(upbeat music)
- [Derrick] If you come down and look at what lowriding is,
and look at what we do,
you'll have a completely different view.
The lowriding scene is not only going out
and showing your cars and stuff like that,
but it's giving back.
It's a brotherhood, sisterhood, we take care of each other.
(upbeat music)
My car's a 1963 Chevy Impala Wagon.
It's got a brilliant PPG red paint job, white top,
four door, the wheels are 14-inch Superior Wire Wheels.
The air ride system is Air Ride Technologies,
airbags on all four corners.
The motor's a 502 Ram Jet, got 700R transmission,
pretty rear ends, leather interior, dash even painted red,
Kenwood stereo system, two amps, three 12 inch woofers.
Get to the car shows
and just watching people looking at your vehicle,
it's just an amazing feeling.
(upbeat hip-hop music)
I've had this car just under a year.
I acquired it through a buddy of mine.
I kept looking at this car and telling him that,
"Whenever you're ready to sell it, I want it."
Finally, he called me up and said,
"Derrick, I'm ready to sell this car."
I picked up the car pretty much the way it sits right now.
Minus the wheels, it had 20-inch Coy wheels on it.
It feels great to be back in the lowriding scene.
Lowriding's always been in my blood.
I had a '78 Monte Carlo back in the day,
that I never really to fix up.
I've been out of the scene for a long time,
so when I saw this one, it's like, I had to jump on it.
I got into lowriding through my family.
My brother-in-law, my brother, lots of friends,
were all in the New Arrivals Car Club.
I was always with them,
I was helping my brothers clean their vehicles,
they would take us for a ride.
We'd go to car shows,
it was an eye-opener to see how all your brothers
come together and help each other out.
(upbeat music)
Getting my vehicle ready to come down here,
I had like three days, four days notice
to get my vehicle ready to do a complete transformation
and I couldn't do it by myself.
My buddies from the Tavares Family Car Club come down
and they just jumped into action.
Just finding parts and them coming down
for three days straight, day and night
taking my front end apart, putting in the new brakes
and disc and stuff to make the wheels fit,
the rear end, I mean we just had to do so much stuff.
It's just an amazing feeling, the way
(sniffles)
These guys just jumped in doing this.
Just an amazing feeling to see everybody come in.
That's the lowriding scene right there,
that's what lowriding's all about,
and all your family and friends
just come down and help you out,
it's amazing.
(ethereal music)
I was born in Salinas, California.
Anything you could think of that involves produce,
99% of that is coming from Salinas.
My mom was raised in Soledad, California.
My biological dad I wasn't with.
I was at a very young age when my mom divorced.
She re-married, my stepfather was my dad.
She was very, very hardworking,
my mom is an amazing person,
she just, she does so much for us.
She would do car washes to raise money
to be able to pay bills for us or buy us clothes,
y'know, when we had to go to school,
she would do that to provide for us.
My mother worked at an elementary school for years
and then she was working at a college for many years,
and ultimately retired
from working at the correctional facility.
Growing up, I was not a good student.
I went to North Salinas High School,
I ended up maybe completing the first year.
It was hard for me to learn,
I could sit there and learn all day long,
but when it comes to the tests,
it's hard for me to retain it.
I ended up dropping out of high school.
When I dropped out of high school,
I didn't have a sense of
what I wanted to do, where I was going,
I was just going with the flow.
My first job was at McDonald's,
worked there for a year or two, and I went to Burger King.
Eventually,
I started driving a forklift for a produce company,
and I did it for like 10 years.
One day, while I was in Arizona,
I got into a little bit of trouble,
I ended up getting locked up.
I got locked up for five years.
My son was about four years old when I got locked up,
so I missed a lot of his life.
When I got out,
I wanted to make sure that I was around for my kids.
It was hard for me to find a job
because nobody wants to hire an ex-felon.
So ultimately, I got back into produce, I did it for a year.
And then when I came back, I worked
and it was almost time to go back again
and that's when I met my wife.
(slow-tempo jazz music)
We hit it off really good, she would come visit me.
I just wanted to be there so I quit my job
and came back to California.
I was looking around
and then I saw an ad for a tow truck driver.
A guy saw me and I told him my story
and they ended up hiring me,
that's where my career started in the towing industry.
I was towing for probably about,
I'd say the first year, it was just light-duty towing.
And then I got my Class A commercial license,
got hired on by a big tow company which was Doc's Towing.
I worked for them for about 10 years.
The owner had bought another company in Oakhurst, California
which is quite a ways from Salinas, where we're from.
And he decided he didn't want to keep coming back and forth,
so I ended up buying a portion of the company,
doing the heavy-duty stuff, so I started with three trucks.
The first year when we started, it was in 2007,
and as everybody knows in 2008, the recession hit.
After the recession hit,
we were struggling and I was ready to give up
but my wife just kept saying, "No, we're not doing that.
"We're going to keep pushing,
"and pushing, and pushing, and pushing."
12 years later, we grew from three trucks
to 38 pieces of equipment from light-duty tow trucks,
medium-duty, heavy-duty,
transports, heavy equipment, trailers.
If it wasn't for my wife, we wouldn't be where we're at.
My company is Always Towing in Salinas, California.
Y'know, when we started, it was just me.
And then I hired one guy, and between me and him,
we were going back and forth, back and forth,
and y'know, from truck to truck.
We were running day and night, day and night.
I didn't have no experience in owning,
or being a business owner.
We've been fortunate coming from where we came from
and not having stuff all the time.
So we started donating, doing stuff for our community.
I did build a special truck,
it's a 2014 Dodge Ram flatbed tow truck.
It's for breast cancer.
We built it in my grandmother's honor,
she was a breast cancer survivor.
A portion of what we made on that truck,
we would donate back to Relay For Life,
which we were a big part of.
There's an event on Christmas Day
that we helped out with the Hackett family.
Christmas Day, we would go to Sacred Heart
and we would donate all the food for the less fortunate.
Y'know, we would feed them a full meal,
and that hall would get packed
three to four times in that day.
We give out Christmas presents to all the kids.
I would dress up as Santa Claus,
and we just had the back thing full of toys,
and we were just handing out toys to everybody,
all the kids.
We'd have blankets, we'd have clothes,
beanies, gloves, y'know, just stuff to make 'em
a little more comfortable.
I love giving back as much as I can, we do it all the time.
Growing up, to when I was a kid, getting incarcerated
and coming out and having a second chance,
I would've never ever thought that I'd be where I am today.
A big part is my wife.
What I have, what we've done,
it just shows that anybody can do it.
You keep your mind set to the positive,
you just keep pushing forward.
If you have your mind set, you can whatever you want.
The lowriding scene is not only going out
and showing your cars and stuff like that,
it's giving back.
All your brothers come together and help each other out.
Don't be afraid to ask for help.
People will see in you,
if you really pour your heart out to them
and you really want do it,
show them,
show them that you could do it.
And that's what we did.
My name is Derrick Perez, I am an entrepreneur,
and I am a Lowrider Roll Model.