Just Off the 710

Skid Row has a way of sneaking up on you.

One night a couple of months back, I went out to eat at this French restaurant in Downtown L.A. It was about 10 p.m. and I was driving home to Long Beach. I had heard stories about Skid Row and how bad it was, but I had never really seen it. As I was driving, I knew it was close by. I just didn’t know how close.

A lot of streets in that part of L.A. look the same, especially at night — pretty clean, cars parked on the street, sidewalks mostly empty.

Then, I started seeing trash scattered on the sidewalks, and the next street I rolled by, I looked down the block and saw total chaos. Trash was stacked up on the curbs like the garbage truck hadn’t come in months. The street was crowded with unhoused people and the sidewalks were packed with tents stacked against each other. Some were connected by tarps spread over top of them, others were circled around fires like a campsite. It was as though I had driven into a third-world country — or a zombie movie, after the apocalypse.

You ever see something and your brain automatically fills in the rest of your senses? I was all the way down the block inside my car, but I could smell the smoke from the fires and the urine on the sidewalk.

But I remember thinking that the people I saw looked … organized, somehow.

Which is when I realized, Oh my God … this is their home.

That scene went on for a couple of blocks before I passed the neighborhood and began making my way home. The rest of the ride, I thought about the people I had seen out there that night. The addictions some of them may suffer. The different things that might have happened to them that led them to that life.

But mostly, I thought about Duke.

Duke Givens is a family friend. He knows my mom from when they were at Long Beach City College together. He was a photographer and he took some graduation photos for her. My mom introduced me to him in 2020 when I was playing for LA Galaxy Academy and was about to go pro. 

She has always encouraged me to serve others, and Duke runs a nonprofit called Care Closet. It’s a program dedicated to helping the unhoused in Long Beach. In addition to distributing supplies to those in need, he organizes unhoused people into teams that help clean up parts of the city that need it most.

So a few years back, I went out and volunteered with Duke, and ... well, there are two things you need to know about Duke.

First, he’s a character. He’s always joking around, always telling stories.

And second: He’s Long Beach, through and through.

His favorite pastime is telling old Snoop Dogg stories. They grew up in Long Beach together since they were 13. So he’s always talking about how they played Pop Warner football together. Or how Snoop gave Duke his first break as a photographer when they were just messing around one day snapping photos, and he took one of Snoop standing in front of a ’61 Impala. Snoop liked the photo so much that he used it as the cover for one of his first albums, which opened some doors for Duke to do some work with MTV and VH1 back in the day.

But his favorite story is how he and Snoop were supposed to join the Air Force together.

The way he tells it, it was 1989 and they were about to graduate from Long Beach Polytechnic High School. He and Snoop went to the Air Force recruiter’s office in downtown Long Beach, and while they were filling out the paperwork, Snoop said he had to run to the car for something … and he never came back. He got cold feet, but Duke still wanted to do it.

The rest is history, I guess. Snoop went on to become Snoop, and Duke went into the Air Force, served during Desert Storm, then came back and went to Long Beach City College, where he met my mom. After college, he got a job working for Long Beach Transit. 

Like I said, Long Beach, through and through.

Duke started working with the unhoused when a friend of his, a city councilman named Al Austin, asked him to accompany him to a homeless community that was set up along the railroad tracks in an unincorporated area of Long Beach. While Mr. Austin was talking to people in need, asking how he could help them, Duke was standing by when he heard someone call his name. He turned, but didn’t see anyone.

“Duuuke!” he heard again.

This time, he turned and saw a man poking his head out of one of the tents. Turns out they had gone to high school together, and the guy had recognized him.

Duke always talks about how that impacted him, knowing they had come from the same place and ended up in such drastically different places.

That’s when he became passionate about helping the homeless, and that led him to start Care Closet.

The first time I volunteered with Duke was in 2020. My mom and my older brother came with us and we went out to the Flood Control District along the Los Angeles River just off the 710. One of the ways Care Closet helps clean up the community is by painting over graffiti, so that’s what we did that morning before setting up what Duke called a “necessity drive” that afternoon. This was around the beginning of the pandemic, so we had people doing drive-thrus where they’d drop off donations like food, water, clothes, sleeping bags, blankets — anything people who are down on their luck might need.

I was born in Long Beach and lived there for nine years before we moved to Lakewood, which is right next door, so Long Beach has always been home. But this was a side of the community I had never seen before.

Growing up, I remember going grocery shopping with my mom. There would always be someone outside the store asking for money for food. And my mom always pulled out some change and blessed that person. Then, as we walked away, she’d remind me to always treat others the way I want to be treated. “At the end of the day, we’re all human,” she’d say. “And everybody deserves to be treated with kindness.”

I’ve always remembered that.

Working with Duke and Care Closet is an opportunity for me to put my mom’s teachings into action.

And now, playing in MLS and representing the LA Galaxy, I have an even bigger opportunity to use the platform I have to make a difference in the community I’ve been a part of my entire life. 

That’s why I’m so honored to accept a generous $40,000 contribution from Audi through the Audi Goals Drive Progress fund to support Care Closet. To have this grant to further the impact I can have on my community in Long Beach means the world to me, and to use it to support the work Duke is doing is like supporting a family member. 

State legislators named Care Closet the 2024 California Nonprofit of the Year for its local district, and I’m excited for it to continue its work in Long Beach for years to come.

Long Beach really is like its own little Los Angeles. It’s everything L.A. is, just on a smaller scale. There’s a great rap scene. A big reggae culture. You’ve got a ton of diverse restaurants, the beach, that mellow SoCal vibe — it’s all here in Long Beach.

But it’s got all the problems of L.A., too. 

Including an epidemic of homelessness.

The Flood Control District is no Skid Row. But when you see up close the conditions in one of the most impoverished neighborhoods in the country, it creates an awareness of what’s happening in your own community. And I’m grateful to have the opportunity to do my part in helping make this a city that my family, Duke, Snoop, and everyone with ties to Long Beach can be proud of.

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Audi Goals Drive Progress initiative supports MLS athletes making an impact off the pitch through financial contributions to nonprofit organizations that create sustainable communities, foster equity and inclusion, and enrich the lives of those in need. Through the Audi Goals Drive Progress fund, Audi will be contributing $40,000 to Care Closet LBC in celebration of the work that both the organization and Jalen do for their community. For more stories on Audi’s commitment to supporting MLS athletes and their community initiatives, please check out additional content from the “Celebrating Impact” series.