Learning about ACEs science changed David Magallon’s life in a profound way — and now he’s made it part of his mission to share that knowledge with other parents who really need it.

Since 2017, Magallon has served as a court referral programs manager at the Child Parent Institute (CPI) in Santa Rosa, California. The non-profit agency offers child therapy, parent education, and other resources for families throughout Sonoma County.

Magallon works with families in a probation program mandated by the courts. The program covers a variety of parenting topics and includes a monthly check-in with a case manager to discuss child development, positive parenting, anger management and, most critically, ACEs, or adverse childhood experiences.

Magallon said he learned about ACEs about seven years ago through a staff presentation at CPI. As soon as he heard about the ACE Study, he says, “It hit home for me.

“It gave me an understanding of why I behaved a certain way, and it was eye-opening to learn that there was nothing wrong with me. It was the stresses that I experienced that made me act the way I did.

The parent educator had a rocky start in life, which began in South Park, a gang-ridden neighborhood in Santa Rosa. His ACE score was a 4.

“I flunked first grade because I didn’t know English,” he says. His parents spoke only Spanish, and he didn’t learn English until his parents told his older brother to teach him and make him speak it all the time, even at home. As he picked up English, Magallon forgot his Spanish. As a result, he could no longer communicate with his parents, especially his mother.

“I just remember trying to communicate with my mom and her just looking at me, smiling and nodding,” he says. His mother lives next door to him now and he’s learned enough Spanish to speak with her, but as a child, he was cut off from his parents, who later divorced.

Magallon attributes his teenage involvement in gangs, drugs, and alcohol in part to that disconnection with his parents. Ultimately, he was arrested and spent two years in a county jail, where he got his GED. A couple of years after getting out of jail, his son was born, and this helped him transition away from the gang life.

A friend who ran a program at California Youth Outreach for gang-impacted youth and their families encouraged Magallon to work there as a youth intervention specialist. While there for two years, he got valuable training and experience and began studying for a certificate in the Children in the Justice System program at Santa Rosa Junior College.

He then moved on to CPI and has continued his education and is planning to earn an AA degree in Human Services Advocacy next year.

After learning about ACEs at CPI, Magallon felt it was important to make it part of the mandated parenting program there. For each family, a CPI case manager now assists in scoring their ACEs. They also give families handouts about ACEs, and CPI shows a 30-minute video produced by Sonoma County Behavioral Health that explains ACEs and anger management. The video is used by social services agencies throughout the county.

ACEs is a term that comes from the landmark CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study of more than 17,000 adults, showing how widespread childhood adversity is. The ACE Study linked 10 types of childhood adversity — such as living with a parent who is mentally ill, has abused alcohol or is emotionally abusive — to the adult onset of chronic disease, mental illness, violence and being a victim of violence. Many other types of ACEs — including racism, bullying, and community violence — have been added to subsequent ACE surveys.

The ACE Study found that the higher someone’s ACE score — the more types of childhood adversity a person experienced — the higher their risk of social, economic, health and civic consequences. The study found that most people (64%) have at least one ACE; 12% of the population has an ACE score of 4 or higher. Having an ACE score of 4 nearly doubles the risk of heart disease and cancer. It increases the likelihood of becoming an alcoholic by 700 percent and the risk of attempted suicide by 1,200 percent. (For more information about how this works and about the full complement of ACEs science, go to ACEs Science 101. To calculate your ACE and resilience scores, go to: Got Your ACE/Resilience Scores?

At CPI, all case managers go through ACEs training, and Magallon says they use resources from ACEs Connection to develop a list of practices promoting resilience, such as exercise, nutrition, mindfulness, and sleep.

Training through Zoom during the pandemic is challenging, he says.

“It’s been difficult because it’s more time consuming to communicate through email and text,” he says. “Lots of individual communication gets lost.”

Two years ago, Magallon got permission to add a parenting component to the Sonoma County Day Reporting Center, a service center for adults on probation.This program also includes class topics of anger management and ACEs.

As participants get out of jail, “...they’re more motivated to make changes,” Magallon says. “We can provide resources to do parenting in a different way. I’m always bringing in ACEs and coping skills.”

Each weekly session lasts 90 minutes, with anywhere from 10 to 25 people attending for up to 52 hours of mandated probation, over 37 to 38 weeks. After people check in, there is meditation to get everyone centered. After 45 minutes of content on a topic of positive parenting, 15 minutes are reserved for questions, so participants can get one-on-one support for issues they are dealing with at home.

Magallon’s work also extends to dealing with the court on juvenile probation cases. He says parents are stressed navigating teenagers’ behaviors that touch our juvenile justice system, so he works with them to manage these stresses — and of course, ACEs is part of the program.

Through his creative and dedicated commitment to help parents in his community — and with the support of the original police officer who arrested him — Magallon was able to get his past criminal record expunged.

That officer is now police chief of Santa Rosa — and he remains an advocate for the parent educator.