His family said they had kept Valdez, 25, from hanging out with the wrong people and joining a gang. And on the eve of his sentencing, they insist he never did.

There were no minced words at home from Valdez’s grandfather, Robert Infante, on the subject of gangs in Casa Blanca, his mother Rebecca Valdez said.

“My dad was always telling him, ‘You don’t join no gangs — ever.’ ”

It was not supposed to turn out like this.

“He is not the monster they make him out to be,” she said. “It upsets me. People need to know: He wasn’t a gang member.”

Rebecca Valdez and her mother June Infante declined in an interview to discuss specifics of the case. Valdez, through his mother, declined to be interviewed.

This is not about a wrongful conviction: On the witness stand during his first trial, Valdez said under questioning, “Yes. I did the shooting.”

When Deputy District Attorney Samah Shouka asked Valdez about any gang affiliations, he denied them, even when confronted with statements he had previously made to law enforcement officers that affirmed gang alignments.

Valdez testified that he got “Casa Blanca” tattoos on his forearms when he was 15 or 16 because “I grew up in Casa Blanca, and been there all my life.”

Under the law, prosecutors do not have to prove Valdez is an actual gang member — only that he committed the crime with the intent to benefit a gang.

The fatal gunfire at Maximiliano’s home was in retaliation for a shooting on Christmas Eve that wounded a gang member, whom prosecutors said was Valdez’s friend.

Valdez testified he drank a lot of beer and remembered little of how he spent that Christmas, other than the shooting, which he claimed was meant to “scare” its intended victim, and a caught-on-security-camera beer robbery where he punched the victim outside a neighborhood market.

He did not recall confronting a passerby in another car shortly after the shooting, jacking the shotgun and asking the driver, “Where are you from, homeboy?”

Jacqueline Torres, Maximiliano’s mother, said in her testimony that she remembers the night too well. “The way that his life was taken away, it’s the most terrible thing that can happen in someone’s life.”

Valdez’s family said he was raised in the Family Praise Fellowship Church on Madison Avenue, where the family regularly attends services and Martin was a member of the Royal Rangers, a Boy Scout-style organization in the church. He also was a member of the church’s youth group after that.

“He was born and raised in the church, up until the time he was a teenager he was involved with the church,” said Infante.

Valdez ran into trouble as a juvenile in 2001 when he fired a rifle into the air at Villegas Park. He spent some time in juvenile hall, then took firefighter training in Butte County and was hired by 18 as a firefighter in South Dakota.

He seemed to be on the right track, and aspiring to bigger things, when he returned home to his family in August 2005 with training certificates and letters of recommendation from his supervisors.

“He always dreamed of being a firefighter,” said Infante. She said he researched for training and job opportunities on his own. “Every step, he looked it up,” she said. “Martin is a hard-working, dependable and reliable firefighter. With every task that is given to him, Martin has never come up short…” wrote Errol D. CrowGhost Jr., who was at the time foreman of the Bear Mountain Hand Crew.

When he came home, he got a warehouse job, his mother said. “He really didn’t hang out with anybody. It was all about his work and his car,” she said.

Shouka, the prosecutor, said Valdez did appear to have a good upbringing.

“They brought him up to know the difference between right and wrong. He seems to have had a very nice and loving family,” she said. “But someone who is raised with a devout and loving family is more culpable than someone who is not.”