Taken to Venezuela at the age of seventeen, he arrived two years after Hugo Chaves' failed coup d'états. The young boy watched for three years, from 1994 to 1997, as the country fell under communist control.

Relocating to Brazil at twenty, traveling down the Amazon then the coast to São Paulo, Velayas lived in Brazil off and on for twenty years.

His' ancestors include a warden of San Quentin Prison, cowboys in Wyoming, performers in vaudeville, actors in Hollywood, soldiers in the Civil War, WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. His great-grandmother crossed the plains by covered wagon with five children settling in Modesto, California, where he was born.

He has worked as a clerk, teacher, filmmaker, lineman, ditch digger, and cable guy in the US, Brazil, Venezuela, Paraguay, and a Caribbean Island.

He calls Texas home.