “His dad was just so strict with him... Now Gabe wasn’t around. So who was going to take the fault for anything...? It wasn’t Larry... I think Larry would do things on purpose just to get back at his dad.” (12:47, Gloria Ortiz)

• Rule-Breaking: Larry deliberately flouts household and social rules as a way to assert independence (12:47-13:35).

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5. Descent into the Street Life

• Trouble Escalates: What begins as mischief (shoplifting, skipping school) snowballs into dropping out and deeper involvement in crime (15:10, 15:29).
• Drug Dealing as “Work”: Larry and Scooter transition from petty theft to dealing drugs, first marijuana, later harder substances (26:33-27:07).
  • Scooter:

    “It’s just same thing. Growing up in it, seeing family members doing it... wanting to help out, trying to be a man before it’s time to be a man.” (26:56, Scooter)

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6. The Impact of Divorce and Addiction

• Family Crisis: The Ortiz family collapses when Gloria leaves after years of marital strife and her husband’s hidden addiction to pain pills and alcohol (21:24–23:54).
  • Gabe recounts his father's breakdown:

    “Dad is crying hysterically... I hear him manipulating what sounds like a gun... He said that he found out mom was having an affair and he had nothing else to live for, and I'm halfway across the world, and I felt helpless.” (21:24, Gabe Ortiz)

  • Gloria:

    “He started looking for more pain medicines from whoever and at work. And I started seeing a change of him. The slur... the eyes and all that. Then after that, if he would mix it with beer... that would hit him even more.” (23:22, Gloria Ortiz)

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7. The Cycle of Generational Struggles

• Inherited Issues: Addiction and emotional avoidance (“the sins of the father”) are revealed to be intergenerational; a moment of family realization (24:24-25:01).
  • Sean Flynn (narrator):

    “Maybe that's what he meant. Maybe that was the devil crawling through the generations.” (24:24, Sean Flynn)

• Alicia:

  “Yes, we were going to church, but I would find hidden beer bottles here and there... So I knew dad was doing extra stuff outside of mom and his relationship...” (25:09, Alicia Ortiz)

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8. “The Game” and Larry’s Rise

• Street Success: Post-divorce, Larry finds belonging, purpose, and recognition within the local drug scene, especially via his relationship with Kissy and ties to Scooter’s family (27:40-29:40).
• Remarkable Adaptability: Just as Gabe excels in the military, Larry becomes a natural at the illicit economy—ambitious, hardworking, and respected (35:02-35:31).
  • Gloria:

    “After a while, as years started going by, he started being the head of the, of the gang.” (38:10, Gloria Ortiz)

  • Gabe:

    “I heard from a lot of people, they're like, hey, your brother's a badass. Like, nobody wants to fuck with that guy...” (38:18, Gabe Ortiz)

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9. The Two Paths Diverged

• Two Brothers, Two Worlds: Gabe witnesses with shock as Larry conducts a drug deal in front of him, realizing how different their worlds have become (36:18-37:42).
  • Gabe:

    “He basically just did a drug deal from my vehicle with me in it. I flipped a lid. I mean, I got in his ass and I chewed his ass right then and there... It was at that point that I realized that things had changed over the last few years.” (36:18–37:22, Gabe Ortiz)

• Larry’s Reputation: Larry is known and feared, having risen quickly within the local gang hierarchy (38:03-38:18).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Gloria Ortiz, on divorce and responsibility:

  “I just went ahead and let them blame me for the divorce.” (23:02, Gloria Ortiz)

• Wade, on Larry’s presence:

  “If it was hot and he came around, it just felt like it got a little cooler.” (10:18, Wade)

• Gabe Ortiz, on family realization:

  “Addiction runs in families... maybe that was the devil crawling through the generations.” (24:24, Sean Flynn paraphrasing)

• Scooter, on inevitability of the street life:

  “Once he started coming around me… the whole street world opened up to him through me. I was pretty much his pipeline… He didn't plan to go over there and do none of that. He just over there visited my cousin, hanging out with the family. Things happened.” (27:08–28:37, Scooter)

• Alicia Ortiz, on Larry’s protectiveness:

  “Larry was always going in there and checking on me, making sure I was good. Hey, you need anything, at least you got what you need?” (29:01, Alicia Ortiz)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Gabe leaves for Air Force; Larry’s idol gap – 03:53-04:56
• Formation of Deuce (“movie gang”) – 05:18-06:33
• Larry’s early charisma and adventures – 08:08-10:18
• Family home and father’s role – 11:42-12:21
• Larry’s rebellion against father – 12:21-13:35
• Mischief turns real; minor arrest – 14:31-15:10
• Decline in school and first signs of gang colors – 15:29-16:17
• Gabe’s perspective, tension about gang colors – 16:30-17:03
• Divorce, addiction exposed – 21:24-24:24
• Larry’s slide into dealing, post-divorce survival – 26:33-29:52
• Gabe witnesses drug deal by Larry – 36:18-37:42
• Larry’s ascension, local respect and fear – 38:03-38:52

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Tone and Storytelling Style

The episode’s tone is frank and authentic—by turns nostalgic, mournful, and darkly humorous. The storytelling remains intimate, delivered through the candid recollections of family and friends, with hard-hitting asides from Sean Flynn. The show masterfully blends firsthand voices with reflective narration, giving listeners an up-close look at Larry’s transformation and its ripple effects through the Ortiz family.

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Summary Takeaway

Episode 2 of The Brothers Ortiz is a richly human portrait of a family rocked by absence, addiction, and divergent paths. Larry’s life, marked by restlessness and rebellion, echoes the turbulence beneath the Ortiz family’s surface—and the unresolved pain that shaped both his rise and his fall. The episode ends with both brothers, now entrenched in their separate spheres—one in the military, one in the streets—heading toward destinies neither could have predicted growing up side by side.

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End of summary.

Transcript

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[Alicia Ortiz]

Campsite Media.

[Sean Flynn]

Gabe Ortiz left Brazoria county, where he'd lived his entire life, in the fall of 1992, when he was 19 years old. He wasn't going far, just to Lackland Air Force Base for basic training. The base is on the west side of San Antonio, four hours from home, three and a half if you step on it. But for Gabe, that was practically another country. He'd never been that far from home, and for his little brother, Larry, San Antonio might as well have been the moon. It was impossibly far away. Larry was 15 years old, and Gabe was his best friend, his idol, his mentor. And then he was gone. There were no video chats in 1992, no FaceTime or Zoom, and even an old fashioned phone call was long distance, which means it was too expensive. So there was a void, an immense, airless gap between Larry and his brother. But there was one more Ortiz sibling still at home. Alicia was 11, four years younger than Larry, the same age difference between Larry and Gabe. And Alicia adores him. So now Larry's the big brother, the idol, the mentor.

[Alicia Ortiz]

I was always kind of just following in his footsteps. If Larry was on top of the roof at my grandma's, hey, I was gonna go climb the roof too. I could do it. Or climbing trees. I can remember him telling if you want to play with us, you got to do what we do, he'd be like, okay, well you could still come hang out with me. Like when he started up this, this.

[Sean Flynn]

Gang, this was shortly after Gabe left for the Air Force. Larry and Alicia had watched a movie called South Central.

[Alicia Ortiz]

And in the movie there's a gang called Deuce.

[Scooter]

The gangs is fitting to be the strongest force on the streets of la.

[Gabe Ortiz]

And we gonna have to kill somebody.

[Scooter]

To send out the message, don't fuck with Deuce.

[Alicia Ortiz]

That's where it all started. Like, he was like, yeah, we're going to start a gang called Deuce. Him and his friends, Scooter, Manny. It was a bunch of his friends. So I don't know if you know about the saying blood in, blood out. You know, you basically got to get initiated into these gangs.

[Sean Flynn]

You've got to get bloody to get in and bloodier to get out. So your brother who kind of idolize is beating people up to be in his gang?

[Gloria Ortiz]

Yes.

[Sean Flynn]

And that didn't strike you as not a good thing?

[Alicia Ortiz]

No, because I was just like, I wanted to do everything that Larry was doing because we were just so close. It was just. It didn't strike me because I seen the movie myself, so I was like, it didn't seem out of the ordinary.

[Sean Flynn]

How does it end?

[Alicia Ortiz]

It didn't end well.

[Sean Flynn]

From campside media and iheart podcasts, this is the brothers ortiz. Episode 2 larry rising. I'm sean flynn.

[Scooter]

I pretty much was born with the name Scooter.

[Sean Flynn]

To understand Larry at 15 and how everything that happened then put all the rest into motion, you need to hear from Scooter.

[Scooter]

It all started with me. Thing you're looking for started with me.

[Sean Flynn]

We met Scooter at the house we rented near the beach in Brazoria. Scooter came by between shifts at work. He's got a pretty important job in one of Brazoria County's chemical plants. He was carrying a large drink from Circle K and you can hear the ice rattling in the background. Now and again, Scooter looks like how he sounds. He's built like a light heavyweight boxer. Approximately 0 body fat, shaved head, sunglasses. Even indoors, he does not look like a Scooter.

[Scooter]

It's not a street name or nothing. My sister was already calling me that. Folk my mother had me. So that's pretty much what everybody know me for.

[Sean Flynn]

Scooter knew Larry from the neighborhood, just hanging out, even though he was four years younger, 11 when Larry was 15. They were pretty tight. It started with sports.

[Scooter]

Most of the kids my age, they couldn't keep up with the kids. Larry and them age, but I could. And they picked me a couple times. I'm gonna take little man right here. And then it was just like, I'm about to walk home one day and he's like, where you stay? I tell him I stayed down here in Wesach, a little project down. He's like, I'm right around the corner. And then it was on after that.

[Sean Flynn]

We satch. Where Scooter lived is a street in Lake Jackson.

[Scooter]

Just a mixture of low income homes and low income families all coming together and making it seem like the best childhood in the world. Neighborhood full of kids, baseball, basketball, whatever. Every day fighting.

[Sean Flynn]

Larry spent a lot of time in Wesatch. He really was just right around the corner. Two, three minutes by bike. And we satch is where all the kids were his friends. And there were girls. Actually for Larry, there was one girl. Her name was Kissy.

[Scooter]

That's my cousin. I introduced him to Kissy.

[Sean Flynn]

Like he said, it all starts with Scooter.

[Scooter]

On the summers when nightfall, we'd all go steal us beers or get one of the addicts in the neighborhood to go get us a bottle of liquor or something at nighttime. And we go swim.

[Sean Flynn]

The Brazos river runs right through the county, pinned in by levees. But that's not where anyone swam or wanted to swim. Instead, the kids went to apartment complexes, ones where they didn't live and weren't supposed to be, but that had chlorinated water.

[Scooter]

So he was like, tell her, come swim with us. Come to the pool with us tonight when we go to the apartments and jump the fence. So we all jumped the fence and went swimming. And that's where it all started, right there.

[Sean Flynn]

Kissy and Larry would be together for the next 30 years. They would raise three children together, though only one would be Larry's biological child. And their relationship would at times become complicated. But let's stay in the moment, Linger in that warm Gulf coast summer when Larry is in that golden hour, not yet a man, but no longer a boy. When he's just coming into his own awesome self.

[Scooter]

Man, he was just cool.

[Sean Flynn]

This is Wade. That's not actually his real name. Wade agreed to be interviewed and recorded, but we talked about some sensitive things. So we're not using his real name. He's Kissy's brother, but he knew Larry even before Larry knew Kissy.

[Scooter]

They go way back, like his demeanor, his personality, his energy. If it was hot and he came around, it just. It felt like it just got a little cooler. Like the temperature Dropped a little bit. The way he walked, the way he talked, he was just cool. And he was somebody he wanted to be around. Back then they were having house parties. So even though we were younger, you know, we would at least get to hang outside. You know, the party was inside, but we'd be outside on our bikes looking in the window of the garage, trying to see what was going on. But you know, if you needed a ride home, he would take his mom's car while she was asleep. He would take his mom's car while she was sleep, but it was just to get us home, you know, and he got us home. But sometimes he'd pick us up to take us to church to play basketball. I never wanted to go. But then Larry was like, all we do is play basketball and eat pizza and we have to do like 30 minutes story time, read a few scriptures, then we play basketball. I'm in. Eat pizza, play basketball situation, talk about the Bible for 30 minutes, go back to playing basketball. So we have shit, let's go.

[Sean Flynn]

15 year old Larry, he's a good kid. He's chasing girls, playing basketball, going to church. Normal kid stuff. He's got friends, charisma, and two parents at home looking after him.

[Scooter]

The life he had was a good home life. I go stay over there sometimes on the weekends or something like that. He didn't even have to stay. By the time his mom gets up, it's gonna be some food cooking over there. So you show up at the right time and you're gonna get a good meal over there.

[Sean Flynn]

And Larry's dad, he commanded some local respect.

[Scooter]

Mr. Ortiz was, we kind of looked up to him. None of us had no fathers. I think Larry was the only one that probably had his dad in the house. He's real deep in the martial arts. I mean, he even had to come handle a few guys in the neighborhood for us a couple times back in the day.

[Sean Flynn]

What do you mean?

[Scooter]

You know, he had to come out there and demonstrate a few times and we had a few problems, problems with some bikers and stuff like that, a bunch of crazy stuff.

[Sean Flynn]

But Larry, like a lot of kids, or more to the point, like his big brother Gabe, he's got a rebellious streak in him. And as he gets older, as he's feeling more like a man and less like a boy, who's he going to rebel against? The old man? His dad. The man who in his mind is holding him back, keeping him down. And let's not forget the guy who sent his big brother away.

[Gloria Ortiz]

They clashed a Lot.

[Sean Flynn]

This is Gloria, Larry's mom.

[Gloria Ortiz]

His dad was just so strict with him and, you know, now Gabe wasn't around. So who was going to take the fault for anything that happened around the house if it wasn't? If it wasn't Larry. I think Larry would do things on purpose just to get back at his dad. If he, he told him not to listen to certain music, he'd listen to it. If he would tell him that he did, he had to come in at a certain time, he wouldn't do it. He just started telling him that he was not going to let him go out, you know, or, or do anything that he would ask. You know, if anybody calls, anybody knocks at the door, I want to tell him you're not here.

[Sean Flynn]

And how did that work out?

[Gloria Ortiz]

Well, Larry, that's when he even more. He got mad and upset.

[Sean Flynn]

Let's rewind just for a second to Deuce.

[Scooter]

Don't fuck with Deuce.

[Sean Flynn]

That was Larry's movie gang. It was an adolescent goof, kids acting out a movie they were too young to understand. Too young technically even to watch it. According to the Motion Picture association, it's.

[Scooter]

Rated R. When that movie came out, we just started playing around it. It was a stupid game we started playing at school and it just spilled over, that's all.

[Sean Flynn]

So when did it get serious, man?

[Scooter]

It was kind of already serious. We was already just trying to figure it out, get some money or whatever. We used to steal as much cigarettes we could for about two months and then sell them all out, stuff like that. So we was already really trying to figure it out. It was troublesome. But that trouble was enticing because we also made that look cool.

[Sean Flynn]

Here's Wade.

[Scooter]

And at that age we weren't completely conscious of the consequences because it just looks so fun. And we got away with a lot. We got away with a lot.

[Sean Flynn]

So that's the origin story. Charismatic, mischievous Larry playing gangster with his friends because it was cool. The thing is, there were consequences just so minor as to be, well, inconsequential the first time.

[Gloria Ortiz]

Not sure on the date, but I remember why he got arrested. Tim and his buddies try to walk out from a store with a 12 pack of beer without paying for it.

[Sean Flynn]

This is hardly a life defining offense. It was probably a misdemeanor and Larry was a juvenile. So the record would have been sealed, maybe even expunged if he kept out of trouble. Ah, but that didn't happen. Instead, as the years go by and Larry's 16 and then 17, he's evolving school is the first thing to fall by the wayside.

[Gloria Ortiz]

He started slacking, of course, in intermediate school, you know, he would skip classes.

[Sean Flynn]

Which was especially awkward for Gloria because she worked for the schools.

[Gloria Ortiz]

So I says, you know, Larry, you can't do this. I said, I'm part of the school district and I hate to see you going to the office all the time. That's not you. And he goes, oh, mom, I'm not doing anything wrong. They just don't like me. He said, the teachers just don't like me.

[Sean Flynn]

Eventually, Larry just stopped going altogether. He dropped out of high school. But there were other things Gloria and her husband were noticing. Things that instinctively bothered them.

[Gloria Ortiz]

And then he also started using different slang. He started dressing differently.

[Sean Flynn]

Blue T shirts, blue bandanas, maybe a blue rag tucked into his back pocket. Dad didn't like it.

[Gloria Ortiz]

He goes, you know, what is this about? I see blue scarves all of a sudden. What does that mean? And Larry was saying, nothing. That. Just nothing.

[Gabe Ortiz]

I do recall coming back and he's wearing a lot of blue.

[Sean Flynn]

This is Gabe. He was home on leave for this. So early 90s.

[Gabe Ortiz]

But I had a red shirt on. And he said, why are you wearing that dead ass red? He said, bro, you can't be wearing that red around here. We're claiming crips around here.

[Sean Flynn]

I was like.

[Gabe Ortiz]

I said, what the are you talking about? You ain't claiming you. You're. You live in Clute, Texas.

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[Sophie Cunningham]

T O.com this is Sophie Cunningham from Show Me Something. Do you know the symptoms of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, or OSA in adults with obesity? They may be happening to you without you knowing. If anyone has ever said you snored loudly, or if you spend your days fighting off excessive tiredness, irritability and concentration issues, it may be due to osa. OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep, which may cause breathing interruptions and oxygen deprivation. Learn more at don'tsleep on OSA.com this information is provided by Lilly, a medicine company.

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[Scooter]

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[Sean Flynn]

Gabe Ortiz finished his basic training in early 1993, about the time Larry was reenacting Deuce. And then he was sent to Montana. For two years as an Air Force security officer, he watched over missile silos. Then in the spring of 1995, when Larry was 18, Gabe was sent to Turkey to work security for flight lines and weapons to depots. Not long after he arrives, his father calls.

[Gabe Ortiz]

Dad is crying hysterically. He's saying he's going to end his life. And then all of a sudden, I hear him manipulating what sounds like a gun in his hand. And I asked dad, like, what's going on? What are you talking about? When he said that he found out that mom was having an affair and he had nothing else to live for, and I'm halfway across the world, and I felt helpless. And I said, dad, please don't do this. You still have me. You still have your kids. Just put the gun down and I'll try to come home. He said, okay. Okay, mijo. I won't do it.

[Sean Flynn]

He didn't. But Hilario, dad was never the same after Gloria left.

[Gabe Ortiz]

And that's when the devout Christian dad, the believer, went back to the old dad and started drinking and partying again. So it came full circle, essentially.

[Gloria Ortiz]

I knew they were mad that we got divorced.

[Sean Flynn]

Gloria means her three kids, one of whom, Gabe is nearby while we're talking.

[Gloria Ortiz]

But they really didn't know the whole story, and I wasn't going to share everything about their dad.

[Sean Flynn]

Gabe is leaning against a wall, arms folded, and I can see him shift his weight and cock an eyebrow when his mother says that.

[Gloria Ortiz]

So I just went ahead and let them blame me for the divorce.

[Sean Flynn]

Her husband, their father, Ilario, the martial artist, chasing away the occasional biker. He had a bad knee.

[Gloria Ortiz]

He started getting into a lot of pain pills.

[Sean Flynn]

Gloria says this had not been a recent development either, that he'd struggled with it for years.

[Gloria Ortiz]

Gabriel had braces, and he had to have some of his teeth pulled out so they could get his braces off. And they gave him some sort of pain medicine, a script, and. And his dad got the script, and so he started taking the pain medicine.

[Scooter]

I was 12 when I had braces. 11.

[Gloria Ortiz]

Yeah. He started very early, and I didn't know that.

[Gabe Ortiz]

I didn't know that.

[Gloria Ortiz]

And he started looking for more pain medicines from whoever and at work. And I started seeing a change of him. The slur. The. Yeah. The eyes and all that. Then after that, if he would mix it with beer, because then he started drinking beer, of course, that would hit him even more.

[Sean Flynn]

Remember after Bellario found Jesus, when he would quote deuteronomy and numbers to his kids? The verses about generational curses. How the sins of the father were visited upon the children and the grandchildren and the great grandchildren. And Gabe had no idea what his dad was going on about. This is a clarifying moment. Addiction runs in families. Hilario, as Gabe has just this very moment learned, was hiding a pill problem. And he'd always been a pretty good drinker, even when he said he wasn't. Even when he was grounding his boys for drinking beer on the beach. Maybe that's what he meant. Maybe that was the devil crawling through the generations.

[Alicia Ortiz]

There's some things that I didn't know that were going on with my dad, you know, because he was kind of hiding them or trying to hide them.

[Sean Flynn]

Here's Alicia.

[Alicia Ortiz]

Yes, we were going to church, but I would find hidden beer bottles here and there. You know, he was trying to hide it from us. So I knew dad was doing extra stuff outside of mom and his relationship because, you know, he wouldn't be at certain places where he was supposed to be.

[Gloria Ortiz]

That was not the only thing. But, yes, that was one thing that really separated us. We started disagreeing a lot, and I. Sometimes I thought he was being too hard with Larry. I said, hey, you know, maybe if you let him just use the car for, you know, once, let's see how he'll do. And. But Larry was always messing up, so it just. I couldn't take up for him no more. I just couldn't.

[Alicia Ortiz]

I would say my mom got tired of the shenanigans, the extra stuff that was going on, you know, him going to work and not coming home when he was supposed to. And so she filed. That was hard. That was hard for me because it was just like, okay, what now?

[Sean Flynn]

Larry would have thought the same thing.

[Scooter]

So when that split kind of came, he was just kind of in the whirlwind a little bit. That's kind of when everything changed.

[Alicia Ortiz]

That's when the. The drug. The drug cells come in, you know, the weed that first started off. And then as time passes on, he and Scooter get into the harsher, you know, drug sales.

[Sean Flynn]

For Scooter, the way he tells it, dealing felt inevitable, almost like a rite of passage.

[Scooter]

It's just same thing. Growing up in it, seeing family members doing it one more, wanting to help out, trying to Be a man before it's time to be a man. Stuff like that, you know.

[Sean Flynn]

As for Larry, you hang around the.

[Scooter]

Barbershop, you gonna get a haircut. Once he started coming around me and meeting other people in the family, I guess you can kinda say the whole street world opened up to him through me. It all opened up to him. I was pretty much his pipeline to open that life up. And all the stuff that was going on at that time, man, you can't resist that stuff. And then by that time, I had already introduced him to my cousin.

[Sean Flynn]

He means Larry's future wife, Kissy.

[Scooter]

So it wasn't no turning back then. He was already in the family.

[Sean Flynn]

Scooter's grandmother had a house in Kloot on a street called Lazy Lane.

[Scooter]

My grandma's house is. That's the roots. That's the roots of where everything starts at right there.

[Sean Flynn]

There was a time when if you wanted to buy drugs in that part of Brazoria county, that's where you went, Lazy Lane. And that's where Larry was hanging out.

[Alicia Ortiz]

And that's bam. That's where it all started. And he'd be out there through wee hours of the night making money. And there's times where I would just ride through there just to kind of just hang out with them or just see what they were up to, you know? Or sometimes Kissy, she would go and pick me up and I'd hang out with her.

[Scooter]

Yeah, well, he didn't end up over there selling no drugs. He was just following my cousin, following Kissy. And all that other stuff just came about. Yeah, he didn't. He didn't plan to go over there and do none of that. He just over there visited my cousin, hanging out with the family. Things happened.

[Sean Flynn]

This all sounds very bad, a train wreck waiting to happen. But let's look at it from Larry's perspective. He's 18 years old. He's industrious. That's one thing everyone says about Larry, that he was always a hard worker, put in honest labor for honest pay, even if the job was illegal. His family has fallen apart. His big brother's in another country, eight time zones away. Someone's got to step up.

[Alicia Ortiz]

When they got divorced, my dad took it hard, you know, and he just was out and about, you know, going out all the time. My mom and I had gotten an apartment at a place called Oldie Oaks in Kloot. Larry was always going in there and checking on me, making sure I was good. Hey, you need anything, at least you got what you you know, you need anything to eat? You need any money? You know, he's always trying to make sure that I was okay. I was good. Larry was just here and there, out and about. Honestly, I don't. I don't know where he. He would just lay his head where Kissy was at.

[Sean Flynn]

Larry is legally an adult by now, but come on, he's still a kid, a teenager. And he's living large. He's got a girl, he's got cash, and he's got no one telling him what to do. Who didn't want that at 18?

[Scooter]

You think you got forever? I'll switch up later on. I'll get it together right now. You think you got enough time to, you know? But I just don't. You really don't.

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[Sophie Cunningham]

From Show Me Something. Do you know the symptoms of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, or OSA in adults with obesity? They may be happening to you without you knowing. If anyone has ever said you snored loudly, or if you spend your days fighting off excessive tiredness, irritability and concentration issues, it may be due to osa. OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep, which may cause breathing interruptions and oxygen deprivation. Learn more at don'tsleep on OSA.com this information is provided by Lily, a medicine company.

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[Scooter]

So you're telling me that the AI that's meant to make everyone's job easier to manage just adds more to manage? On top of the thousands of apps the IT department already manages? Funny how that works. Any business can add AI. IBM helps you scale and manage AI to change how you do business. Let's create Smile to Business IBM.

[Sophie Cunningham]

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[Sean Flynn]

Gloria has a theory about what happened with Larry.

[Gloria Ortiz]

He wanted some attention. He wanted. I guess he wanted big brothers. And the big brothers that came in and knew that he was struggling and going through something, you know, that was their chance to start him in a gang.

[Sean Flynn]

The game. Selling drugs, running the streets. The thing is, Larry was good at the game. Kind of a natural. In the same way Gabe took to the military, how he learned to be an airman who could protect crucial parts of the American war fighting machine. Larry took to the streets. He was learning business, organizational hierarchies, how to invest in inventory, secure market share, turn a profit. He happened to be doing so in an industry that's illegal, but that doesn't change the underlying economics.

[Gabe Ortiz]

I sense that he is probably running around with some guys who are criminals. There's some criminal element that I could sense that he was involved in. He smelled like marijuana on occasion. You know, people would come by the house, and it was like a brief exchange and then leave.

[Sean Flynn]

This was the summer of 1995, around the same time Larry said he was claiming Crips. He had an adult criminal record by then, a minor one, but still. At the end of December 1994, he was arrested for possession of marijuana. Gabe didn't know about that. But on a visit home, he got to see what Larry was up to.

[Gabe Ortiz]

He asked me to give him a ride somewhere. He's like, hey, bro, run me by my friend's house real quick. I had this Ford Ranger. And so I drive him to this guy's house. Guy comes out. My brother pulls out a pill bottle and opens it up and dumps this little pebble. It's crack rock. Guy gives him some money. So he basically just did a drug deal from my vehicle with me in it. I flipped a lid. I mean, I got in his ass and I chewed his ass right then and there. I mean, I was so livid. I just. I couldn't believe what had just occurred in front of me. I told him. I was like, don't you ever fucking do that in front of me again. Like, what? By the way, what do you.

[Sean Flynn]

What's.

[Gabe Ortiz]

I didn't even have the words like, what is going on right now? What are you. What are you doing? Like, I. I've only been gone a few years. Like, what do you. He's like, bro, he's like, we just.

[Sean Flynn]

We're just out here hustling.

[Gabe Ortiz]

Like, we're just out here hustling, making a little, you know, making a little money. And it was at that point that I realized that things had changed over the last few years. I mean, it was reality set in. Like, shit, things are different now.

[Sean Flynn]

Gabe didn't know, not just then, how different things were. Because it turns out a confident streetwise kid, even in Klute, Texas, can claim any damn thing he wants.

[Scooter]

Yeah, he's gonna wear his blue, that's for sure. Most of the people that been to prison in my neighborhood, they kind of, they fashion with that.

[Sean Flynn]

Larry hadn't been to prison, but yeah, he was claiming Crips and he was moving up in his small town underworld.

[Gloria Ortiz]

After a while, as years started going by, he started being the head of the, of the gang.

[Gabe Ortiz]

I heard from a lot of people, they're like, hey, your brother's a badass. Like, nobody wants to fuck with that guy. You know, I go to the military and he's 15, like, you know, just playing basketball, chasing girls, going to the local mall, walking around, you know, nothing crazy to all of a sudden he's established a reputation for himself as a dope dealer, gang member, and somebody who's relatively feared.

[Sean Flynn]

Success is a matter of perspective in Larry's world. From his perspective, he's made it, or at least he's on his way. And all of this while his big brother's trying to figure out what he wants to do other than not stay in the Air Force. And he won't have a lot of options. That's next time on the Brothers Ortiz. The Brothers Ortiz is a production from Campside Media in partnership with I iHeart Podcasts. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Brothers Ortiz was written, reported and hosted by me, Sean Flynn. Lane Rose is our senior producer. Story editing by Audrey Quinn. Sound design, mix and engineering by Garrett Tiedemann. Original music by Garrett Tiedemann. Fact checking by Savannah Wright. IHeart podcast executive producers are Lindsey Hoffman and Jennifer Bassett. Campside Media's executive producers are Josh Dean, Vanessa Grigor, Moriadis, Adam Hoff and Matt Sher. A special thanks to our operations team, Doug Slaywin, Ashley Warren and Sabina Mara. If you enjoyed the Brothers Ortiz, please rate and review the show wherever you.

[Scooter]

Get your podcasts and thanks for listening. Foreign.

[Sophie Cunningham]

This is Sophie Cunningham from Show Me Something. Do you know the symptoms of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea or OSA in adults with obesity? They may be happening to you without you knowing. If anyone has ever said you snored loudly or if you spend your days fighting off excessive tiredness, irritability and concentration issues. It may be due to osa. OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep, which may cause breathing interruptions and oxygen deprivation. Learn more at don'tsleep on OSA.com this information is provided by Lilly, a medicine.

[Scooter]

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[Gabe Ortiz]

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[Scooter]

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[Gabe Ortiz]

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[Scooter]

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[Gabe Ortiz]

Max $100 cash back per month.

[Scooter]

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[Sophie Cunningham]

It matters that we're not just in your community, but that we're part of it. It matters that we're here for you when you need, day or night, and we want everyone to feel welcomed and rewarded. It matters that CVS is here to fill your prescriptions and here to fill your craving for a tasty and yeah, healthy snack. At cvs, we're proud to serve your community because we believe where you get your medicine matters. So Visit [e-mail] or just come by our store. We can't wait to meet you. Store hours vary by location.

[Sean Flynn]

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