Yareli had one drink too many one night in January and ended up in the hospital. With only her tears and remorse to comfort her, she knew then that her gangbanging days were over, even as her friends continued to drink and get pregnant all around her.

The 15-year-old student at Damonte Ranch High School, who asked to be identified only as Yareli, at first thought what she was doing was cool and harmless. But she said it also took a physical, mental and emotional toll on her at 12, 13 and 14 years old.

“A lot of my friends were in different gangs,” Yareli said. “It’s a lot of pressure for me because I can get into a lot of trouble. A lot of girls have seen me hang around. I’ve been jumped before. I’ve been in fights before. … It wasn’t what I was looking for.”

But it took her some time and one bad choice to help her see the light.

Like most teens, Yareli went through the age of rebellion but it nearly destroyed her relationship her parents.

Her father, who asked to be identified only as Juan, said his daughter’s gang association changed her and turned her into a person he and her mother hardly recognized.

“It started three years ago when she was in middle school and it seems to me that it was other people and the so-called culture of our younger people,” he said. “(The gang members) would meet in the barrio (neighborhood). They were influencing young kids.”

Yareli’s friends began acting mean toward Juan and her mother.

“We went to (professional) counseling for her and the counselor told us how to discipline her,” he said. “They said, ‘Don’t let her use the phone and to encourage her to choose better ways of living.’ ”

The counseling helped, said the father, who commutes to Gardnerville to cook for a Jack in a Box.

Yareli voluntarily began attending the Boys and Girls Club, where she is now considered one of the staff’s hardest working teens. She has healthy relationships with friends there and feels like she makes a difference helping kids younger than herself stay safe and enjoy positive activities on field trips and outdoor games.

Yareli has plans to graduate from high school and go to college for a degree in nursing, but watching her peers make choices she doesn’t agree with has been difficult without a positive support system, which is why she turned to the BGC. She had doubts about going there at first but after she discovered how much she liked it, she abandoned her gang friends and spent as much time as possible at the club.

“When I first came here, it wasn’t safe for me at all. I’d heard about it before and my mom said, ‘What’s the point of going there if you’re going to be living here?’ ” she said. “(But) I liked it a lot. At least I’m here, not at home and not on the streets.”

Her friends turned their backs on her as she pursued better things.

“They talked to me and said, ‘Hey, (Yareli), how come you don’t party with us no more?’ ‘Because I don’t want to.’ ‘Well, forget you, we don’t need you here,’ ” she told of her conversations, responding with, “Fine, I don’t really care.”

Now she has a job at the club where she seeks to help kids stay away from the path she once trod. She cleans up after lunches and plays with the younger kids and is proud that she can be the positive influence for them that she needed at their age.

“You get to work with little kids and have that experience a lot of people don’t,” she said. “Since I’m taking summer school right now, I get to go on field trips with the kids and it takes a lot of trust (from the staff) to send me with the kids. … We want to help little children and through the experience I’ve been through, I’d rather they be here looking up to us, playing with us, rather than being on the streets, having bad influences and going to see the gangs.

“I thought I was all cool and stuff and I’d heard about the Boys and Girls Club before I got in it, but I never got around to see how much it makes a difference in kids’ lives,” she said. “Kids here are 12 (year old) and instead of being outside doing bad things, they’re here enjoying themselves, doing something positive for themselves instead of being out there.”