When Natalino Gomes dreamed of a life beyond Dorchester, beyond the fear and violence that swirled around him, he pictured Miami.

Sometimes, he imagined himself on his wedding day — on a warm beach beside a calm, blue-green sea. His suit was white, a Louis Vuitton. He and his bride were surrounded by family and friends.

The daydream felt safe and beautiful and, most of all, far from Bowdoin-Geneva, the section of Dorchester that had been his home since he was 14.

One September night in 2012, when one of his best friends was nearly killed by a gunman, Gomes was ready to make his dream a reality and take the next plane out of Boston.

“Now!’’ he said a few days after his friend’s shooting. “I want to move on now, not later. Because maybe later, it won’t be later. I might not be existing. You never know what can happen to me.’’

But his love for his home, for his family and friends, ran deep. He could never leave Boston, and it would eventually cost him everything.

* * *

Gomes was 25 the summer his friendwas shot. Over the course of six months in 2012, the Globe followed him for a series of articles chronicling life in a neighborhood grappling with persistent violence. Gomes agreed to take part in the report as long as he could remain anonymous.

He was called “Tal’’ in the series, which described his struggle to find steady work and the efforts of a team of police and community leaders to help him get a job and leave Bowdoin-Geneva, a hub of Cape Verdean gang violence that threatened men like him.

Police and neighborhood leaders told him about a job program that would send him to Maine, then offered him refuge in a rooming house in Chelsea. He said no to both. The idea of starting over somewhere else didn’t seem possible.

“I’m sure he wanted to leave,’’ said his cousin, Elias Monteiro. “But it’s hard for you to leave the city without family. He grew up there his whole life.’’

Gomes had never been implicated in a shooting. His criminal record was minor. But he was friends with some tough characters, men reputed to associate with Cape Verdean street gangs. That drew the attention of the police and rivals alike.

Gomes always rejected the way police defined him and his friends. He knew his friendships might put him in danger, but he was too loyal to let them go.

“You wish you could cut the ties, but it’s a lot easier said than done,’’ Monteiro said. “It’s hard to tell your friends, ‘I can’t be around you. Don’t talk to me.’ You feel guilty.’’

Gomes lived in a city where young men, even boys, are gunned down just for coming from a certain neighborhood. And he had a knack for drawing attention. Charismatic, loud, and funny, he stood out from the crowd.

His round, chubby face and impish smile gave him an almost child-like quality. He was friendly with everyone, including police officers, and would call out to people on the street, flirting with women and hurling jokes at men.

Most young men in the neighborhood steered clear of the police. But Gomes went his own way: He would hug a cop on the street, tell a police captain “I love you,’’ and invite officers to block parties.

Philly Laptiste, his neighbor and the executive director of the Bowdoin Street Health Center, recalled a time in 2010 when local officers tried to recruit neighborhood kids to clean the sidewalks. Gomes and another young man were the only two in the neighborhood to volunteer. Throughout the day, Gomes hollered at passersby to join in.

“The whole day he talked trash about cleaning up trash,’’ Laptiste said, laughing.

But standing out in the crowd can be dangerous. Gomes’s outsize personality, combined with some of his friendships, made him a target for gangs, police said.

By 2012, he had been shot three times, once in the chest. He had lost friends and a beloved cousin to gun violence. At 25, Gomes had seen enough bloodshed to make anyone hard and cynical.

Instead, he remained steadfastly optimistic, determined to land a steady job that would lead to a secure, peaceful future. One day he would get married and start a family. A boy and a girl, maybe even twins.

“First, you get yourself together,’’ he said. “Then you can think about having kids.’’

* * *

Gomes wasn’t sure where to start. But he would ask anyone he met for help.

“I need a job!’’ he implored Susan Young, a community health worker who befriended Gomes in 2009.

From police officers to health workers and ministers, a host of mentors had taken a liking to Gomes over the years, believing all he needed to fulfill his simple dreams was some guidance and luck.

“He was respectful,’’ said Jack Danilecki, a Boston police captain who met Gomes around 2010 when he was a lieutenant in Roxbury. “He wasn’t a punk kid who had a chip on his shoulder and felt the world owed him a living. That wasn’t him.’’

In 2008, Gomes struck up an unlikely friendship with the Rev. Richard Conway when a police officer introduced them.

“You gotta meet this kid,’’ the officer told the priest, known as Doc. “He wants to do a unity day for the neighborhood.’’

That year, Gomes had the idea to hold a party that would bring residents of Bowdoin-Geneva together. It became an annual event.

In 2012, Gomes persuaded local police and city officials to let him close off Norton Street, where he lived, and throw a block party. Reluctantly, they agreed and assigned officers for extra security.

Energized, Gomes began collecting donations for hot dogs, burgers, and soft drinks. The party was a huge success, bringing dozens of neighbors who spent the afternoon face-painting, eating, and dancing to the Black Eyed Peas.

After that, Gomes’s confidence swelled. Soon he was working for the city, doing landscaping, a job Young and Conway had helped him find.

Over the next five years, he worked long hours at a series of jobs.

He left the street behind, and the urgency he’d once felt to get out of the neighborhood faded.

Over the past year, he lived at home at his parents’ neatly kept house on Norton Street and worked as a cafeteria chef at the Berklee School of Music, his family said. In the fall, he took a second job working nights at Peguero’s Market on Bowdoin Street, a short walk from his house.

He was up at 6 a.m. to make it to his cafeteria job. He would return at 5 p.m., shower and eat, then head to the market, where he stocked shelves and worked the counter until midnight.

“It was just a way to stay out of trouble,’’ said his brother Adilson Gomes. “He’d been doing good. We’d always thought he was going to be alright.’’

As far as the police were concerned, Natalino Gomes had been off their radar for years, Danilecki said. Conway said police often give him a list of troubled men to visit around the neighborhood. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen Gomes’s name on it.

“After a while, the cops take you off the list,’’ Conway said. “But the gang members don’t. They have their own list.’’

* * *

Close to midnight on Dec. 1, Gomes was working at Peguero’s when a man walked in, his face fully covered. He strode up to Gomes and opened fire, hitting Gomes in the face, the neck, and chest. He fled the store. Gomes died almost immediately.

Danilecki, whose shift ends at midnight, found out what had happened within minutes from the captain who responded to the shooting.

“It was like getting hit in the stomach with a two-by-four,’’ Danilecki said. “It’s the cycle of violence we try to break by mentoring and giving jobs, and when it fails like this it hurts. It hurts the city. We lost a good kid.’’

Police have not made an arrest. Adilson said the family has no idea who killed Gomes, the youngest of three brothers and two sisters. They are desperate for answers, Adilson said.

“We do not want this one to go cold,’’ he said.

In the weeks before the shooting, Gomes had seemed relaxed. He had saved up enough to buy a car, a 2004 black BMW that he loved to tinker with in his spare time.

“He was happy,’’ Adilson said.

Young said that if Gomes had thought his life was in danger, he would not have taken a regular job at Peguero’s, in the heart of Bowdoin Geneva.

“It just doesn’t make sense,’’ Young said.

Gomes was buried in a brown suit on Dec. 9. On Christmas Day, he would have turned 31.

More than 200 people attended the funeral at St. Peter’s Church. Conway presided over the service, an hour-long ceremony punctuated by wails from the women who sat in the front pews near his casket.

Three young cousins read poems to the congregation.

“Trust me when I say that everybody dies, but not everybody lives,’’ one read. “And you need to hold on to that, like the very air you breathe right now.’’

After the service, one of his cousins collapsed over a pew and had to be helped from the church.

“Please, please, please, please,’’ another cousin cried as she left the church.

In 2012, shortly after his friend’s shooting, Gomes had reflected on his own mortality. Death, he said, did not scare him.

“I ain’t ever scared,’’ Gomes said. “You know why? You never know when your day is coming. Doesn’t matter. Anything could happen.’’

Maria Cramer can be reached at mcramer@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @globemcramer.