When Rick Martinez was nine years old, his whole world turned upside down.
After moves typical of military life, his family had settled down in Texas for several years. His father, formerly a member of the U.S. Air Force, was working on the Apollo program at NASA; his mother kept books. But in 1972, just before Martinez entered fourth grade, his parents divorced, and the family split in half. Martinez’s father, sister, and older brother eventually moved to Chandler, AZ.
Meanwhile, Martinez went with his mother and younger brother to live near his grandparents. When they arrived in Santa Rosa, CA, they found Martinez’s grandfather — who had struggled with alcoholism for decades — a new man:
“He’d been hospitalized, institutionalized; he’d been through every kind of rehab they knew of that day and age and could not stop drinking. He gave it up to the God he knew and said, ‘If You’re there and You take this away from me, I will follow You for the rest of my days.’ And he never wanted alcohol from that moment forward,” Martinez remembers. “He became saved and just wanted to tell everybody about his friend Jesus.”
Martinez’s grandfather wanted to tell him, too. One day as they were sitting in the living room together, he explained the gospel to Martinez for the first time.
“Not every 9-year-old can get that, but I understood it,” he remembers. “Tat’s how I came to know Christ.”
What Martinez remembers about the years in California that followed is “mostly surviving” — that and helping raise his brother.
Martinez says he was a “terrible student.” He even wanted to drop out, which is why his mother sent him to live with his father after his sopho- more year of high school.
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