Help Ray Arebalo.

Several years ago, I gave lessons to a young high school lady named Gemmenne; she went by Jay for short. She was very serious about her lessons, and every week she was accompanied by her boyfriend, Ray, who was also a musician. He played guitar and was a punk rocker through and through. He had a huge Mohawk and was always dressed in punk garb. You would think a punk rocker would be angry, but Ray was one of the happiest kids I’d ever seen, smiling ear to ear throughout the entire lesson. He was always picking my brain about music and the music business.

Jay took lessons from me for the 4 years she was in high school. She and Ray both applied to and were accepted into the Musicians Institute in Hollywood, California. We stayed in touch, and from time to time, Jay would come by and take a lesson to work on something she was struggling with at M.I. Again, Ray was always by her side. Like all students, they went on with their lives and moved on, but we stayed in touch through social media.

It turned out that Jay and Ray did not stay together. Ray graduated from M.I. with an associate’s degree in performance and recording engineering. I saw on social media that both of them had moved on, met new people, and were living their lives.

One day I saw a picture of Ray lying in a hospital bed with some friends standing around him, and as usual, he was smiling ear to ear. There was no explanation, just a picture, so I think I said get well soon or something and scrolled on.

Fast forward to the weekend of November 18th, 2023. I saw another picture of Ray in a hospital bed, but this time there was a dark message attached to the picture. Because of this, I reached out and asked him if everything was okay. I texted him back almost immediately and said he had been in a car accident and was paralyzed. I asked if there was any chance that he would get his mobility back, and he informed me that it had been three years since the accident, and he didn’t think so.

Yesterday I went to visit Ray in the rehabilitation center where he is housed in Lomita, CA. I learned that he doesn't have any family. His mom has passed away, and he never knew his father. He was raised by his grandmother, who is divorced from his grandfather. She is now in her 80s and is in poor health, battling cancer, and she lives in public housing. His grandfather is alive, but basically in the same situation, living in public housing. Ray has some half-siblings but does not know them very well at all. In other words, he has no one to help him at all.

His insurance is paying for him to live in the rehabilitation center, but it only pays for the bare minimum. Unbelievably, to me, it does not even pay for a wheelchair for him to move around in. His friends pitched in a bought him a wheelchair, but the only time he can use it is when his grandfather or one of his friends comes and visits. One of the nurses will lift him into the chair, and whoever is visiting him will wheel him outside onto the patio, where he’ll spend a little time.

He does have a tablet, internet access, and a television, but that’s about it. I’m putting this GoFundMe Together campaign together to try to help my friend Ray out with some basic stuff and possibly make his life a little better.

He knows Pro Tools and Logic from his time at M.I. so I’d like to get him a good computer and some external hard drives so he can have access to mixing, songs, and making music; maybe a better wheelchair; and a few other things to make life more comfortable.

Ray is a great kid (I call him a kid; he’s a grown man of 32 years, but I watched him grow up). It breaks my heart to see him in this situation. If you can help at all, it would be greatly appreciated. I will be posting about any help that we can provide for him.

Thank you