Chelsie Campbell interview, January 9, 2019: transcript

i AN INTERVIEW WITH CHELSIE CAMPBELL An Oral History Conducted by Maribel Estrada Calderón, Laurents Bañuelos-Benitez, and Nathalie Martínez Latinx Voices of Southern Nevada Oral History Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas ii ©Latinx Voices of Southern Nevada University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2019 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV – University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Project Manager: Barbara Tabach Transcribers: Kristin Hicks, Maribel Estrada Calderón, Nathalie Martinez, Rodrigo Vazquez Editors and Project Assistants: Laurents Bañuelos-Benitez, Maribel Estrada Calderón, Monserrath Hernández, Elsa Lopez, Nathalie Martinez, Marcela Rodriquez-Campo, Rodrigo Vazquez iii The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of a National Endowment for Humanities (NEH) Grant. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank University of Nevada Las Vegas for the support given that allowed an idea the opportunity to flourish. The transcript received minimal editing that includes the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader’s understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. In several cases photographic sources accompany the individual interviews with permission of the narrator. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Latinx Voices of Southern Nevada. Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas iv PREFACE Chelsie Campbell is a Cuban-American attorney and lobbyist. Born on October 4, 1979, Chelsie is a native Nevadan and grew up in Las Vegas. Her mother, Norah Campbell, came to Las Vegas after the Cuban Revolution and works as an elementary school teacher. Her father, Alan Campbell, was a former teacher and hotel manager. An advocate for the Latino community, Chelsie has dedicated her life to advocacy. Her involvement began at UNLV where she found her voice through the Student Organization of Latinos (SOL). During her time with SOL, she advocated for the elimination of the social security requirement in UNLV’s admission process and lobbied for the retraction of Las Vegas Review Journal’s racist article on Latino students. Her activism in SOL also helped established additional SOL chapters across Las Vegas high schools and at the College of Southern Nevada. After earning her Bachelors in Broadcast Journalism and Spanish Literature from UNLV, Chelsie attended William S. Boyd Law School where she graduated in 2005. Chelsie also attended University of Nevada, Reno where she received her master’s in Management and a graduate certificate in renewable energy. Chelsie worked for Mach One Group as Editor-In-Chief of its two publications, Nevada Family Magazine and La Familia de Nevada. After law school, Chelsie began working at NV Energy as a spokesperson and worked her way up to government affairs. Chelsie is currently working as an independent lobbyist and choses her clients. Her clients include Clark County School District and NV Energy. Her work as a lobbyist includes helping agencies prepare for Nevada’s legislative session, conduct public policy research, and help with educational outreach. v Through her activism, Chelsie has worked for former Senate Majority Leader, U.S. Senator Harry Reid. Chelsie is also part of the inaugural class of Emerge Nevada, a political leadership-training program for women in Nevada. Chelsie is on the Board of Trustees for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of Southern Nevada, the Chairwoman for the Nevada Advisory Board for CPLC Southwest, Board Member for the Advisory Commission on law-related Education for the State Bar of Nevada and serves on the Governmental Affairs Committee for the Latin Chamber of Commerce. She is the former President for the Boyd Law School Alumni Chapter and the Board of Directors for the Gray Plunkett Jydstrup Living Facility. Chelsie would like to dedicate her oral history to her parents: Without them, I wouldn’t be here. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with Chelsie Campbell January 9, 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada Conducted by Maribel Estrada Calderón, Laurents Bañuelos-Benítez, and Nathalie Martínez Preface………………………………………………………………………………………..iv-v Chelsie talks about her Cuban mother [Norah Campbell], her American father [Alan Campbell], her father growing up in San Miguel Allende, Mexico, her father’s education and origin, growing up in Las Vegas, moving to Los Angeles for her father’s cancer treatment, her mother escaping the Cuban Revolution to settle in Los Angeles. Chelsie shares her mother’s story of moving to Las Vegas and meeting Chelsie’s father. She mentions her parents working in the Sahara Hotel and Casino, her father working as a teacher at Valley High School, the Mob Museum, The Silverbird, El Rancho Hotel and Casino, and Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino………………..1-4 Talks about her private school education [Paradise Christian Academy and Trinity Christian High School], attending UNLV and Boyd Law School, majoring in broadcast journalism and Spanish Literature, attending UNR for graduate school, and speaking Spanish at home. Chelsie shares her story of growing up in a bilingual household, family traditions, language as a transmitter of culture, and attending UNLV with her mother. She mentions filing a complaint against a professor and dealing with the Office of Civil Rights at UNLV. Begins speaking about her involvement in the Latin Chamber of Commerce and the Student Organization of Latinos (SOL), and her dream of becoming a lobbyist………………………….......…………………..5-8 Chelsie discusses mother becoming a bilingual first-grade teacher, becoming involved with SOL, growing SOL across Las Vegas by helping open more chapters in Las Vegas high schools and at the College of Southern Nevada [CSN]. Mentions the Rebel Yell, Las Vegas Review-Journal (R-J), an incident at the R-J, and lobbying against one the R-J’s publications. Chelsie shares how SOL began lobbying for the DREAM ACT (DACA), and gathering support from NSHE and former Nevada Governor Kenneth Guinn. Mentions North Las Vegas City Councilman Isaac Barron, Tony and Brian Ayala……….………...……………………….……………………..9-12 Speaks about her parents support while lobbying, her grandmother [Raquel Adreubreu] helping Fidel Castro’s soldiers, her grandmother choosing to settle in Los Angeles, and her grandmother’s cooking and character. Begins talking about her experience in law school. Mentions UNLV law professor Sylvia Lazos, Hispanic Heritage Month, and the Latinx experience going to private schools…………………………………………………………..13-17 Mentions working with Senator Harry Ried, magazine La Familia, working as a Spanish language translator at the magazine and as research assistant for Professor Lazos, and becoming editor-in-chief at Nevada Family Magazine. Talks about the distribution of Nevada Family Magazine throughout Clark County School District and the West Coast. Chelsie shares how she vii and her staff modernized the magazine and included diverse perspectives. Discusses her work with Professors Lazos on the book Cambio Colores:Immigration of Latinos to Missouri, getting a spokesperson job at NV Energy, using the Family and Medical Leave Act [FMLA] when her father became sick, and quitting her job at NV Energy to become an independent lobbyist...18-21 Chelsie shares her experience growing up Catholic and going to a Christian school. Mentions living by Valley High School on Karan and Sahara, then on Sahara and Buffalo, The Lakes, and Summerlin. Mentions Noche Buena, visiting Cuba and meeting her mother’s family, the Elián González custody battle, Fidel Castro, and Valley High School’s SOL. Chelsie explains how UNLV used SOL to address Hispanic and multicultural issues, and UNLV’s transition from requiring Social Security numbers for admissions to only requiring Individual Taxpayer Identification Number [ITIN]………....................................................................................22-25 Talks about Isaac Barron and Rancho High School, the Latino Enrichment Conference (LEC), Larry Mason, UNLV funding LEC, her duty as SOL president, Margarita Rebollal and the Hispanic Day Parade, Maria Silva and Chris Aldana, Downtown Las Vegas, Harry Reid and his Secret Service, Cirque du Soleil, Dario Herrera, John Kerry, and Tom Gallagher. Shares how she received a certificate in renewable energy from UNR, studying professional Spanish, the difference between Mexican and Cuban Spanish and culture……………………………..…26-31 Mentions her travels to Mexico, Mexican cuisine, and visiting her father’s family. Talks about Houssels House at UNLV, the Latin Chamber of Commerce Young Professionals, Otto Merida (former president of LCC), Chicanos Por La Causa Nevada (CPLC), Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, Culinary Union Local 226, Olivia Diaz, and Irene Cepeda……………..…………..32-361 Today is January ninth, 2019. We are in the Oral History Research Center at UNLV. My name is Maribel Estrada Calderon and I will be interviewing Chelsie Campbell. Chelsie, can you please spell out your name for us? Sure. Chelsie is C-H-E-L-S-I-E. Campbell is C-A-M-P-B-E-L-L. Can you tell me how you identify? Hispanic or Cuban American. Let's begin with your childhood and your family history. Wow, what a broad question. I was born in Vegas. My mom is from Cuba. She came to the U.S. in 1971; shortly thereafter, moved to Vegas. My dad was American, born in La Jolla, California, but he was raised in Mexico, in San Miguel de Allende, so he was completely fluent in both Spanish and English. He ended up doing his master's degree in Spain. It was an interesting childhood because I had a parent who was completely Cuban or Hispanic and a dad that was American, but very much so identified with being Mexican or Hispanic or the Latino culture. LAURENTS: When you say American, do you mean Anglo? A Caucasian; blond hair, blue-eyed, born in La Jolla, whose parents were British and Scottish background. But he identified as Mexican? I wouldn't say he identified. He very much identified as American, but he was very much—he grew up with a Mexican culture from the time he was seven until he was fourteen, they lived in Mexico, they lived in the States then for about four years, and then he went back to Mexico to finish out one of his degrees. He loved the culture, he loved the music, he very much loved everything about it. Then married with a Cuban, obviously it kind of all got mixed in. I think he also was very much a Cuban. A lot of people would ask him, where are you from? And he would 2 say, "I'm from Havana." MARIBEL: What took your dad's family to Mexico? His dad was an engineer and he had some government projects and the mom was very much a traveler, and so she believed in moving every year to a different country except she fell in love with San Miguel de Allende and decided to go back and stay there and raise the kids. There was an American colony there and the kids just had the very idyllic childhood. She wanted them to be exposed to different cultures as they grew up, so that's why. What year did your mom move here? She moved to Vegas around 1974. She met my dad shortly thereafter. She got married in '76 and then I was born three years later. For the most part, we've spent all of my life in Vegas; I spent five years in Los Angeles. My dad passed away about a year ago, but when I was three he was diagnosed with cancer for the first time, and so when I was five his doctor said, "We don't have the treatment in Vegas, so you have to go to L.A. for five years and get treated." Then we came back once he was back in remission and he could be treated here again. What brought your mom to Vegas? How my mom came...When Fidel Castro took over in the sixties, there was the exodus of all the entrepreneurs in Cuba and all the professionals, and her dad was part of that. Her dad was a CPA. But my grandfather and my grandmother had divorced when my mom was four months old, which was unheard of. My grandma was a fireball. They divorced. So when my mom was twelve that's when my grandfather left Cuba and filled out her paperwork to get her out as well. But because of the process and the politics and all that what ended up happening is that my mom and my aunt and the two children, were given their permission to leave Cuba when my mom was twenty, so eight years later they left. But my grandmother was given permission a year before 3 them, so she came out to L.A. by herself and tried to set everything up so that when the girls would come everything was set up. My mom and my aunt and two little boys ended up going into L.A. but my mom just did not like L.A. She just thought it was too clustered, too much traffic, too difficult of a life. A friend of hers at the time had come out to Vegas. She was sixteen or seventeen, still lived with her parents, and she said, "Why don't you move in with me and my parents? Come to Vegas. There are lots of job opportunities. It's a smaller town, easier, safer." My mom ended up staying. She met my dad. It was funny. My dad at the time was one of the managers, I believe, at the Sahara Hotel and she was working in one of his departments. They knew each other or whatever. She knew that he was the boss and he had announced that he was going to make some massive cuts. The way that he did it is he would just take the list of employees and just at a certain name, everybody below that would get fired. I know, I know, my dad was brutal. He was always fighting with the unions back then. She ended up being the very last one before the cutoff. She remembers going into the office and saying, "Please don't fire me. I just bought a new car and I'm here, I'm young." I think she was like twenty-five, maybe, twenty-four, and she is speaking in her limited English. He is just, "Okay, okay," not saying that he was completely fluent in Spanish, tricked her. Then I guess a couple of weeks later he just started talking to her just as friends. About a year later he then went to the Aladdin for a food and beverage director position and gave her his number and said, "I'm leaving. Here's my number. Call me." That's where it all started. She called him and they went on their first date and that was it. BARBARA: Sounds like a romantic comedy. I know it does, right? I know, right. 4 We should introduce that also present in this interview... MARIBEL: In this interview... Laurents Banuelos-Benitez. Nathalie Martinez. And Barbara Tabach. Thank you. MARIBEL: How did your dad become involved in the casino business? That's a good question, actually. Let me think back. His degrees were in philosophy. He loved that aspect of the world and he loved literature. He ended up coming to Vegas as a teacher at Valley High School. What year? That was in the sixties, in the early sixties. He was young. He did not like teaching. He only did it for a couple of years and decided to go into the hospitality business. There was an opening at one of the hotels. He just found that he really had a passion for it and he just started to move up really quickly through the ranks. His last hotel, before we had to move because he got sick, was the old Silverbird, which is where Mandalay Bay is now and the old El Rancho. At the Silverbird, he was their last general manger, their last hotel manager before he shut it down. He's got some cool history. BARBARA: What is your dad's name? Alan Campbell. We went to the Mob Museum before he passed away. He would be like, "Oh, that was my boss." They were all mobsters. I'm like, "Oh, cool." MARIBEL: Tell me about your educational experience. I did my elementary school in L.A. because those were the five years that I was there and then came back and finished junior high and high school here. I went to private school here and then 5 went to UNLV straight through. I did my undergrad here and then I went to Law School here. My undergraduate was in broadcast journalism and then I ended up adding a second major in Spanish lit. After that I just decided to go to law school straight through. Then a few years ago, actually about five years ago, through UNR I ended up doing my master's in management and a graduate certificate in renewable energy just because that was the industry I was in for ten years. What were the names of the junior and high school? Junior high school was Paradise Christian Academy and for high school I went to Trinity Christian High School. What was it like going to a Christian school? I really didn't know anything else. My elementary school was private, but it was nondenominational; it was Montessori. I was raised Catholic, so I always tell people that my peer pressure was never drugs, it was to convert to a different religion that wasn't mine, which was interesting. Like I said, I always knew small schools. I always knew private schools. It's hard for me to speak to the difference because I was never on the other end of the spectrum. But for me it was fun, small classes. I didn't keep in touch with anybody, which is crazy. Most of my friends are my childhood friends from elementary school. Did you grow up with any Latino traditions? Very much so. Very Cuban. I spoke Spanish at home always, so I'm fully bilingual. My mom made sure that I only spoke Spanish until I started school because she knew that I would speak English once I got to school and just being in the U.S. I was still watching TV and I would still speak to my dad. That was a big one is that she just really the language to be transmitted. She wanted me to speak properly and speak well in both English and Spanish. I think through that, just that in itself. 6 Then obviously the food, the traditions, like Noche Buena for Christmas Eve and all the traditions for New Year's Eve, like eating the twelve grapes and we always eat turron. It's a Spanish candy. There are different kinds. One is peanut buttery and one is like an almond rocca. Just little things like that that get passed down. I'm married and we don't have any kids yet, but I just find myself wanting to make sure that I don't lose that part of the culture. It's the food and the language, I think, are two of the biggest transmitters of culture in my opinion. After high school you came here to UNLV? Yes. What was it that you decided to study? I did not declare my major until my junior year. Originally I was very interested in psychology and very much into how kids develop language and linguistics. I took a few classes, but decided that the work path wasn't for me. I decided on broadcast journalism. I loved media. I loved reporting. I liked that aspect of what I was doing. Here is where things got fun, I guess, for me at UNLV. During my sophomore year—and here is the other thing. My mom starting taking college classes when I was five. I would go to the child development center and she would start taking her classes because she wanted to finish out her degree in the U.S. With my dad being sick so much and having to take care of me and my dad, she was only able to take one class at a time, super slow. Finally, once I started UNLV she basically quit her job and said, "I'm going to go back to school to finish out my degree." We both started UNLV together and we've graduated together twice from UNLV. That added a different dynamic, obviously, to the typical college experience, but it was a lot of fun. With that being said, my mom was in a class where there was a professor who was just beyond mean to students. The records are still in the university somewhere. She would call 7 students stupid in class. When they were taking exams, she would hover over them and be like, "How can you not know that? How come that isn't filled out on your exam?" There were multiple students that were repeating this information. She was so degrading. She was not what a professor should be. My mom was like, "Something has to be done. This is insane. There can't be a teacher on campus like this where kids would come out crying out of that class." We started talking to some of the teachers and they were like, "Yes, we know that this is an issue, but there are no students that want to come forward because the pressure of needing her to get your degree." Nobody wanted to say anything because it was such a small department. It took us a year and we ended up filing—this is where I really got into a lot of student activism and it shifted my career path a hundred percent from broadcast journalism to what I ended up becoming. We ended up filing a complaint internally. The complaint internally actually ended up with forty-five students that came forward from past years that once they heard that this was going on, they wanted to help, because they knew it was anonymous. These kids ended up with anxiety medications. It was just bad. We were shocked when we saw the reports. So we know had this report in hand. We knew that something was wrong and this was beyond just being a bad teacher. This was abuse at its worst. We were told to file with the Office of Civil Rights for Students. I think it was Title VII; I don't remember super clearly, but it was Office of Civil Rights basically for student issues. They came in and did their investigation and they sided with the students. They were like, yes, this is wrong; this should have never happened. Students ended up getting back their tuition and their book fees for having to go through all of that, which was insane. Everybody was telling us, “You were like this nineteen-year-old little powerhouse who really had no idea what was just barreling through and getting to the people that needed listen.” 8 We got to the Board of Regents. We knocked on every single door that would listen to us and said, "Look, we now have a federal report that says this. You guys have to do something. This is not right." She was Latina, but it's not right. You can't allow that. She can't belittle people. She can't stop kids from getting their degrees. Once I got a taste of that I was like, you know what? I like what I'm doing. It was actually Tony Sanchez who ended up being my boss. I had already met him because I was super involved with the Latin Chamber of Commerce. I was very involved with Student Organization of Latinos, which I'll get into. He saw what I was doing and he was like, "You know what you're doing is lobbying, right?" I was, "No, I don't, but I love it." He was like, "Yes, you have a natural ability to get to the people that you needed to get to and people listened to you and trusted you even though you were only nineteen or twenty. But you came with the research and the facts and you had everything in hand that you needed." So I'm like, "Uh, that's interesting." I ended up at that point making the decision that I was going to finish out my broadcast journalism degree add on the Spanish lit and, at the same time, take the LSAT and go to law school so that I could become a lobbyist. I wanted the law degree behind me. I know there are a lot of lobbyists that don't have law degrees, but I wanted that and I wanted to be licensed as an attorney as well. That's a very long answer to your question. That's perfect. What was your mom studying? My mom ended up doing her bachelor's in Spanish lit and then she ended up doing her master's in Spanish lit, and because of the master's she became a bilingual first-grade teacher with the school district, which is what she was doing before. She always was a teacher's assistant and whatnot, but she wanted to actually just finish it out. With, well, the American side, too, but with the Cuban side, it was always very much, you get your education; that's your job; you don't 9 work; you don't do anything else; you get your degree. My mom, my aunt, everybody in my family ended up with master's degrees after leaving Cuba. What ended up happening to that professor? The school and her had to negotiate because the federal government got involved and they said, "She has to leave; she doesn't have to be terminated, but you guys have to come to some type of resolution where she knows that she's done." So she left. You mentioned that you worked at the Latin Chamber of Commerce and were involved in it. I was involved, but did not work for them. During that time, I was also president of the Student Organization of Latinos and it just kind of snowballed because there was just one issue after another. At that time the Student Organization of Latinos was fairly small, but it was the first student-based organization on campus. It was started in the sixties by Fernando Romero. I don't know if you guys have interviewed him yet. LAURENTS: He's on the wall. He may have mentioned it. It was called something else and then they switched the name to SOL. At that point there were a couple of high school chapters and us and the CSN chapter. I was president for three years. We ended up expanding that group from four or five chapters into seventeen chapters. The high schools that didn't have chapters, we started them. Some of them were under different names, not necessarily SOL, but we put them all under one banner. We were very, very strong at that point. MARIBEL: This was when? This was 2000, 2001, 2002, yes, right around there, '99, 2000, 2001, 2002. Like I said, I was part of that lobbying, very activist group that we had on campus. There were a couple of things that 10 happened. From there we started to see more Hispanic and Latino kids come into college and we saw a lot more groups form. (MNSHA) started. We had a lot more Hispanic Greek organizations start after that. It was cool to see. But the other thing that we were super proud of is that—and you can actually still Google all of this and the Rebel Yell still has all of the news articles. We were crazy. We were approached with this issue and we decided to take it on. There was a writer at the Review- Journal who had called. He was mean. He wrote an article about Hispanics and he said something about "the browning of the school district." Everybody was livid when they saw that. I know, I know, I know. We were like, come on, you guys. I think that was the title of the article, The Browning of the...He was so racist. We were like, how can the Review-Journal allow this? Come on, we're not in 1950s. He talked about illegal aliens and just used really ugly words. Fernando was actually involved in some of that. Tony was heavily involved in that. They came to us and said, "Hey, look, this is really very much an issue that you guys should lead and take the torch on because, first, you guys have organizations in the school district, and, second, that's a pipeline from the school district to UNLV. The fact that he is calling all these kids illegal aliens and the browning, just making it very mean, not appropriate." Again, as president of SOL and our board being some of the community leaders, we approached the Review-Journal and we said, "We want this article retracted. You need to retract it. You need to remove it." We met with the R-J a couple of times that said, "No, absolutely not. The writer was on there." He explained his side and we explained our side and we said, "Fine, game on." We actually organized one of the first student-based protests in front of the R-J. We ended up getting a huge crowd, more than what we expected. It was a great success in the fact that it was student led. We knew what we were doing. We knew what we were asking for. Once 11 again, at the end of the day they ended up firing him because we put so much pressure on them to say, hey, this isn't right; you guys can't allow this. It's not like we like to fire people, but if you're doing something that's not appropriate, then you as a company needs to rectify it because you can't accuse a particular group or race of browning the school district. It just wasn't good. That really was the peak of our activism on UNLV. It was fun. It gave me a lot of great skills. I met a lot of great people. To this day I am still heavily involved and after that I stayed very involved in the community. My mom and I were there spearheading all of this stuff. LAURENTS: Can I ask you the process of starting a chapter of SOL as you went into all these high schools? We were the first group of students to bring the DREAM ACT (now DACA) to the forefront. When it was announced, we held a press conference at the steps of the federal building announcing our support. We spent twelve to eighteen months lobbying the state to help pass it, or to help pass a state version of it. The NSHE got behind us, helped us remove the social security requirement form the admissions process. At the time, governor Guinn even invited us to the Governor’s Mansion for a celebration. I think they were seeing that we were so active, especially the committee, because we were getting involved in the parade. We always had a float in the parade and we had a college conference that we would hold every year where we would teach high school kids, here is your enrollment age form; come meet the UNLV staff members. They were seeing that we were doing stuff that the high schools needed assistance with, and so the moment we would walk into one of the guidance counselors or to the dean, they would say, "Absolutely." We had a couple of kids 12 that were interested already and they would approach us and say, "We want to start this chapter." With the blessing of the high school that was it; they would take off. I think at one point in one of our parades we had four hundred SOL kids, which was a lot. MARIBEL: Did you guys have reunions? Meetings? The way that we had structured it is that at that point we knew that we needed a SOL umbrella, and so we created a board with the CSN chapters and the high school chapters with reps and that way at least every once in a while we would communicate so we knew what we were all doing and we could support each other. Obviously the high schools and CSN knew what they needed to do best for their own communities. Everybody was pretty much self-run, but we would all meet to support each other and figure out who needed the help or what we needed to do for cross events or anything like that. What was the process to ultimately have the protest? Rancho High School at that time, and even today, had a large Hispanic population and was very, very strong, and so that's who we partnered up with. That's who the initial conversations started with, with Isaac Barron, who is now a North Las Vegas City Council person, and that's who we started with. Honestly there wasn't a big, huge process. It was just that the R-J didn't listen to us, this guy keeps writing horrible articles, and let's pick a date we're going to meet up. We had a general meeting beforehand as to the rules and regulations; meaning, these are the posters, this is what they need to say, what they can't say, what you guys can't do. Especially for the high school kids, you have to be nice, you have to be peaceful, this isn't a free for all. Just to make sure that everybody was very well organized. Then we set the meeting point for eight in the morning in front of the R-J. That was it. The community came out to help us, all the Hispanics. Tony and Brian Ayala, they brought us water and everybody was there supporting us. They loved it. 13 What did your parents say? My mom was all over it. My dad was all over it. My parents were extremely supportive of any event. Anything that I always did, they were both there. My dad was always the one that was driving us everywhere if we were in a hurry and we were like, "I don't even have time to park; let's go." Extremely supportive. My mom, she is also a fireball, I would say much more than I was. I was just very much about logistics and knowing how to get things done and get to the people, but she is the one that is like, "Come on; hurry up; you've got to do this; you've got to do this." They were always a hundred percent involved and they loved it. I think it just comes from my grandmother, like I said, in the early fifties she divorced and that was unheard of anywhere. She had two young girls and she was part of at the time when Castro was coming in and everybody thought that Castro was great. She was part of the women trying to help Castro's soldiers and she would hide soldiers in the house. It's crazy. Sh