Few words carry the weight of redemption. It’s a concept often dreamed of but less frequently lived, a narrative arc that suggests a fall so profound that the subsequent rise feels almost miraculous. For David Luis González, better known by the single, resonant nickname Suave, redemption is not an abstract concept. It’s his lived reality, his daily mission, and what he powerfully terms his “Redemption American Dream Story.”

But to understand the man, one must first understand the name. “Well, the name Suave is a long story, but I'll give you the short version,” he begins, his voice carrying the rhythmic cadence of the South Bronx where he grew up. “I was 12 years old when my grandfather was murdered in his barber shop. And I was there, he was giving me a haircut. From that day on, you know, I was moving fast. I was reckless.”

In the raw, searing pain of that moment, a young boy’s world shattered. His grandfather was more than a relative, he was an anchor: “My hero, my father figure, my male role model. If there was ever a person that I wanted to be like, it was him. And when he was taken away, that's it, he took a piece of my heart that can't be replaced. And from that day on, you know, I just grew up wanting to see everybody hurting like I was hurting.”

In his tight-knit community, people watched the boy careen through his pain and offered a constant, gentle admonition: “cógelo suave”— take it easy. “And the name stuck, you know, because every time I used to do something, it was like in a rush. I used to get a rush out of it. And people used to say, cógelo suave, cógelo suave.” 

The downward spiral accelerated after his mother moved the family to Philadelphia, hoping for a fresh start. But tragedy unfolded one cold December day. A gun was fired, a young man lost his life, and Suave, then 17, was swept into the jaws of a justice system that showed little interest in nuance. “I was tried and convicted all in one day. And sentenced to life in prison,” he recalls, the starkness of the sentence still palpable decades later.

Prison became his world. A life sentence for a crime he did not commit could have been the end of his story, a final punctuation mark on a life derailed. But within the concrete and steel, a seed was planted, quite by chance, on the radio. With only two stations to choose from, he found the voice of María Hinojosa on Latino USA. When Hinojosa later came to the prison to speak, something shifted within him.

“I just felt that day that she was talking to me, even though there was an auditorium full of people. I felt like she was talking to me directly,” Suave recalls. “And from that day on, I decided even if I was in prison, I wanted to do something better with my life.” Hinojosa’s message that day was a spark in the darkness: “You could be the voice for the voiceless.”

Armed with this new purpose, Suave embarked on a profound journey of self-reinvention. He taught himself how to read, earned his GED, and then a BA degree. He became the president of the only Latino organization in the state Department of Corrections, representing 700 fellow prisoners. “And to me, I didn't have expectations of ever getting out of prison because I'm serving life. So I said, you know what? I just want to leave a good legacy for my family,” he said. 

Then in 2017, the impossible happened. The Supreme Court ruled that lifetime sentences without the possibility of parole for juveniles were unconstitutional. The door that had been welded shut for over three decades creaked open. Suave was released that November, stepping into a world that was utterly foreign.

“I went in as a child,” he reflects on the disorienting transition. “I was still living at home with my mother. So I never knew how to pay a phone bill. I never knew how to pay rent. I never knew how to live on my own or cook my own food or take care of myself. You come home, you're on your own. And you come home as an old person, you know, age 48, 49, 50. But you're still thinking as if you were 17, 18, 19 because when you go to prison, your growth stops at the age you go in.”
The technological revolution was perhaps the most jarring shock. “When I came home, everything was computerized. So when people were asking me, send me your résumé, I'm like, I've got a paper résumé. They were like, we don't do that no more.” 

This firsthand experience with the digital divide ignited a fierce passion within him to reform how the incarcerated are prepared for re-entry. “I believe that people that are incarcerated are being given a disservice when they're being kept away from technology, since the world right now revolves around technology,” he asserts. 

Suave’s vision is one of practical empowerment. “Why not put how to get a GED, how to get a resume made, how to submit your resume from in prison to different employers that could prospectively offer you a job on your way out? You know, why not make it where you can get your social security or your birth certificate through emails, start the process while you're still incarcerated.” The response to this pragmatic approach has been overwhelmingly positive. “People love it,” he says.

So do companies like Aventiv Technologies, which provides communications services for incarcerated persons: “Reentry succeeds when people have the tools to stand on their own the moment they come home. Access to technology helps them build those skills and, just as important, start believing in their own capabilities,” says Margita Thompson, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer of Aventiv. “Suave’s focus on early preparation reflects what works and keeps communities stronger. At Aventiv, we support that approach by providing secure technology that lets people take classes, build résumés, and start key reentry steps while still inside the facility. We hear consistently from individuals who are incarcerated and those returning home that these tools make a real difference in how confidently they reenter their communities.”

This philosophy forms the bedrock of Suave’s work today. Since 2022, he’s been a driving force behind the I Am More program at the Community College of Philadelphia, a transformative initiative he started three years ago with just three students. Today, it serves 174 formerly incarcerated individuals.

“They come home, they enroll in college, and we get them into the program and they take college classes like everybody else,” he explains, pride evident in his description. “My program is special because you see people returning from incarceration. Two years later, they're walking down the aisle graduating with an associate's degree and now they're going into different professions or other schools for different degrees. You can see the transformation.”

The program’s success, however, is not measured solely in diplomas---it’s a holistic ecosystem of support. “Our program is unique in the sense that it's an educational program, but we have additional services because we have a lot of partnerships. So somebody might come in for a degree, but we can also help with jobs. We can also help with placing people in certain living places. We can also, we also provide mentorship. We provide tutorship. We follow the students from the day they step on campus to the day they graduate.”

The results speak for themselves. Of all the students who have gone through the program, only one has returned to prison. “So in a sense, my program is not only about education, but also public safety,” Suave notes. “Most of my students are now taxpayers with nine to five jobs. Some of them are working as interns in different places that you would never think of, such as courtrooms and hospitals. The success is not in how many awards you win or how many student engagements you get. The success is in how many people can you help transform their lives so they can be able to sustain themselves and support their families. To me, that is success.”

His own story is meticulously documented in the podcast Suave produced from conversations with María Hinojosa, which won a Pulitzer Prize. It was described by the Pulitzer committee as “a brutally honest and immersive profile of a man reentering society after serving more than 30 years in prison.” For Suave, the acclaim was a stunning validation. “To me, that proved that anything was possible. This is a prime example of what could happen when we give people a second chance.”
Even his art, created for years in prison with makeshift materials — coffee grounds, markers, spoons, toothpaste — is a testament to his enduring spirit. Today, his mixed-media works, incorporating everything from notebook wire to court documents, continue to tell a story of fragmentation and reassembly, of finding beauty and meaning in the most unlikely of places. They’ve been exhibited at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC as well as galleries like Morton Contemporary in Philadelphia.

For Suave, the second chance he was given is not a gift to be hoarded, but a responsibility to be shared. He sees the potential for redemption not as a rare exception but as a latent possibility within thousands of individuals failed by the system. He is building the bridges he himself did not have, ensuring that the journey from incarceration to integration is not a solitary, desperate scramble. Instead, a supported path toward a dignified life.

Suave reflects on this purpose with profound clarity: “It's a testament that I was given a second chance for a reason. I don't believe that I was given a second chance just to go home. I believe the purpose behind it is to make sure that other people don't commit mistakes that could harm communities. And I know that through education, we could change that. Because when you have a high school diploma or any form of higher education, your likelihood of becoming re-incarcerated decreases.”

In the end, the boy who was told to cógelo suave while running from his pain has finally learned what it means to live with purpose. Now 56, he is no longer rushing toward destruction, but moving deliberately, building, teaching, and healing — a living testament to the power of a second chance and the unyielding resilience of the human spirit.

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