A Tattoo Story: How Diego Cortez Navigates His Life's Meaning Through Ink

By students Crystal Fraughton and Eseudel Jang, and TOSA graduate Diego Cortez, who now manages TOSA Moving & Stories, with production help from RadioACTive's Connor Estes
April 18, 2024 || KRCL RadioACTive

 

 

Diego Cortez has a deep relationship with tattoos. 

Inked artwork on his body has played a major role in his life, he said, from his incarceration to his current association as a staff member with The Other Side Academy, a free life skills school for adults who have struggled with addiction, incarceration and homelessness. 

Cortez said he was 14 when he got his first tattoo. 

"I was an ex-gang member, so naturally, I sought to express myself, signaling to others my identity," he said. 

From then on, each new tattoo marked something happening in his life. Cortez's progression with tattoos, from his gang days to his present academy position, shows how body art may change an individual’s identity.

Shortly after receiving his first tattoo, Cortez moved to Salt Lake City’s Glendale neighborhood. Seeking acceptance in school, a teenage Cortez found himself drawn into gangs. Years later, his involvement in a firearms crime as a result of this association ultimately earned him a 10-year prison sentence. 

Instead, Cortez found the Other Side, which gave him an opportunity to take another path and change his life, he said. 

“If I was out there banging for the wrong reasons, why can’t I switch my mentality?” he said. “All it is the commitment, the loyalty, the drive for the Other SideA Academy. Why can’t I bang for TOSA now?” 

The academy emerged a place to transform his life, he said, and he was determined to remove the tattoos that represented his gang affiliation. He now wanted the ink, he said, to have a more defined and positive significance.

"On my left arm, I have a forest of trees growing around my whole forearm,” he said. “And those trees, to me, it’s like you’re burying your past and letting something else grow.”

Cortez said he now wants his tattoos to represent good things in his life, like the new warrior band during a February visit to Neon Tattoo in Midvale.

 "I want to get meaningful stuff, so it’s a warrior band of the Aztecs,” he said. “I love culture, especially my culture.” 

Fellow Other Side graduates, Nick Henderson and Johnathan Pangburn, said they, too, have embarked on similar tattoo journeys.

“Being at [the academy] opened my eyes to the realization that everything I believed in prison was merely a false belief," Henderson said. 

His tattoos mirrored that, he said. 

Pangburn said his tattoos reflected his earlier experiences idolizing troubled and violent individuals, including white supremecists. 

"It provided me with a false sense of pride – a pride I had never experienced before," he said.

All three many, and others like the at the academy, said they have been removing or reworking several of the tattoos that represented a different time of their lives and no longer align with who they are today. 

Cortez said removing his tattoos – including a demon tattooed on his neck that was meant to serve as intimidation to other gangs – allows him to rewrite his journey and better reflect his life now.

"I had to confront the falsehoods I told myself," he said. "Once I was able to see the truth, with the help of others who’ve been in my shoes, it made it easier to take this opportunity and get this off my neck." 

Getting rid of this specific tattoo, Cortez said, helped him let go of his past. He now stands as a staff member of The Other Side, embracing his newfound life and motivating others with his inspirational story.