The account begins with his earliest memories growing up in an East Los Angeles ghetto, attending more than fifty schools between first grade and high school. For a time, his best friends were bookies and hoodlums. In Life on a Roller Coaster, Mendoza describes the many chapters in his life which include a stint in the United States Air Force, a long career with the Los Angeles Fire Department, and his experiences as a professional gambler in Las Vegas. He tells about the good and the bad-of his flight on Air Force One and meeting President Lyndon B. Johnson and Secretary of State Dean Rusk and of his seventeen-year marriage and subsequent divorce.
A riveting narrative, Life on a Roller Coaster recounts Mendoza's meager beginnings in squalor to his now tranquil existence in Nevada. It's a testament of one man's determination to turn his dreams into reality.