Francisco DePina has a vivid memory of the moment his life changed. He was running down Dorchester’s Norton Street in pursuit of a rival gang member. He was out for revenge, a gun in his hand.
Then he heard someone shouting his name from the porch of the Log School on the corner of Bowdoin Street. “I looked and saw Bob on the porch, and I ran back down the street. I’m telling everybody, ‘Oh, I’m about to go to jail,”’ DePina said. “But nobody showed up. A few days later, I walked up the street, and it was like Bob was sitting there waiting for me.”
Bob Flynn, a GED instructor at what was then College Bound Dorchester and is now called Boston Uncornered— knew what DePina was up to that day, but rather than calling the cops and having DePina locked up behind one door, he opened another one and invited him into the world of the College Bound program.
On Jan. 1, DePina— who has worked his way up from entry-level jobs in the organization – became its first-ever president.
Uncornered provides people who are engaged in street violence with educational resources, mental health and spiritual support, and work that can change the trajectory of entire families, communities, and cities.
Co-founded by Michelle Caldeira and Mark Culliton, Uncornered’s mission is to eliminate violence by working with Boston’s most violent, disruptive, and neglected residents.
“I pay shooters to stop shooting,” DePina told The Reporter. “We’re solely going after the one percent who are responsible for 80 percent of homicides and shootings in the city. With everything else that’s been talked about and invested in, like healthcare, childcare, education, for all this to work, that one percent needs to work.”
While DePina’s life at age 40 is much different now, he was once part of that one percent. At age 11, he moved from Cape Verde to Dorchester with his mother and four siblings. Trouble soon followed. He was expelled from multiple schools for fighting, and then told he could no longer attend any Boston Public School. He was given the option of enrolling in the Job Corps or going to jail.
DePina didn’t last long in that setting, either. Kicked out of the Grafton Job Corps in Worcester at age 16 for selling weed, it seemed that he’d run out of options.
“I came home to Norton Street and joined a gang, CV Mob, Cape Verdean Mob, and thought that was it for me,” he said. “I remembered having this math teacher telling me that by the time I was 18, I was either going to be dead or in jail. I started to believe that that was going to be my life.”
His encounter with Bob Flynn interrupted those plans. “He started to invite me to come check out his classes to get my GED, and I basically brushed him off,” said DePina. “Somehow, someway, he saw something in me when I couldn’t see it for myself. Next thing I know, he’s ringing my doorbell and asking me to come downstairs to play chess or basketball. Then I started to meet some of the guys working here at the time.”
Though DePina wasn’t convinced that school was for him, he accepted Flynn’s offer. He started with cleaning work after hours before transferring to the front desk. He was far from the perfect employee, but the organization didn’t quit on him.
“The thing about Uncornered that has worked for me was this door,” he said. “No matter how many times I walked out, no matter how many times I came in and smelled like weed, my teacher told me go home, put it away, come back. I would leave and that door would still be open on the day I decided to come back.”
On one of those “come back” days, he decided to go back to the classroom and, eventually, he earned his GED. From there, he was made an Uncornered recruiter, meaning he was charged with identifying active gang members, who the program calls “Core Influencers,” and persuading them to leave the streets.
That’s when “I found my passion,” DePina said, “because they gave me an opportunity to go back into my own neighborhood, Norton Street, and talk to them about what Uncornered was doing.
“My family was involved in a gang, my family was getting killed, my friends was getting killed, and Uncornered gave me an opportunity to change that, and I took it.”
He added, “Once I started working with my family and friends and bringing them into the program, it became more about the community. It was working for my family, so how do I do this for the Norton Street community? “Then it became how do I do this for my Bowdoin/Geneva community? How do I do this for the city?”
Eventually, De Pina was given a “Lead” position as a specialized staff member who mentors recruiters and Core Influencers.
“That’s when I got my case load, I had over 50 people,” he said. “As a Lead, what I was doing is I was looking at maps of the city, and I would see where the hotspots are, and then I would go into them.
“I walk every day on these corners where there’s a hotspot, and that’s my intention. I want the ones who are most active, who are shooting all over the city. I want to invest in that individual.”
The Boston Uncornered leadership team— as seen in 2022— includes (front, left) Mark Culliton and Michelle Caldeira, the group’s co-founders and co-CEOS, and, in rear, Francisco DePina, the new president. Photo by Romana Vysatova
The job of president is a new position at Uncornered. “Mark and Michelle would say I created the position,” DePina said. “President at Uncornered never existed, neither did Director of Core Influencer. They would say I paved my own way.”
Culliton, also a Dorchester resident, calls DePina “the embodiment of all we hoped for in creating Uncornered.”
“A leader from within the violence who has taught us all about the path to peace being driven by a humility of spirit, a passion for learning and the courage to believe in a world others can’t see. Michelle and I are grateful that the work of Uncornered is what makes his heart sing. The city and country is better because of it,” said Culliton.
Before Mark and Michelle, there was Bob.
“Until this day, whenever I see him, I ask him, ‘Out of everybody, what made you choose me?’ He says to me the same thing I say to my guys. The only one who’s going to change the community are the ones who are destroying the community.”
DePina says his goal for 2026 is to help Boston realize a 50 percent decrease in shootings and homicides. His own story, he argues, is evidence that it can happen. “I was the kid everyone would point their finger at and say, ‘That’s the bad guy, the Cape Verdean gang member.’”
He now knows it’s not too late for the generation coming up: “You still have an opportunity to do something different. You are brilliant, and you have the power to make changes, whatever changes you want to make. Uncornered is here to support you through that.”
