Plastic surgeon gives gang-members new life through laser treatment

Former L.A. gang members experience a new tattoo-free life, thanks to alumnus Dr. Frank Ryan.

Walk into Dr. Frank Ryan’s Beverly Hills waiting room, and you might see actor Lorenzo Lamas, reality TV star Kristin Cavallari, or maybe a former member of L.A.’s 18th Street gang—all waiting to get a tattoo removed.

A well-respected plastic surgeon, Ryan is regularly called upon to help celebrity patients transform their bodies, or, as in the case of Lamas and Cavallari, to remove a tattoo with the name of a former wife/boyfriend. Ryan also sees an entirely different side of society, as youths who want to leave their former gangs behind come in to shed the brandings that accompanied that lifestyle. Ryan is a 1982 graduate of the University of Michigan.

For the last 15 years, Ryan has been removing visible gang-related tattoos pro bono for youth who want a second chance.

“These youth have already done the hardest thing by leaving the gang,” Ryan says. “They’ve gone through counseling and school, all this great stuff, but then they say, ‘No one will hire me with 18th Street on my neck.’”

What then? “They can say forget it and go back to the gang,” Ryan says, “or we can remove the tattoo and eliminate a huge roadblock.”

Julie, 17, hopes removing the stars from her neck will help her land a job. She also says it’s symbolic of her decision to move on. “The tattoos bring back memories I’m trying to forget along with the life I used to live,” she says.

Yet removing the stars isn’t easy. “It’s more painful than getting the tattoo in the first place,” Ryan says. It takes time too, as professional tattoos may require as many as 8-10 removal sessions, each a month apart. Some tattoos will never be fully removed, but will remain as a blurry blob, Ryan says.

Removing a tattoo is also expensive. The typical cost is between $200-300 a square inch, per session. Julie alone is getting thousands of dollars of free treatment, just like so many former gang members who visit Ryan’s office.

When Julie’s tattoos are finally off, “I’m going to be able to present myself better,” she says. With only months to go before she graduates from a residential treatment program at Optimist Youth Homes in L.A., Julie plans to finish her education and become an actress.

“She has the potential to be very successful at that, thanks to Dr. Ryan,” says Rudy Martinez, a Community Liaison for Optimist Youth Homes. “In the past several years, I have witnessed firsthand the thousands of at-risk kids who have benefited greatly from Dr. Ryan’s generosity. He truly cares.”

It was actually by accident that Ryan says he first started volunteering to remove gang-related tattoos. He was looking for a way to help the community and met a member of the Optimist Club. After hearing about area youth whose tattoos provided a disadvantage to their future employment—not to mention danger when the wrong tattoo is seen on the wrong street—Ryan found a need he was well suited to meet.

Ryan says his volunteer work reminds him of his mom, and of growing up in Toledo, Ohio. His mother raised him by herself after his dad died. “It was rare to have a single mom in the 1960s,” Ryan says. “I didn’t think about, at the time, how great she was. She worked full-time as a nurse and also volunteered with Head Start.”

Ryan graduated from the University of Michigan's College of Literature, Science, and ARts with a bachelor’s in biology in 1982, and completed his medical education and training at the Ohio State University College of Medicine, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, the University of Missouri, and UCLA Medical Center.

Now, not only is Ryan helping youth through his profession, but for the last nine years he has invited at-risk youth out to his 26-acre ranch in Malibu, called the Bony Pony Ranch, for barbeques, mentoring programs, and leadership training. Some of the youth who come have already had a tattoo removed in Ryan’s office.

“It’s just great watching these lives change,” he says.