The events of Tattoos on the Heart are narrated through the recollections of the author, Greg Boyle. To set the foundation of the other anecdotes in this work, Boyle begins Tattoos with a description of his time serving as a pastor at the Dolores Mission Church in Los Angeles in the mid-1980s. When Boyle first became head pastor of the church, it was the poorest parish in all of Los Angeles and had as many as eight different gangs active in the immediate area.

This was a difficult time for Dolores Mission Church; Los Angeles is commonly described as the gang capital of the world, and if so, then Dolores Mission Church was furthermore in the gang capital of Los Angeles. Boyle had to bury his first gang-related casualty in 1988, and since then, he has had to tragically bury 167 other gang-related casualties.

One of Boyle’s first initiatives at Dolores Mission Church was to open the Dolores Mission Alternative School, as much of the crime in the local community occurred during school hours and was perpetrated from teenagers who had dropped out or been kicked out of school. The school struggled to retain staff and keep the peace among its students, but it created an awareness in the community that soon brought about more positive change.