When Levi Leyba left the Gilbert Police Department earlier this year, it wasn’t because he was ready to slow down.
In fact, he was just picking up momentum on a personal mission he believes could change lives — especially for children learning to read and those with special needs.
“I always had a passion for art and writing,” Leyba said.
He’s now combining that passion with years of experience in business, education and public service to create bilingual children’s books and educational tools aimed at boosting literacy and awareness for neurodivergent students.
A longtime Mesa resident, Leyba’s journey to children’s literature and autism advocacy took an unconventional path. He came to law enforcement later in life after a career in graphic design, product development, business consulting and teaching.
“Just one night I told my wife, I still want to do law enforcement,” he said. “It was just something that I really wanted to try.”
Leyba joined Gilbert Police at age 41, graduating from the Phoenix Regional Police Academy in the top 10 of his class. While with the department, he became a public affairs officer and helped to spearhead Gilbert’s effort to become autism certified.
“I created the SAFE events,” he said. “It was a sensory or wellness event. I created those and I made sure to include as many different departments in Gilbert as possible.”
Leyba was instrumental in starting sensory-friendly versions of events like Gilbert’s Trunk or Treat, giving families with neurodivergent children a safe space.
“I would get parents come out and say, ‘Thank you for having this,’” he said. “‘This is the first time we can bring our son or daughter to these events,’”
His autism work is now expanding through a new initiative, the Autism Training Academy. He’s developing video modules to train educators and support staff on how to recognize and support students with autism and other neurodivergent conditions.
“I’m building these lesson plans and doing these video modules where I can train and certify teachers and support staff from K through 12 to community college to universities,” he said.
The training, he said, is designed for global reach.
“I have the ability to translate ‘em in over 150 languages,” he said. “Once I get up across the United States and I launch it, I can go ahead and I can expand it to other countries.”
Leyba’s push for education and literacy is deeply personal. While earning his MBA from Wilkes University, he wrote his final paper on childhood literacy.
“If a child knows how to read, it helps them with having confidence,” he said. “It helps them not getting in trouble. Teen pregnancy rates drop when kids know how to read.”
That research inspired him to write a series of bilingual picture books focused on historical figures as children — figures like Abraham Lincoln, Frida Kahlo and Susan B. Anthony — with dual English and Spanish text on every page.
“So if a child’s on their own and they might get left behind because they don’t have the help from the parents … if they bring it home, the parent can read the Spanish and the child can read English,” Leyba said.
The books also include hidden ninjas — an “Easter egg” challenge he added to keep his own kids engaged in reading.
Leyba has distributed the books through school events and police-community outreach, often partnering with departments, school districts, or sponsors like Amazon to cover the costs.
“I just started just giving ‘em away to schools,” he said. “I would get either the school districts or … even the Mesa Police Department to pay for some books.”
His nonprofit, Guardian Angel Council, manages book distribution and other community initiatives, including a Mesa-based running program called We Run Mesa operated by his wife, Nycole. The program gets kids — many from Title I schools — active and outfits them with brand new running shoes.
“Sometimes that’s the only time these kids have ever gotten shoes before,” Leyba said.
He founded the nonprofit in 2012 after a health scare led him to consider becoming a bone marrow donor. Though it turned out to be a false alarm, he partnered with Be The Match to promote donor awareness and held large events to add hundreds of people to the donor registry. The mission soon expanded to education, health and literacy.
Now, Leyba works for the city of Mesa’s Office of Economic Development, a role that fits well with his background in entrepreneurship and small business consulting.
“I live in Mesa,” he said. “I’ve always had a passion for small businesses and nonprofits and how to help them grow and succeed. And Mesa has been more than welcoming with me being there.”
Despite his full-time role, Leyba’s weekends are focused on developing the Autism Training Academy and continuing his writing and illustration work.
“It’s something I can do Friday, Saturday, Sunday,” he said. “It works out perfect.”
He’s also teaching others to follow in his creative footsteps through a LinkedIn newsletter and a book titled “A Quick Guide to Publishing Your Own Children’s Book.”
In it, he explains step by step how to write, illustrate and publish — even demonstrating how he created a picture book for adults called “I Need a Job” in just one month using AI-generated images.
For Leyba, everything ties back to empowering children and their families.
“If somebody else is doing what you want to do, that’s proof that it can be done,” he said. “You can easily do it if you set your mind to it.”
We would like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments, pro or con, on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org. Tom Blodgett can be reached by email at tblodgett@iniusa.org or follow him @sp_blodgett on X.
Meet Tom Tom Blodgett joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in 2022, when the company acquired Community Impact Newspaper's Phoenix-area properties. Raised in Arizona, he has spent more than 35 years in journalism in the state.
Community: He has served as an instructional professional in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication since 2005, and is editorial adviser to The State Press, the university's independent student media outlet. He also is director of operations for an 18U girls fastpitch softball team from Gilbert.
Education: Arizona State University with a BS in Journalism.
Random Fact: He lived in Belgium during his freshman year of high school.
Hobbies: Tweeting enthusiastically about ASU softball (season-ticket holder) and grumpily about other local sports (pessimistic fan).
By 
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here