Raśl Ortiz
"I think it was DaVinci who said, 'After you fly, whenever you look at the
sky, you always want to be there,'" says Raśl Ortiz of knowledge DaVinci
could have only garnered from his dreams, though Raśl knows it from dozens
of flying lessons he has taken at Republic Airport every Thursday. He wants
to be a commercial pilot and in the meantime works at LaGuardia Airport and
studies aeronautical science at SUNY Farmingdale where he's a junior. Raśl
grew up all over Brooklyn: Borough Park, Brownsville, Coney Island, East
New York. He's living in Carroll Gardens now with his girlfriend Stephanie
Jordan and her family. He and Stephanie are usually together, walking her
dog or heading off to work. One afternoon, I watched him listen carefully
to Stephanie talk about the nature of "good and "bad" neighborhoods, that
some people "just don't care" about their homes or communities. From under
a baseball cap with an ornate embroidered dragon, he quickly but softly
contradicted her: "No, that's not always true. Remember, we talked about
red lining?"
That they had discussed prejudicial mortgage practices shouldn't have
surprised me. At 14, Raśl joined the Civil Air Patrol, a youth group
associated with the Air Force, which he credits with giving
him "leadership skills" and introducing him to other "young people
who want to be professionals." That's where he met Stephanie, who is
also passionate about flying. Raśl builds computers as a hobby and
studies meteorology as part of the aeronautical curriculum. He
advises me to check weather.com when I'm nervous about flying
conditions.
In the section of East New York where Raśl once lived he sees new buildings
going up intended to attract higher income people. He's glad, on the one
hand, since the neighborhood is in many ways decayed. But he's worried that
people who live there now will eventually be forced out. He loves South
Brooklyn, but says of the local kids who hang out on the edges of Carroll
Park, "They're like vampires; they only come out at night, but as far as
we're concerned," he says speaking for Stephanie too, "we're adults who
come and go." In particular, when they wear their Civil Air Patrol
uniforms, she adds, nobody bothers them.
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