Finding God on the Streets (Part 1 of 2)

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That's focusonthefamily.com slash careers. Today on Focus on the Family, you'll hear how a man went from high-level drug dealer, also known as a street God, to a pastor and evangelist. Made it down south and that's when I hit street God status. I mean, we started making money like I've never seen before. We were in the middle of several drug wars.

30 of my friends got killed and in between this timeframe and we're just in this game. Now I'm seeing all this money coming. You'll hear a really vibrant testimony today. Thanks for joining us for Focus on the Family. Your host is Focus President Jim Daly and I'm John Fuller. John, I met Dimas Salaberrios at a Salem radio event a couple years ago and I was so impressed by his love for the Lord and once I heard his backstory, man, I was even more impressed. This is a man who has overcome incredible odds and I know our listeners are gonna be fascinated by his story, especially if you have a prodigal child. As you'll hear, Dimas is living proof that no one is beyond the reach of God.

No one. Dimas pastored in New York City for many years and has shared the gospel on every continent except Antarctica. I'm sure there's some penguins there that might listen to the gospel, but there you go. Maybe he'll get an invitation from somebody down there to come see Antarctica.

You never know. Pastor Dimas is the author of the book Street God, which tells his life story in more detail. And we have that book here at Focus on the Family.

The proceeds go right back into ministry when you're requested from us and we've got the link in the show notes. Here now is Pastor Dimas Celeberios speaking at Harvest Fields Community Church in the Bronx on today's episode of Focus on the Family. So today I want to share with you my testimony and one of the reasons why is the Bible says in Revelations chapter 12 and 11 that we can overcome Satan by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony. So I want to tell you a little bit of my story. I didn't always look the way I look right now and and I just want to walk you through some some really tough things, some hard things, some very real things I experienced. Now growing up I grew up in Queens, New York in the Hollis area of Queens. This area is called Cambria Heights. My mother was a principal, my father was a captain of correction and an Air Force guy. So I came out the house, it would always be like manicured lawn, you know, it'd be a very beautiful surrounding, but a couple of blocks away is where a lot of the crazy stuff would go on. And I remember, you know, my mother got me to the best school district.

Her and my father had separated and he lived in Bayside, Queens and my mother still stayed in the house by Cambria Heights. So we got into this all-white school district in Bayside. So the school took us on a trip to see the movie E.T. Y'all remember seeing that?

E.T. phone home, you know. And I remember I left out of there, I was so happy, I was like nine years old and I said, man I wish I could just ride my bike and just launch into the air, you know. I mean that was my dream. But then when we came out of the theater, we started to walk and there was a big sign of the movie that's coming out called Scarface.

And I looked, I said what's up with that? And many of you may remember this, but Scarface was going to be rated X. Not because of pornography or anything like that, but it was going to be rated X for the power of the content.

The actual content of the movie was so intense. So at age 10, I went in there, saw that movie and it had a real negative impact on my life. I left out of there with a dream of becoming a street god. I left out of there with a dream of becoming one of the largest drug dealers in New York City at age 10.

And you know, by age 11, I finally went back to middle school and I remember I was walking the halls and I saw one of my friends. And this is not, you know, one of these stories like, you know, whenever we think of a drug dealer, we think of somebody with a black hoodie in an alley, like you'll come over here my man. You know, I got the stuff, you know.

No, it wasn't like that. It was a fellow classmate pulled out this bag of these little dots of mescaline tabs which looked like a tip of a number two pencil was broke. And he said, yo man, he said, you want to buy these? I said, I'm selling for $3. He said, yo, it will rock your whole day.

You'll be laughing all day. And I remember I was like, I didn't even believe him. I was like, that little dot, you're telling me could do something? He was like, oh yeah. I said, man, it's $3, man.

You fronting. And I took, I said, what do you do with it? He said, you got to swallow it.

So I swallowed it. And you know, back in the day, I don't know if people still do this today, but we were big on writing these little notes to girls that would say, I like you. Do you like me?

Yes or no? So I wrote this girl this note and you know, a half an hour went by. I was like, I'm feeling the same.

45 minutes went by. I'm like, I'm great. Then the girl walked down and she looked at me. She said, I like you. And I said, you like me?

And the drug kicked it. I started crying, walking down the hall. She likes me.

Tamara likes me. And then I was sitting in a classroom. I could not control my emotions. And then walked in the principal with this man with him.

And they said, today, we're going to have a special assembly on drugs. I sat there. My heart was pounding because you know, at that age, you just feel like teachers know everything. I was like, I'm busted. I was like, they're going to know. And I remember I went into that assembly and the guy was talking and the giggles just came over me and the guy just looked at me and I knew he knew. But then he kind of second guessed himself like this kid's 11.

No, no way. It just kind of went on. I was there. And at that point I told my friend, I said, I never want to take it again.

I'm good. And then my friend said, why don't you help me sell it? And then I said, Oh yeah, I could do that. And then I became also a drug dealer at age 11. Then we took it out into the streets and I would walk around selling the mess tabs.

Then I kind of realized very quickly I wasn't going to become Tony Montana by selling mess tabs. So then we found out that this girl in the neighborhood had like a pound of weed. I went to her, started hustling weed, you know, did pretty good with that.

And then I remember, you know, we sold out all the stuff and she didn't know how to get more. And one day we were walking down to McDonald's and I went down to McDonald's and I never forget it. This guy who's from my neighborhood, he had this beautiful Cadillac and he was only like 18 and I was like, dad, look at that car. And I remember my friend said, yeah man, he's a crack dealer. And then it went into my head, crack. That's the way I could get a car.

I was like, this is the way I could really do this thing. So I went and started working for them, hustling for them, learning, you know, the ropes, learning about jail and, and how to not get busted and sell. And I started to get arrested from time to time. But my father, since he was a captain of correction, he knew a lot of judges. So I was getting passes over and over again.

And also my mother had money so she always kept me with a paid lawyer. So every time I went, I'd get a dismissal. I would get, you know, a slap on the wrist, probation, another probation, one year probation, a five year probation.

Over and over again, I kept getting this break into one day, the only day that I was really, really sort of innocent. I came out the house and I'm walking and I was going down to check on some of the workers and all these cops pulled up surrounding me. And I was like, I'm good. I'm not running.

I don't have anything. And then when they pulled up, they took the drugs off this dealer that they had in the back of the car and they came and put it on me. And they said, which is my street name, daylight. They said, daylight beat this one.

And I was like, Oh man. And when I went to court and I had my lawyer, he came and he said, look, he said, he said, you've been arrested nine times already. You beat nine different drug cases. We're not beating this one.

He was like, this one is looking serious. So I was sent to Rikers Allen. You know, I went in there for a year and Rikers Allen was hard.

I ain't gonna front. You know, I went in there, everybody I knew from Queens said they were from Brooklyn, Manhattan, the Bronx. So I'm the only dude representing Queens. Like, where are you from? I'm from Queens.

They're like, oh, Queens is soft. And the next thing I know, I'll be in a fight. Next thing I'll be in another fight. I mean, it was horrible. Then finally they put me into this thing called Shock. Got out, came out. I was so excited.

I just, Shock was like awesome. It was this military thing where you had to do a hundred push-ups and run miles a day and all this stuff. I came out with my mindset like, yo, I'm gonna like go straight.

I'm gonna do the right thing. And the only job that was available to me was White Castle. And let me tell you, all my manpower for four bucks an hour, it did not work. And at the end of the week, they gave me $75. I was like, when I was used to sometimes clocking a G in an hour. Because this era that I'm talking about, there was one block in Queens that was owned by Fat Cat Nichols that made a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a day.

You're talking, I mean, real money. So when I got the $75, I was like, I tried it for another week and I was like, I can't do it. And I went back into the drug world and then this one girl, I'll never forget, she gave me what I call the kiss of death. She was like, yo, smoke this with me and I was there. And then she turned this blunt around, put it in her mouth and kneeled down and said, now I didn't date her.

I just liked her. And she said, put your lips on mine and I will blow this smoke into you. And I kneeled down and when she blew into me was marijuana and crack cocaine. And I took a hit of that and I was like, wow. And I remember I turned into like a fiend. But me and my friend, we'd be like, nah, we ain't crack heads.

We put weed in it. Then the weed started getting smaller and smaller and the crack started getting bigger and bigger. And then people started looking at me and I was all smoked out losing weight. I started stealing people's packages, messing up people's money. My operation went to zero and I had all these dudes that was chasing me wanting to kill me. And I thank God my mother stepped in again.

She said, I'm gonna send you down south to stay with your brother. I went down there. I tried to get high there.

I couldn't find a thing. I mean, he was in the woods and you don't have a car down there. It's over.

Yeah. And I realized from those drugs, I lost all my self esteem. I forgot who I was. Then I started to find myself again. I started to buy clothes. I started to get dressed. I started to remember I like this and like that and all that. Then I got myself together and then he sent me back to new york.

My mother called up, said, I got the money to pay off some of these people you owe the most wild ones and went and paid them all off. And I remember I turned to my friend. I said, well, guess what we're gonna do? I said, we're gonna hustle crack and this time we're not gonna use it.

Now some of you know for real, I never used it again. I just hustled it in that time. I knew the mind of the attic. So I'm like, yo, I know how to win this thing. And I trained all my workers. It was kind of like I used to call it the drunk man style.

Like we never drunk. But what I did was I would chop the stuff up and put it in these smaller like bottles. So when people would come, I would tell them if they give you a $10 bill, act like you're dizzy and you don't know what you're doing and just give them five. So everybody thought they were getting on me like, yo, this dude can't count. But what I was doing was I was growing the market and I took over this whole area.

And then one day, I mean, I felt like I was on top of the world. I had a parole officer had to report to. I was getting a GED program stuff going down.

And I remember I walked in there to see the parole officer and I was sitting there and she said, I want to talk to you. I said, How's it going? Says going.

Okay. I said, So what's up? She said, You're going back to jail. She got up and handcuffed me. I said, What? I said, For what?

I'm in a GED program. What's going on? She said, You have turned in three dirty urines of cocaine back to back. And I said, I don't even get high. And then I thought about it like the movie Breaking Bad. I was cooking the drugs in the cocaine was going in my pores, and I didn't even know what pores were. So then I'm sitting there and I'm having flashbacks of Rikers Island. One time this dude, you know, he sliced my face with a razor.

Thank God, you know, it was a dull race, so I don't have the big, you know, Buck 50 sign that you see on some people. And, you know, he sliced me once. I started thinking about all the fights I had, and I was just sitting there. And while I was sitting there, she got up and walked out, and I just started to slip the cuffs to my knees. And then I put one foot over the other one.

One. Next, I know I'm sitting there with the cuffs in front of me, and I'm sitting there like, All right, you pull that off. Then she came and she sat in front of me. I said, Oh, shoot. She didn't see it. And she was like, Okay, you're gonna go to jail. It may be 90 days.

It may be six months. And I jumped and said, No, I'm not. And I grabbed the door and opened it.

And now I'm running. And I was on the fifth floor, so I would hit this. I always had a lot of heart, so I would hit the steps and I just leap down the steps. I mean, heading with my face forward, bang, and I would hit the bottom. I would run, jump down, bang, and I could hear a army of cops coming down the steps after me. So I'm running, jumping, boom, running, jumping, boom.

I'm running. Now I knew down at the bottom it was always this officer there, and I said, I gotta get around this dude. So when I came around the corner, he wasn't there.

I wasn't even a Christian by yelled, Praise God and ran outside. Now I'm on Jamaica Avenue. This is like 42nd Street. I'm running. Get out the way. I'm knocking people down.

Let it move. And I ran into this mall called the Gertz Mall and dipped inside of this barbershop. And nobody in the barbershop saw me, but I could hear them yelling. You know, they chasing this dude in the mall.

You know, they chasing this dude. Then one of the managers opened up and saw me. I had the cuffs. I was like, Yo, dude, I was like, call my friend, please. And I told my friend's name, and he was like, I now this is the error.

You gotta remember of the big change. I mean, if you have ropes, that was you. If you were fly, you had links.

You know, you had the nice links in the medallion and all that. So my friend, he was like one of these links, dude, and you know, and we were doing that. So he said, Yo, I got a place to stay right here.

He went down to one of the guys he bought the chains from, and he got a metal cutter. So he came and clipped my cuffs. And I said, Put me in the barbers. He was like, Are you crazy? I said, No, man. I said, Trust me. I said, If you put me in the barber's chair and you just give me a shirt, they're looking for somebody cuffed.

They're not looking for somebody with their hands moving. So I was there getting a cut. And every time the cops came in there, I was like, Yo, man, the next man, you know, they let us down again. They garbage into the castle walk out.

So then one of the guys pulled the car around and I got up and I tried to act like I was short, walked, got in the car and took off. Now, where did I go? The worst place to ever go. The girlfriend's house.

That's why you see on TV and the news quarter matters. Girls house went to my girl's house, but I knew I wasn't stupid. I said, I got like 20 minutes here. So I went in there.

We're getting stuff together real fast. I call up one of my drivers and he said, Yo, I got somebody that could take off your cuffs. I said, Bring him. He said, It's gonna cost you. I said, I don't care.

I'll take care of him. Guy came in, gave him $100. He took off my cuffs and then I don't know what came over me. I just said, Yo, dude, what do you do for a living?

He said, I'm a parole officer. He went out the front door. We grabbed everything. We went out the back door. 10 minutes later, they rushed my girlfriend's house, but I was gone. Then the next day was Halloween. So I told my girl, I said, I got a plan.

So what? I said, You gotta give me a wig. You gotta give me a dress. I said, We're gonna go down south. We're gonna get this money. So on Halloween, I was the tallest woman you've ever seen.

Went through Amtrak, got on the train, went down, made it down south. And that's when I hit street God status. I mean, we started making money like I've never seen before. We were in the middle of several drug wars. 30 of my friends got killed in between this time frame.

I mean, 30 of them were dead and we're just in this game. Now I'm seeing all this money coming. And then I get this crazy idea. I was like, man, I'm gonna go to New York, get a little chocolate tie and whatnot about the, you know, I want to visit some people and all this. So I came to New York and on my route driving to New York, there was this other drug dealer whose girlfriend was well known as a witch.

I mean, this was some stuff that happens down south. And I never forget. I was in this car sleeping and we just heard the horns honking and it just kept honking. And I remember I woke up and looked and I saw the girl driving past me, like looking at me like this. And we all saw and we were all like talking about the whole ride. Like, how did she see us? How did she find us? We're in a car. We got black tents.

This ain't even a car we use. And then we got all the way to New York and I was walking down the street and that girl popped out, grabbed my arm. I remember I yanked my arm away from her and she did some like weird move and I just pulled it away.

And lo and behold, when I got back down to North Carolina, it was like I completely lost my mind. I started to see things and shades of red. I mean, I was walking around the house trying to find a gun to kill myself, but part of me was trying to stop myself.

But I was still moving and one of my friends grabbed the gun and held it and I tried to get he pushed me away. I got so angry. I went over the kitchen sink and just started to smash all the dishes with my fist.

And that's how I got a lot of scars on my hands today. Blood was flying everywhere. I looked outside. I saw someone had their door open only down south, not New York, but they had a door open and I went running to their house.

I don't know to this day who they are. I opened their front door, ran in through their living room and ran out their back door. Now could you imagine that? You sitting there, some dude running and blood everywhere, ran out in everywhere. I went from that point on because news travels really fast in a town like Winston Salem. So everywhere I went, blocks were clear. Like I walked to a block. What's up, my man? How you doing?

Hey, hey, block will be packed. I turn around. Everybody was out and I was like, what's going on? And then I said, man, I knew I needed help. So I called up my mother and I said, ma, I said, I'm struggling. I need help.

So this is hard. And she said, what's going on? It's like I'm losing my mind. I'm seeing everything in red.

Can you help me? She said, why don't you go to church? I said, ma, I need real help. And I hung up the phone. Bang. Wow. Well, I know you're going to want to tune in next time to hear how this story ends as we hear from Dimas Salaberios on Focus on the Family. John, what a cliffhanger. And remember, if you can't be with us next time, get the CD or audio download so that you can hear the entire presentation.

Or you can get the Focus on the Family app for your smartphone. Yeah, we're going to link over to those in the show notes or call 1-800, the letter A in the word family. John, there's so much to reflect on from what Pastor Dimas shared today.

But I'd like to comment on just a couple of points. Dimas said that it was seeing the movie Scarface, which was rated R as a 10 year old boy, that inspired him to become a drug dealer. Think of that.

One of the taglines for that movie was, the world is yours. And you can see how that would appeal to a young boy who had no power. And let me tell you, parents, movies have a huge impact on the hopes and dreams of your young people.

So you need to help them choose carefully. And we can help you do that through Plugged In. Focus on the Family's media review website.

Now we are here to help you make those good media decisions for your family. Yeah, look for the link for Plugged In online. And if you really want to stay current on your media choices, subscribe to the Plugged In Show podcast.

The details are right there at the website. If you're the parent of teens, Plugged In is a must have resource for you. Our staff covers the whole gamut, movies, TV shows, music, and now video games too, books and even reviews on YouTube channels. It really is amazing what they do.

It sure is, Jon. Another point I'd like to make is that Dimas said his parents helped him avoid punishment. In fact, he had an attorney who managed to get a dismissal or probation for Dimas in nine, nine drug cases. And it just makes me wonder what would have happened if Dimas had really felt the full weight of the law the first time around, or maybe the second. And maybe he would have figured out that the consequences for dealing drugs were just too painful. So parents, as hard as it might be, don't shield your children from the penalties for their bad choices unless the punishment is truly unjust. If they pay the price now, chances are they won't be paying a bigger price when they're older.

And obviously, God had a plan to redeem Dimas, but he also allowed a lot of painful consequences, like a full year at the notorious Rikers Island prison there in New York. Yeah, that's a great point, Jim. And when your child is very young, that can be as simple as taking them back into the store if you discover they've stolen something, and confessing to an authority figure like the store manager can have a big impact on a youngster, and can help them really count the cost the next time they're tempted to cross a line. Wow, you've never had to do that, have you? Only a few times. Were you the kid or the parent?

I was the parent. Well, those are important lessons to learn, and I always didn't do it that well. And Dimas had to learn some lessons too, on a much bigger scale, obviously, even after he became a Christian.

And we'll hear more about that next time. But there's so much more to this story than we're able to share on the broadcast, so I'd highly recommend the book Dimas has written called Street God, the Explosive True Story of a Former Drug Boss on the Run from the Hood, and the Courageous Mission that Drove Him Back. It really is a well-written account.

One reviewer said, easy, entertaining, and edifying. I especially recommend giving this book to young people who are living that lifestyle. I'd agree, and let me encourage you to get the book right here from Focus on the Family, where the proceeds go right back into ministry. Help us as we support and save marriages, encourage parents, protect the lives of unborn babies, and so much more. We're a non-profit ministry, and we need your partnership. And if you can make a donation of any amount, I'd like to send you a copy of the book Street God by Dimas Salaberios. Get in touch with us today. And you can do that when you call 800, the letter A in the word family, 800-232-6459, or follow the link in the episode notes to donate to the work of Focus and request your book. As Jim mentioned, when you're online with us, be sure to look for resources from our Plugged In team that will keep you up to date on what's going on in popular media.

And if you enjoyed today's program, please tell a friend to tune in next time to hear how Dimas got to this point in his life. I remember I got up at that moment. I felt such a peace like never before.

I mean this incredible peace. I took all the crack out of my pocket. I started dumping it in the garbage. I looked up to heaven.

I said, God, I'm never gonna sell crack again. On behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team here, thanks for joining us today for this Focus on the Family podcast. Take a moment, if you will, leave a rating for us and allow others to find this great content, won't you? And we'll say thanks in advance. I'm John Fuller and we'll see you next time as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.