Gerybeth Silva

At 7 years old Tweaky Dave was selling heroin for his father. At 9 his father shot him in the stomach and walked away. At 10 he was doing prostitution on Hollywood streets to survive. By 19 he was a heroin addict dying of leukemia and refusing treatment. He died shortly after this interview. Twenty years later his jacket became the center of a fashion controversy involving Kanye West. He sat on the Jerry Springer Show and told this story like it happened to someone else. In the video below, Dave walks through a childhood that most people couldn't survive a single week of - and Jerry Springer sits across from him visibly struggling to process what he's hearing. Dave said he started selling dope for his dad at 7. Said it was the family business. Said he didn't see anything wrong with it at the time. Then at 9 he kicked open the wrong door. His father was bagging dope with customers in the room. Next thing Dave knew he was on the floor bleeding. His father walked away. The hooker next door called an ambulance. Dave ran to Hollywood to become a rock star. Was 9 years old. The system put him in placements. He ran. They locked him up. He ran again. Trusted nobody. Said cops treated runaways like criminals. Started prostitution at 10 because it was the only way to eat. Stopped at 16 after watching two friends die of AIDS. Found a dismembered body in a Beverly Hills dumpster one night. Said it happens all the time. Asked what keeps him going he said: the 8-year-olds he meets on the street. He doesn't want them to go through ten years of what he went through. He didn't get much longer to help them. Is Tweaky Dave a cautionary tale about what happens when every system fails a child, or proof that some people find a reason to keep going no matter what?