His gaze looks tired, his body worn down by the strain, but there’s still a powerful fire behind David Cavazos’s eyes.
At 52, Cavazos is navigating a different kind of reality — one far removed from the success he’s had as a tattoo artist. His lettering has been exhibited at the Getty Museum and helped define a modern Chicano art style in Los Angeles. He’s been profiled by LA Taco, and he’s published multiple books.
But now he’s on dialysis and urgently in need of a living kidney donor.
Long before any of that, Cavazos called Pico Union home. He grew up near Venice Boulevard and Hoover Street in the late 1980s, where breakdancing was part of daily life and the sound of gunfire — or word of a nearby shooting — could feel routine. It was there that he became known as “Big Sleeps,” where, as he put it, “we were able to do normal things even though there were shootings on the regular.”
Out of that past, he built a successful enterprise through his art. It came together over years, from his girlfriend buying him a $300 tattoo gun, to working in other artists’ shops across Los Angeles, to gradually gaining recognition for his lettering. Eventually, he published his books on lettering, including “Letters to Live By” (Vol. 1–3), for those hoping to emulate his style.
That long road shows in the way Cavazos carries himself. At first glance, he has a striking presence: green tattoos stretch from beneath his sweatshirt sleeves and climb up his neck. The most defining tattoo is inked on the back of his head — a set of eyes, a nose and a mouth with a thick handlebar mustache that seems to peer out. He wears glasses and a hoodie, his own mustache framing a stern expression.
One of his earliest moments of pride came in 1990, when he was invited to help paint an Earth Day mural in Pico Union: a memorial listing the names of young people killed in the neighborhood.
“I remember being so excited, so proud to be part of that, going every day to paint those names and feeling like I was doing something important,” he said. “And then halfway through it, I got arrested and taken away, and I never got to finish it.”
Years later, when he returned, he added more names.
“I came back and there were more kids that had been killed, so I added their names too, and that really stayed with me, how much had changed but also how much hadn’t,” he said. “It’s crazy to think about everything I survived, everything that I went through growing up, all the situations I put myself in, and now this is the thing that could take me out if I don’t get a kidney.”
Killing each other
Cavazos’s life is deeply tied to Pico Union, a neighborhood he describes as both vibrant and volatile. He recalls a busy childhood — kids always out on the street, a family member of his always being close by — even as violence, including shootings on his block, became part of the background of the neighborhood.
“You could run home and say somebody got shot on the corner, and the next day we’d be back outside playing like nothing happened,” he said.
What started out as tight-knit groups of kids in the neighborhood gradually shifted into something else. Those same friends who grew up together — going to the same schools, playing sports, breakdancing and spraying graffiti tags — eventually became part of the gangs that defined his neighborhood.
“I think everybody just gradually morphed into the gang of the block they were on, you could live on one street and that was one gang, another street was a different one, and those rivalries just kept growing,” Cavazos said. “I still think about it to this day, how it went from that to something so extreme where people were killing each other.”
Around 15 or 16, he was sent to the California Youth Authority, a juvenile correctional facility that closed in 2023.
“I went away around 1990 for close to three years, came home and right away got shot in the chest point-blank range, then later got shot again in the pancreas and almost died, and then I went right back to prison,” he said, going on to describe how unsurprising these experiences were to him as a young teenager involved in this lifestyle.
Encounters with law enforcement, particularly during the Rampart-era of policing in the 1990s, added to that sense of being trapped. At the time, the LAPD’s Rampart CRASH (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums) unit carried out aggressive patrols and frequent stops in neighborhoods like Pico Union. Years later, several officers with the task force were convicted of excessive force, false arrests and planting evidence.
“There were times when I wasn’t even doing anything and I’d still end up in handcuffs, getting picked up, getting treated like I was already guilty,” Cavazos said about the era.
And yet, through all of it, his art was taking shape.
“Thinking about letters”
At the time, art wasn’t an escape, it existed alongside everything else.
“I loved doing it, but there were too many distractions at that age, I was already caught up in a lifestyle that made everything else secondary,” he said. “But even then, any chance I had, I was drawing or thinking about letters.”
Incarceration became an unexpected place where that skill developed.
“When I was locked up, I was constantly drawing, doing envelopes for people’s girlfriends, trading my artwork for coffee, for stamps, whatever I could get,” he said. “I didn’t go to art school, but that was my schooling, that’s where I really refined what I do now.”
Looking back, he sees that period as foundational: a place where he built discipline and instinct.
At home, his life looked different. His father wasn’t in the picture, but his mother raised him and his brothers in a loving environment — something he didn’t fully recognize at the time. His older brother, a musician, was his idol.
“Everything he did I wanted to do, the way he dressed, the music he listened to, I wanted to be just like him,” he said. “When he left for college, that was a big shift for me, because I didn’t have that same guidance anymore.”
Even as he became more involved in the streets, he also tried to protect his younger brother.
“I saw how much pain I was causing my mom and everything that came with that life, and I made sure my younger brother didn’t get involved in any of it,” he said. “I felt stuck, but I didn’t want him to ruin his life the way I felt like I was ruining mine.”
By the late 1990s, after multiple stints in custody, he met Monica Torres, who would later become his wife. At the time, however, he wasn’t ready to change.
“I was still out there doing things I shouldn’t have been doing, still living that life and not thinking about anything long term,” he said. “I wasn’t ready for a relationship or any kind of commitment.”
Torres saw something else.
“I saw who he was underneath everything, not just what people saw on the surface, and I knew there was more to him than that life,” she said. “I always believed he could be something different.”
Their relationship didn’t fully take hold until years later.
A tattoo gun
In 2004, Cavazos’s mom died after battling undiagnosed stomach cancer — a loss that deeply affected him.
“When she passed, that’s when everything really hit me, I felt a lot of guilt for everything I had put her through, all the years I was in and out of jail, everything,” he said. “It weighed on me heavily.”
He ended up spiraling.
“I was drinking, using, not taking care of myself at all, and I didn’t understand how serious my health was at that point,” he said. “I was just lost.”
Around that time, he was diagnosed with diabetes but didn’t take it seriously.
Torres had stayed in touch with his mom over the years. When Cavazos called to tell her she had died, the two reconnected.
“And when I saw him again, I knew he needed someone there,” Torres said.
At the time, Cavazos was facing another case that could have led to decades in prison.
Torres stayed.
“He wasn’t in a good place at all, but I still saw something in him, and I wasn’t going to walk away from that,” she said.
With her support, he fought the case and ultimately served a shorter sentence — his last. When he was released in 2008, he made a decision to change his life.
“When I came home, I knew I couldn’t go back to that life anymore, I knew it was either going to change or I wasn’t going to make it,” he said.
Around that time, Torres bought him a tattoo machine with what little money she had.
“That tattoo machine opened everything up for me, it gave me something to focus on, something to build,” he said.
He began working at a shop in Inglewood, slowly building his craft and clientele.
“It wasn’t like one big break, it was years of work, of showing up, of building it step by step,” Torres said. “People see where he is now, but they don’t see everything it took to get there.”
“We built it from nothing, from literally having nothing to creating something that people respect now,” Cavazos added.
‘He is struggling, but he still has spirits’
His studio, a two-story building in Paramount, reflects the success of his life’s work, with his signature lettering covering the walls and a dedicated tattoo parlor. Being there can feel intimidating at first, given what he represents for LA, Chicano art and culture.
But when Cavazos speaks, his voice softens, he’s welcoming and vulnerable, and still grounded in who he is and what he’s been going through with his disease.
Over time, his lettering — once shaped in Pico Union alleys and prison cells — gained international recognition. His work would eventually be displayed at the Getty Museum, a milestone that marked how far he had come.
In 2022, the couple bought their first home, something that once felt out of reach.
That same day, Cavazos received another diagnosis: advanced kidney disease.
According to his doctor, Dr. Anjay Rastogi of the CORE Kidney Program, cases like his are common.
“Most patients with kidney disease don’t have symptoms until the very end, and David was one of those patients who didn’t show any signs until it had already progressed,” Rastogi said. “By the time they come to us, they’re already getting close to dialysis.”
Cavazos had no clear warning signs. Now, he undergoes dialysis regularly while searching for a donor.
“He is struggling, but he still has his spirits,” Rastogi said.
For Torres, the diagnosis reshaped their lives.
“Everything changed, but at the same time, we’re still facing it together, just like we’ve faced everything else,” she said.
Cavazos sees it the same way.
“I feel like we both have it, like we’re both going through this together every single day, and I couldn’t do it without her,” he said.
Together, they’ve turned his story into advocacy, raising awareness about kidney disease and encouraging people to get tested early.
In March, Cavazos led a group of artists to paint a mural bringing attention to kidney health. The health fair at the Graff Lab in Pico Union featured nurses in scrubs checking guests’ vitals and letting them know to get tested if they had any underlying health issues. A group of fans followed Cavazos around the event as he painted and took frequent breaks as he signed his book and sprayed someone’s shirt with a spray can.
A few hours into the process, he stopped to eat a tamale far away from the crowd. He admitted that he was winded and worried about finishing the work.
“It’s like someone turned down my dial to zero,” he said. “I used to be at 11 and now it’s nothing.”
Looking ahead, Cavazos hopes to build a youth center that blends art and health education, in hopes of offering young people a different path than the one he experienced growing up in Pico Union.
“I’m in a place where I wish I wasn’t, but I have a home, I have a family, I have a beautiful support system,” Cavazos said. “I don’t want to spend any second of the time I have left worrying. If this goes bad, I want to enjoy every second of it.”
Anyone interested to see if they are a suitable donor match can contact Findsleepsakidney@gmail.com for more information.
