As a young boy, Sam McLaurin’s grandparents loaded him and his three siblings into the family van and drove around the seedier areas of Havana, Fla., outside Tallahassee.

Bobby McLaurin pointed out people he did not want his grandchildren to emulate. Some were people with problems like those of Sam’s parents.

“I used to take them around and show them what the drug dealers and dope addicts and crackheads look like,” Bobby McLaurin said. “We’d ride through and show them. ‘Is this what you want to be like? This is it.’ ”