The moment the condom broke, 17-year-old Joaquin Villalobos panicked.
How could this happen? He was being responsible, but he never imagined latex would tear so easily.
Questions swirled. What if the girl he was with became pregnant? What would become of his life?
He pleaded with Katie Gibbons, also 17 and the first girl he had ever had sex with, to come with him to a clinic to take an emergency contraceptive pill. She told him not to worry; she was not ovulating.
A month later, Katie learned she was pregnant. Against Joaquin’s wishes, Katie decided to have the baby, forever altering their lives.
Katie said her parents asked her to leave their Brighton house, and she wound up moving into a shelter, dropping out of school and getting on welfare.
Once her case was opened, it meant the courts would go after Joaquin to pay $220 a month in child support. But Joaquin made very little as a full-time student working occasional, part-time jobs.
It made him resentful and bitter.
Now, five years later, Joaquin’s anger has subsided. He no longer blames Katie for making him a teenage dad, and he doesn’t resent paying child support.
But he does think many dads are made out to be villains when they are really victims of a court system that sways heavily on the side of the mother.
That’s why the CU-Boulder film major has spent the past several months researching the topic, interviewing teen moms and dads and court officials for a documentary he’s producing called “Deadbeat.”
In it, he tells the story of young fathers who don’t earn much yet wind up having to give as much as half their pay in court-mandated child support.
Joaquin is editing the 30-minute film, getting it ready for its debut at 7 p.m. May 6 at the Sibell-Wolle Fine Arts Building at CU-Boulder, along with several other student documentaries.
He said the film has lessons for both young moms and young dads.
The first one: Not every teen who has sex is acting irresponsibly; sometimes contraception fails. He wishes Katie had taken his advice and taken emergency contraception. At that age, he said, you’re not prepared to be parents.
He also explained that courts should do a better job determining who is a deadbeat dad versus a dead-broke dad.
Katie agreed: “I have known women who live off their child support. They use it to pay their rent and for their car payments. I can’t be around women like that.”
Katie said she didn’t realize when she applied for welfare they would automatically go after Joaquin for child support.
In his case, Joaquin believes it made more sense for him to continue going to school full time so he could earn more in the long run than to leave school and work to support a baby with a minimum-wage job. He eventually figured a way to do both: He works part time as a waiter at a Denver restaurant while taking a full course load.
He said it’s draining. Joaquin realizes, however, that his sacrifices can’t compare with the difficulty of being pregnant, giving birth and being the sole caretaker of an infant.
It’s taken years for him to come around, but now he’s involved in the life of Halla, who is 4 .
“She used to ask me about her daddy,” Katie said. “I would say, ‘Jesus is your daddy, and he takes care of you and he loves you so much.’ ”
Now that Joaquin is a part of Halla’s life, Katie said, “he’s the best dad he could be.”
Cindy Rodr guez’s column appears Tuesdays and Thursdays in Scene. Contact her at 303-820-1211 or crodriguez@denverpost.com.
