See Also: Ricardo Antonio Chavira (Carlos Solis) People Guide

Ricardo Antonio Chavira (Carlos Solis) has spoken about how becoming a father changed him as a person, helping to leave a life of crime behind.

For Chavira, the recent scenes in prison on Desperate Housewives have been a reminder of a bad period in his life. At 17, Chavira began drinking and smoking drugs. He carried guns, racked up traffic violations, stole money from his father and took cars for joyrides. One time he found a car with keys in it and "drove it around, trashed it and left it," he told USA Today.

His life was often in danger, and he often got into bar brawls."There'd be times when we'd be at a club that would get shot up, and there would be two guys lying there with gunshot wounds," Chavira said. But at 21, after surviving a serious car crash and seeing a number of his friends die or be locked away, he saw the pain he was causing his father and tried to turn his life around.

Now Chavira has someone else to care about, and that is his son, Tomas. "My son's the most precious thing to me; he's changed me from being selfish to selfless," Chavira said. "Everything else is crap. God have mercy on anyone who'd hurt him." Chavira's father Juan Antonio Chavira agreed that the child has been a changing force in Chavira's life. "Tomas has brought a big change in Ricardo's life in terms of maturity. He's got a focus outside of himself."

In a separate interview with Metro, Chavira said that he felt Desperate Housewives was escapist TV to allow people to escape their everyday worries. "If at the end of the show, they can laugh and say, 'Thank God I don't have to deal with that crap,' it may spur some sort of conversation about your own relationship," he said. "People are looking for anything to distract them from their own problems, and as my father says, it's so much better to watch someone else's show than your own."

The full interviews with Chavira can be found at USA Today and Metro.

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