Stallworth was born and raised in Tulare, graduating from Tulare Union High School in 1989.

At the age of 12, he set a national midget group pentathlon record. The win, which included the shotput, hurdles, long jump, 50 and 400 meters, enticed the attention of Sports Illustrated. A reporter interviewed him for its “Faces in the Crowd” section. They also sent him a silver bowl in support of his achievement.

In high school, Stallworth was a three-sport standout. He lettered in football, basketball and track. In 1989, he set the National Federation of State High Schools Association record in the long jump with a 26’ 4.75″ jump, while participating in a CIF State meet. That record is still in existence today.

In 1990, he attended the World Junior Championships in Bulgaria and again set a record – earning a gold medal with a 26’ 11″ jump. He still is the world record holder from that jump. At the same games he earned a gold in the 4 x 1m relay, which he anchored, and a bronze medal in the 200m.

He started college with a scholarship in track and field at Cal State, Fresno. He had his eyes set on the Olympics in Barcelona, Spain in 1992.

And then – “I went to the Drake Motel in Tulare on South K – a rundown motel and they were selling a lot of drugs out of there,” Stallworth said. “I sold a $20 rock to four undercover officers – it was a buy bust. And that’s when my life changed. That was the spiral.”

He was not using drugs at that time, he said.

A Positive Life Starts to Spiral Out of Control

“I was arrested. I was given some time in the county jail [serving a total of 4-5 months], and from that point on I started engaging in criminal activity,” he said. “I got on drugs and started using heavily.

“Taking inventory of my life – I have to be honest with you – I started using rock cocaine heavily. I started pilfering. I started doing some robberies. In 2001, I was arrested for two counts of 211 – robbery. It went to jury trial and through God’s grace I had a hung jury, and the DA didn’t pursue any more charges.”

But it continued.

“From 1991 – September 2, 2014 – it was all drug use, criminal activity [non-violent], relapsing, prison,” he said.

“I lost my father to a tragic accident in 1995 – he was run over and killed,” he said. “It was tough, because I was just given a two-year sentence for possession and I’ll never forget when they came up and said, ‘Stallworth, you need to come down’ – like at one o’clock in the morning – and I thought, ‘OK, why are they calling me down.’ Back then I was a little mouthy and I thought, ‘What did I do wrong this time?’ They just wanted to inform me that my father was run over by a car and killed, and they wanted to give me time to make phone calls.

“I remember it like it was yesterday.

“I am close with my brother and sisters. We all hail from the eastside of Tulare and it’s different today. But anyone who is familiar with the eastside of Tulare in the ‘80s and ‘90s – there was P Street – the pool hall and the gambling shack. That’s when it was a tough neighborhood to grow up in and come out of.

“Growing up, I saw it all at such a young age. They used to take the mattresses and dump them in the alley, of course we were just kids then, we would see a man and a woman engaging in sexual activity. We laugh about it, because the guy would say, ‘Kids, get outta here,’ and we’d take off running. We were scared.

“At Fresno State, I was a C-average student – I was studying criminology with a minor in physical education. I studied criminology with the thought of working with kids in probation – giving them counseling. Physical Ed was the minor to say, ‘you know what – let’s go do some PE work.’”

Reality Hits – Big Time

“After my [first] conviction – Fresno State would no longer honor my scholarship,” he continued. “That was a tough deal.

“Here I came from the eastside of Tulare – Bam – I set this national record at 12. At 18, I set the national high school record. I was heavily recruited in basketball and football – heavily recruited. In ’89, I set the national record. In 1990, I go overseas to Bulgaria, and I win two golds and a bronze. My whole life seemed to be pretty good.

“I had Reebok after me – I was a wear-tester for Reebok. At that time I couldn’t sign a professional contract, because I was still in college. At that time, with my personal coach – who I give a lot of credit to for my success – we decided not to [take a professional contract] – so they give me a wear-testing contract. This was 1992.

“There I am destined for stardom and then reality hits – Wow!”

He paused in reflection.

“In 1992, the Olympic Games are going to be in Barcelona – here I am in the championships in 1990,” he said. “I have already submitted myself among the world’s best – Carl Lewis, Mike Powell – the best, and I’m on my way to this next step of my life.

“In ’91 I do that drug sale.

“To be honest with you – the truth, today, because I live in the truth – I did not need the money. I had Fresno State give me a full-ride scholarship. I had my apartment was paid for. They were giving me $450 a month to spend. I could go get my books. The only thing I had to do was study and go get my education.

“Wow.”

Stallworth paused again, “I don’t know,” he said.

“Why would a kid from the ghetto, who has pretty much made it – if you do one more thing right, we make it,” he said. “We set this kid’s age group record at 12. We set the National High School record in ’89. In ’90 we get two golds and a bronze. Boom, boom, boom – he’s made it.

“Why go sell drugs? It’s still a mystery today. And, that’s the truth. I didn’t need money.”

Comeback Falls a Bit Short

Through his ups and down with drugs, convictions and jail time, Stallworth made a comeback in 2000. He was getting out of prison in 1999, and he spoke with his personal coach on the phone.

“He said, ‘Olympic year in 2000 – you get out in September, what you want to do?’” Stallworth said. “Let’s shoot for it.

“Getting back in shape, having that nine-year layoff, I started to realize you do get old, or you do age.”

He was 29.

While training, he stayed clean. He went to the Olympic trials in Sacramento, but did not make the team.

“I had been absent for nine years,” he said.

“I was clean until 2001, and then I relapsed,” he said. “My mom passed January 27, 2001 – things had been going pretty good. I was working. I lost my mom and I relapsed. Not to say because of my mom’s death – but, it was a tough situation. A lot of that situation with my mom is very personal and I have done some work here at the [Visalia Rescue] Mission regarding that. But, when I lost her in 2001, I went back to my addiction.

“I was arrested – I was given a four-year, four-month sentence for two robberies. I did 23 months straight – from June ‘01 to May ‘03. I came home in ‘03 and I went right back to my addiction, that same year.

“In ‘05 I did a violation, and I did a year. Again, I relapsed. In ‘06 I get another possession’s charge – a two-year sentence – I came home in home in February ‘07. I returned to my addiction. In 2008, I did my last violation.

“My baby was born in February – I paroled off of my last violation on Easter Sunday of 2008.

“I said this is my last stint in prison – I’m done – I’ve got to break these chains. And, that was it for prison.

“I stayed clean from Easter Sunday until the summer of 2010. I was working – I moved to LA, I came back – I re-engaged into my addiction. In 2013, I was back – it was always the same drugs. I went back to the vomit [referring to addiction] until September 2, 2014. If you return back to the same thing, we expect different results and it just doesn’t happen.

“It did the same thing for me for 27 years – it’s either going to jail, institution or death. Through the grace of God, I never did death. Jail and institutions – I’ve been there. That’s some pretty sick vomit – huh?”

A Baby Changes Everything

“In 2014, I came over to the Visalia Rescue Mission (VRM) and when I came here, I came here for help to come clean and sober,” he said. “My daughter was six. I had to get my life together, because I had to help support my daughter.

“When I came here, I’ll never forget – I did an interview with Henry Leon [who now works in the warehouse for the Mission] and he said, ‘James you’ve got one hour,’ this is really meaningful to me – I was doing my assessment and he saw that I wanted to change my life, and he said, ‘James you’ve got one hour to go get your clothes.’

“I was back in 45 minutes, and I had to go all the way back to Tulare!

“When I got here September 2, 2014, I’d go to the classes. I always knew God existed, but I never knew about building a relationship – opening your heart to him – crying out, if you will. You’ve got to believe in God, or you’ve got no way of existing.

“Where I come from, religion is not practiced on a continual basis. You see the elderly people walking with their wives, or their husbands, to church – that’s as far as it went.”

Stallworth’s grandparents attended church, he said.

“So, I get to the classroom and they’re pouring out God, and I said, ‘Oh, my God, here I am in this classroom – I didn’t come here for this – I came to get my life together, I came to get clean and sober,’” he said.

“When I got to the classroom I was afraid. I was embarrassed – not because of my lifestyle, but because I didn’t know the word of God,” Stallworth said. “I’ll never forget talking with the counselors – they’d say, ‘James, ya know, this is a faith-based program – we practice God here, we practice religion – we’re trying to change our lives.’

The Word of God

“And, I’ll never forget opening up to God for the first time in my whole life. Having somebody that I could go to, that I knew loved me and would hear my cries – because for so many years of my life, didn’t nobody hear my cries.

“And, it was then I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior.

“What I wanted at that time was help – what I needed at that time was change. In this classroom, I’m getting the combination of both. I’m getting the help and the change. So, I started praying, and I started believing and I started talking to God – not knowing if I was talking to him the right way or not.

“When you do something wrong, you say, ‘God forgive me,’ – that’s the norm. But I’m still trying to figure out how to say – how do I talk to him – is he going to hear me?

“Is he?

“Nobody’s heard me my whole life. I come from the eastside of Tulare. I come from where I hear myself – don’t nobody hear me. Don’t nobody care about my hurts, my pain – but me. I’ve got to put my trust in somebody I don’t even see.

“That’s the best part of my life today. I didn’t know, but now I know today, that there is a living God and that he does exist. And, yes, I’ve had situations in the last 34 months of my life to show me that God is real.”

Stallworth hopes he can reach others with what he has learned.

“Only thing I ask for today – is to help somebody and be rich in spirit,” he said. “You can talk about my legacy. You can talk about my national record – which they still talk about 28 years later. That’s OK. You can talk about my gold medals. But, when I came to the Visalia Rescue Mission, I found something greater than a gold medal will ever do for me. Records are made to be broken – eventually, one day, somebody else will be the reigning king in the long jump.

“I’m from the eastside of Tulare – for so long we developed that attitude of racism. I’m being honest here, and I want you to hear that – I’m being honest here. Today, God has renewed my heart. He has renewed me as a person. I can go in a church, like I did last night, and be the only African American in there and feel like its 100 African Americans in there.

“I can finally trust again.”

Work at the Mission

Stallworth graduated the then eight-month VRM class in 2015. He was employed in the Mission’s warehouse upon graduating. He had to take a break on medical leave last year, when he required surgery. He was given oxycodone to manage his pain. He took a total of six of them following his surgery. He threw the other 84 remaining in his prescription away.

“I thought I can’t take these pills,” he said. “I got rid of them. I had major surgery, but there was no way I could consume all of those pills. My system was clean. I took the conservative way – there’s no way I can take 90 of them. I took ibuprofen. The doctor wanted to prescribe something else, but I said I don’t want to take anything with narcotics in it.

“I own the truth – I’m still an addict.

“It was tough. I had to lay a certain way and I encountered a lot of discomfort. But, I just asked God for strength and I just kept going.”

Stallworth went back to work at the mission, this time in the Men’s Shelter and he now works as an assistant in the Life Academy.

“The life I once had – I had it,” he said. “I had it from the bottom all the way to the top. But, I have never felt the way I feel today. The feeling you get by having a relationship with Jesus Christ is phenomenal.

“The blessings that have come – here I am able to talk with you about my story. If you had come to me three years ago, No. Twenty years ago, No. Ten years ago, No. Because I wasn’t content and I wasn’t happy with who I was at the time.

“I get so emotional – because I lived that lifestyle. Why does God intervene in people’s lives? That’s what I’ve got to find out. Because, I was at the top – one more thing and I would have made it. But, I wouldn’t trade my life today for all the tea in China. I am so blessed.”

Stallworth has three children, two who are now adults and his nine-year-old daughter. He also has three older sisters and an older brother. Today, he has a good relationship with his three children and his siblings.

He lives in transitional living at the Mission. He took a coaching assignment with the COS track and field team last year. But, he didn’t participate this year. He may be open to coaching in the future and a lot of people would like to see him do that.

But today, it’s about giving back to the community in a different way.

“If I leave work today at 3:30 and there’s a guy sitting out there and he’s hurting,” he said, “I can sympathize with him. I can sit with him. I don’t have to judge him. I won’t laugh at him. I can relate to him and I can hug him, if that’s what he wants.”

The post James Stallworth: Back on Top appeared first on Valley Voice.

Back in 2006, when Daniel Hernandez was 10 years old, his family’s version of the American dream started to come true.

His father was a migrant worker born in Mexico, and for a time his mother worked the fields beside him.

As their children were born–Daniel, now 21, has two sisters, 20 and 17, and a 14-year-old brother–his parents, particularly his mother, longed for a better life for their growing family.

Cramped Quarters

“We were living in–you could almost consider it a one-bedroom house, ‘cause my parents slept in their room, and then we had bunk beds,” Hernandez said.

“Sometimes I’d sleep in the living room, which is kind of small too, but I come from a migrant working background.”

Field labor could only carry the family so far.

“When you come from Mexico and you have no educational background, that’s what you do, anything to support your family,” Hernandez said.

His mother knew she could do better. The first step was asking Habitat for Humanity Tulare/Kings County for a helping hand.

“She said, ‘This is not for me,’” Hernandez said. “At the time, we had applied for Habitat for Humanity. We had been going to church. My mom prayed, and she knew she was going to get the house.”

Earning a Home

Hoping, praying and being rewarded were only the start. Getting help from Habitat is not a free ride.

“Our homeowners don’t get a free house,” said Deanna Saldana, Habitat T/K’s director of resource development. “They have to pay a mortgage payment, so we are looking for hardworking families.”

That’s what they found in the Hernandez Family. Those picked to work with Habitat on building or rebuilding a home of their own must pick up the tools and join the crew. But Habitat is flexible. Those chosen can make their contribution on projects for other families, and they can take as long as they need to do their part.

Habitat is only one means of addressing substandard housing for low-income people, says Habitat T/K’s executive director Dirk Holkeboer, who has overseen the building of 60 homes over his 23 years running the program, and it isn’t for everyone. But it works.

“What we’re trying to do is create opportunities for folks who need a decent place to live but can’t afford a home to work with us,” he said. “To partner with us, to become homeowners by building or renovating homes with us.”

Affordable, Decent Place to Live

Holkeboer, who calls himself a reformed lawyer, wanted a career that might change the world around him for the better. He volunteered with Habitat in his native Michigan and soon was working in Georgia at its home office, where he oversaw President Jimmy Carter and First Lady Rosalyn Carter’s annual Carter Work Project.

“An affordable, decent place to live is important for all kinds of reasons. It allows people to thrive, to raise their children,” he said of why Habitat’s work is significant. “It’s transformational. It’s about stability and security for the family, so that they can grow into all they can be.”

That was certainly the case for the Hernandez Family. A home of their own made a lasting difference, and should for generations to come. It started with Hernandez’s mother.

“It was the spark that she needed to turn things around in her life,” he said.

She earned a bachelor’s degree and now teaches high school.

“After we received the house, my mom felt the need to go back to school, because she felt the need to be an example for her children,” Hernandez said. “That you could struggle, but you have to take it upon yourself to better yourself and give your children better opportunities, that you don’t want to stay at the same level that you started, that you want to grow and thrive.”

Rolling It Over

The investment Habitat made in the Hernandez Family isn’t lost. The payments they make on their Tulare home are put back into Habitat’s lending pool, used again and again to finance their other repair and construction projects.

Not only does Habitat hire local workers and purchase their supplies from local vendors, they do it over and over.

“Those monthly payments come back to Habitat, and we recycle those monies to help other families, so one of our phrases is: It’s a hand up, not a hand out,” said Holkeboer. “And, Daniel’s parents, who’ve been living in their home now for about 11 years, they have been helping us build homes with other families in similar circumstances, even though they probably haven’t swung a hammer on a site in a few years.”

And once a family gets that hand up, there’s no going back.

“Once we get a family in, it’s a permanent solution,” said Saldana. “It’s an investment for not just the family but the whole community.”

Myth Busting

There are two myths Holkeboer would like to debunk about Habitat. The first is that it was founded by the Carters. It wasn’t. The second is the only thing Habitat needs is volunteer workers. They also need cash, and the more they get the more the whole community benefits, as it gets used again and again.

“It takes a lot of hands, but it takes a lot of dollars,” Holkeboer said. “The funding that we need to do our programs come from the community. There’s no pipeline of support from Georgia. What we do is only limited by what we receive from the community.”

That said, Habitat also needs volunteer workers of any skill level for a variety of jobs, including manning the ReStore, Habitat’s used hardware store at 637 S. Lovers Lane in Visalia, or working on its social media sites and helping market its programs.

“We have jobs for everyone, regardless of their skill, so we do a lot of teaching on the work sites,” Holkeboer said. “You get to do things you maybe haven’t ever done before.”

Change for the Generations

Daniel Hernandez, who now works as a volunteer for Habitat mainly in its low-income home repair program, is certainly doing things he’s never done before.

He’s a junior now at William Penn University in Iowa, where he’s studying industrial technology with an eye toward architecture. His older sister is in college, too. His brother is a star soccer player who intends to go pro, and his sister is on track to graduate high school and go beyond. Even his father, who still works in the fields, is thinking about education again.

All of it, Hernandez says, goes back to the family’s owning its own home.

“He has more opportunities now. He’s also considering getting his high school diploma,” he said. “That’s so cool. It makes me happy and sad at the same time.”

Those fundamental changes are the true reward for Habitat staff and its supporters, says Saldana.

“We were able to watch that, to see the impact,” she said, “to watch that snowball to the end.”

It doesn’t end there. The help Habitat provided the Hernandez Family means the group can now help even more families.

“It’s like planting a seed,” Hernandez explained. “Habitat plants a seed for my family and it grows into a tree. The tree drops seeds. They grow.”

Ongoing Investment

The work Hernandez is doing for Habitat now, repairing houses of low-income homeowners, will pay off in the long-run for him as he learns the building trades while becoming an architect. It will also pay off for the entire community Habitat serves.

“We do wheelchair ramps, exterior painting, bathroom modifications, yard maintenance, roof repairs, leaky toilets, all kinds of things,” Holkeboer explained. “It’s similar to the home ownership program. The folks, the homeowners that we work with, pay back the cost of those projects into our revolving loan fund, and use those funds again, along with donations from the community, to help other families.”

If anyone doubts the program works over the long-haul, they can rest assured. The first mortgage Habitat offered here was paid off last year, 22 years after the homeowner took possession. Every penny she repaid has made its way back into the program and from there around the community.

Daniel Hernandez may also be back when he finishes his education. He intends to seek a master’s degree in architecture starting next year at Fresno State. When that’s done, Habitat would love to have him back.

“He can come back any time he wants,” Saldana said. “We want him to design the Habitat house, then come back and help us build it.”

The post Habitat Volunteer Builds Home, Future, and Community appeared first on Valley Voice.

By all accounts, Dr. Tom Drilling–an icon in Tulare for the better part of a century who died last month at the age of 96–lived a life that made a difference.

Whether he was in his home or his dental office, in his church or at large in the world, his family and friends remember him as a man of morals, humor, duty and action. Following his passing, some of them gathered at the Tulare home of his daughter, Dr. Patty Drilling-Phelps, to reminisce about his life and times.

Monsignor Rick Urizalqui, pastor at St. Aloysius Church where Tom Drilling was a longtime member, called his 30-year friend “someone whose word was heard and understood and accepted.” Drilling, he said, “lived his decisions.” Though he often found himself at the center of community business, he didn’t seek notoriety.

“Tom didn’t like the spotlight. He just wanted to enjoy his family,” Urizalqui said. “Tom was just not someone who wanted to be out in front of anything. He just wanted to do what he wanted to do and do it well.”

Strong Civic Leader

Tom Drilling often found himself involved in keeping Tulare honest. He’d been a key player in cleaning up Tulare politics after WWII and again in the last decade, and most recently he’d been carrying on the a fight against perceived corruption at the Tulare Local Health Care District.

“He’s been my lead plaintiff on a voluntary basis in a couple of major cases,” said attorney and longtime friend Michael Lampe. “He was the only one who, quite frankly, don’t be offended, had the balls to do it.”

It wasn’t just courage Drilling brought to the fight for honesty in government. He also carried respectability with him says attorney Dennis Mederos, who has known Drilling since he was a childhood patient.

“It lent credibility to the whole action that was being taken,” he said. “To have a lead plaintiff who had the credibility of Tom Drilling gave importance to the whole action in and of itself.”

Early Service

Drilling, the oldest of five siblings, came to Tulare in 1936 with his family. He graduated from Tulare High in 1938 in a class that included Dan and Don Hillman, as well as future Adm. Elmo Zumwalt Jr.

He would follow Zumwalt into military service during WWII, but not until after attending CSUF and taking his dentistry training at USC. He served on the medical staff of Fleet Adm. Chester Nimitz during his first tour starting in 1944 and was recalled for duty again to treat returning Marines during the Korean War.

In between, he managed to start his dentistry practice in Tulare in 1946, lead the Tulare Red Devils fast-pitch softball team to a state championship in 1948 as a player-manager, and got himself elected to the city council in 1951, serving as mayor at just 30 years old.

The association between the Lampe and Drilling families now spans generations, and after Drilling’s death, Lampe discovered a letter home his father wrote during his own service during the Korean War.

“Was surprised to hear Tom Drilling is the new mayor,” the letter from John Lampe reads. “I agree Tulare needs a good housecleaning, and he should be a good man to do the job. Politics are just like the Army: The ones in the clique have it easy, and the heck with the rest.”

Cleaning House

Drilling was looking to curb organized prostitution and gambling, along with the corruption in city politics that allowed it to go on when he ran for office. Before he returned to active duty, he got the job done and persuaded the city’s corrupt police chief and justice court judge to resign in the process.

Drilling had to go at the job again during the last decade, signing up to front a series of lawsuits against City Hall and members of the city council in an effort to force openness in Tulare’s governance. By the time the dust had returned to Earth and the cases settled, things were on the up-and-up at City Hall, and Tulare’s vice mayor had resigned.

At the time of his death, Drilling had become a plaintiff in a case filed by citizens against the directors and managers at the Tulare Local Health Care District as part of a wider thrust to clean house there.

Efforts so far have led to the replacement of two of the board’s members, with a recall of a third in the works.

An Inspiring Wager

The resignation of the vice mayor in 2010 was the center of a bet Drilling lost to Lampe, and the payoff–a framed dollar bill that hangs in Lampe’s office–gives Lampe lasting inspiration.

“I said, ‘Tom, I’ll bet you at this upcoming mediation that we get (the vice mayor) to resign,’” Lampe recalled. “And he said, ‘That’ll never happen.’ I said, ‘I’ll bet you a dollar.’”

Drilling lost, and Lampe displayed his trophy proudly as he retold the story.

“This has been in my office since the day he gave it to me,” he said. “It’s gonna sit in my office until I retire.”

Mederos says the inspiration Drilling engendered spread beyond his immediate circle and though the community he loved when he took the lead on these contentious issues.

“It became a lawsuit from somebody who had a long history of caring about Tulare and it had credibility he brought to the litigation,” Mederos said. “So people looked at that and said to themselves, ‘This is being brought by someone of stature in our community. We better start listening.’ And, that was the difference.”

Being a leader, however, is not without risks. Yet Drilling was able to bear them and the consequences.

“Tom knew by injecting himself into that dispute there were going to be a lot of people in this community who really liked him who were going to get really, really mad,” Lampe said. “He knew that, but he did it. He had the courage to step up to the plate, and he did the same thing in the (ongoing dispute with Tulare Regional Medical Center’s directors and management).”

Sailing True

It may or may not have been his former service in the Navy that gave Drilling such an even keel. Whatever the source, the high standards he set for his community he also kept at home, his wife and children remember.

He also inspired his family by example, and Drilling-Phelps says he specifically taught her how to be decisive. This, she said, is what he taught her: “You can look at the problem you have, but you can’t just wallow in it to the point where you don’t make a decision and become paralyzed. But when you make that decision, you also have to accept the consequences.”

Patricia Drilling, 96, Tom’s wife of 72 years, remembered her husband’s stance on impeccability.

“You said it, and that’s your oath,” she remembered.

Tom Drilling was often a source for calmness during crisis.

“That’s what Tom did: He wasn’t afraid to be the voice of reason,” Mederos said. “At a young age and at an old age, he was willing to stand up for what he perceived as right and not be afraid to let this community know that that was the position that he was taking.”

It was a habit he carried on to his final days, and it was a habit her father hoped would inspire others to follow in his footsteps, Drilling-Phelps said.

“Yet he knew he was older and he’d say to me, ‘God, I wish somebody else would stand up, because I’m getting tired of doing this. Isn’t there someone else?’” she said. “But, then he’d come around to it and say, ‘Well, you know, I guess I gotta do something about this.’”

No Guts, No Glory

Seventeen years separate Drilling-Phelps and her oldest sister, Sister Kathleen Drilling, and she remembers a different time in her parents’ lives when she and their now-deceased sister Christine Drilling Glogow were small children.

“Chris and I grew up in a time when Mom and Dad were young and vibrant. Growing up, I heard stories of that time,” Sister Kathy said. “I only found out later that there were threats they were going to kidnap Chris and I. They ran him (her father) off the road on the way home from Porterville and threatened to say that he had hit someone or hit somebody and took off, a hit-and-run type thing.”

Even as a child, Sister Kathy was impressed with her father’s fortitude, and still carries the sentiment he passed on today.

“As a little kid when you hear this stuff about your dad, you think, ‘Wow, my dad–’ You (Lampe) said he’s pretty courageous,” she said. “I’ll put it that way, because I don’t want to be quoted in the paper as the nun who said he had balls, but he did.”

Famous Father Problems

There is a downside to having a father who is both very moral and very popular, Sister Kathy found out.

“I grew up knowing my dad was somebody in the community. Now, there is a good part of that and a part that can be called a handicap,” she said. “I couldn’t do anything without someone calling my mom or my dad.”

She found out how true that was when she decided to ride down Tulare Avenue on the hood of a car. Tom Drilling was waiting for her and her explanation when she got home. It was a part of fatherhood he liked, his wife said.

“I’m here to say he enjoyed every time they thought he knew something,” Patricia Drilling said.

And nobody in the Drilling household got anything they didn’t deserve, she remembers.

“He was fair whatever came up. That I remember. He was even fair with me,” she joked. “He had big dreams. He saw things that needed to be right.”

Sister Kathy thinks what her father really wanted was the best for everyone.

“You also had the sense he loved this town, he loved the people in this town,” she said. “He wanted us to have a town that we could run around in and be safe. It was a wonderful childhood.”

The Funny Stuff

The life of Dr. Tom Drilling wasn’t all serious business. How could it be when he was a dentist with a name like that? In fact, the funny coincidence between his name and his job gained him a tiny bit of national recognition.

“Somebody put him in Ripley’s Believe it or Not,” Sister Kathy said.

He had a very serious side–“People believed whatever he said, that it was true and you didn’t need to question it,” his wife said–but it was underscored with humor that worked to a purpose.

“He also had a lot of comedy within that,” Drilling-Phelps said. “He kind of said he was serious, but he wasn’t really serious. He would use humor to get the point across.”

When Sister Kathy was young, there had been a serious family meeting when her father announced he had been recalled to active duty during the Korean War. When she was a senior in high school, her father called a very similar meeting.

“I thought, ‘Oh my gosh! My dad’s going to Vietnam!’ So, I asked, ‘Are you going to Vietnam?’ and he said, ‘No, but your mother has been recalled into the service. And, I look at Mom, and Mom salutes,” Sister Kathy said. “Chris and I look at each other, and then they said, ‘We’re going to have a baby.’ And I thought, ‘What am I going to tell my friends?’”

Man of the Year

Drilling’s humor and good sense also served him well while making his acceptance speech when he was selected as Tulare’s Man of the Year in 2014. But, he almost never got the chance. Despite all he’d done for his community, he’d always been passed over for some reason.

“Somehow he just missed out as it went on,” said Mederos, who sat on the committee that selected Drilling for the award. “I know when the name came up, we saw Patty’s nomination that had been set aside for a couple years–“

“More than a few years!” Drilling-Phelps said with a laugh. “I just forgot about it.”

Drilling was a shoe-in once the oversight had been realized.

“The committee immediately said that’s the man we want,” Mederos said.

On the night of the awards ceremony, Drilling was the last speaker, and he read the crowd perfectly, his youngest daughter recalls.

“He looked around and said, ‘Everyone here is bored to death and they’re falling asleep, and I’m the last one, and I’m not going to give that same speech everyone else gave,’” Drilling-Phelps said.

A Mass was held in Drilling’s honor on May 22 at St. Aloysius Church. Monsignor Urizalqui delivered the homily at the celebration.

“This Mass is our time of celebrating Tom’s life and faith, his service, his humor, his love and straightforwardness,” he said. “It is a time of recalling a life well lived. We thank God for the gift of Tom Drilling and the gifts we received through him and we express our faith that even now he is with the God he served so well. May the light of heaven shine on him forever.”

The post Dr. Tom Drilling appeared first on Valley Voice.

If you know Sam Sciacca, you know he tells a good story. He is, indeed, a good salesman, and he loves downtown Visalia.

Sciacca did not have an easy childhood. The Visalia native was the only child to immigrant parents from Sicily, although he does have a half-sister. His dad, who was a farmer, worked hard and expected the same from his son.

“My life was always about work – always about selling,” Sciacca said. “At the age of seven, my father put me in the asparagus business. He raised a bed of asparagus, and he would bundle it into two-pound bundles, and I would go out on the streets in the neighborhood and sell two pounds for 25 cents. It got to be a huge business – by the time I was 9 years old, I was taking 100 orders a week.

“As soon as I finished my asparagus sales, I got a paper route, and I worked for Real Fresh Milk and I had a part time job working for A&W. I would work at Real Fresh from 5:30am – 1:30pm. I’d go home and sleep. I’d get up and 4 and go to work at A&W from 5-11pm during the summer. And during the school year, then I’d just work the A&W job.

“I was always working – I had the desire to make money at an early age. My father taught me that you will never get ahead in this world unless you work. He told me that life is not sitting on the couch watching TV.”

High School, Family Background and College

Sciacca attended high school at Mt. Whitney and studied industrial technology. Extra-curricular activities were not to be.

“Playing football was not in the cards. I had a tough time playing baseball [in high school],” he said. “My father didn’t even know about it. I couldn’t tell him, because if I did, I couldn’t play, so the coach did me a big favor, he let me play when I could play. There were times I couldn’t go to games. I played once in a while – it was not an everyday deal. My dad never knew I played baseball.”

His father encouraged him to become an auto mechanic.

“I thought I wanted to be an automobile mechanic, because my father kept pushing me to do a trade and mechanics seemed to be a trade that he liked,” Sciacca said. “My dad was set on my being a mechanic, not a farmer like he was, ‘I don’t want you to work as hard as me.’

Sciacca’s dad was one of a large family of siblings who moved to California during the 1930’s. Each time one of the seven brothers or five sisters moved, they’d send money back to home to help the next sibling move, he said. His father had been divorced, and decided he wanted to find a Sicilian bride, so he went back to his home country – he found her and the next day there were married. His father brought his mother back to California and they had Sam within a couple years.

“My father bought the property on Tulare Ave. and Burke St., which is right in the middle of city limits today and I have kept that property. One of the reasons I have not sold it, is because I wanted my kids to see what he did – I barely had reached 20 years old when he had passed away,” Sciacca said.

“So, I decided I was not going to sell his property – I was going to keep it. Little did I know that I was going to be in the real estate business.”

After high school, Sciacca attended College of the Sequoias.

“I was mixed up – I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” he said. “I had worked for Bob Cary at the A&W drive-in starting at the age of 14.”

After graduating COS, he enrolled in Fresno State and got into their industrial technology program and studied to be a teacher. Just prior to his graduating his father passed away. He finished up, but could not find a teaching job.

“I decided that my mother was here by herself – I had no brothers and sisters,” he said. “She couldn’t drive – she could barely speak English, and I decided to move back to Visalia and watch her, and take care of her – so that she had somebody.

“I was lost, I didn’t know what to do, so I went back to work for Bob Cary and he built a new restaurant on Mooney Blvd. and he hired me to run that restaurant. So, I was the manager of that store for five years.

“I decided maybe I could have a career in the restaurant business.”

At the same time, Sciacca was farming walnuts.

“I decided I would continue to farm the property that my dad bought when he came here from Sicily. I started becoming familiar with raising walnuts at a real early age and I was running the walnut dehydrator, probably at the age of 10. My dad was managing it, but I was working in it. We had a small walnut orchard, it was only 17 acres – so it wasn’t a full-time job – whenever my dad needed me, I was helping him. But, I learned how to run the walnut dehydrator and I learned how to raise walnuts and how to take care of them – all through high school.”

Around this time, Sciacca had a brief first marriage.

“Because of my work habits,” he said. “I admit it. I’ll tell the whole world out there, that because of my being a workaholic, I lost my first marriage. I didn’t spend any social time. I was all about work.”

The Beginnings of a Career in Real Estate

As if he didn’t have enough to do, Sciacca also started farming walnuts for other people.

“I met this man Pete Manuele – his property was here in Visalia and I was shaking the walnuts and doing all the work for the Manuele family. One day I went to his office to pick up a check, and I sat down with him and he asked me if I ever thought about getting into real estate.

I said, ‘are you kidding me? I can’t sell anything – I could barely sell asparagus when I was seven years old.’

“With real estate – I would have to learn about land and descriptions and he said, ‘why don’t you go to Anthony Schools [of Real Estate]?’

“Alright,’ – so I went to Anthony Schools and got an education.

“Then I signed up to take my real estate exam. And, I took it three times. I couldn’t pass the test. Finally, the third time, I passed. So, I went back to Pete Manuele and I said, ‘Pete, I’ve passed the test, and I’ve quit my job, can you tell me what I need to do now?’

“And, he kind of laughed, and said, ‘well, that’s your problem now,’ and kind of walked away. He turned me on to Bill Jordan.

“Ironically, Bill Jordan had come to me when I was at A&W to try to buy my father’s property. Well, I told Bill Jordan, ‘Get away from me.’ I didn’t want to talk with him. I rudely told him to go away. Little did I know that in 1978, I would be at his doorstep asking him for a job.

“He remembered. He said to me, ‘I don’t hire people without experience.’ I just kept on bugging him.

“I said, ‘I think I can do this. My father has had property in Visalia since the 1930’s.

“And he asked, ‘well, had your father every sold real estate?’

“’Well, no, but he owned it.’

“‘Well, what do you know about it?’

“I said, ‘I know how to harvest walnuts. I know how to run a walnut dehydrator. And, besides that, I’ll make you money. I sold asparagus when I was 7 years old. I know how to sell real estate – I know how to do this. Give me a break.’

“He thought about it. And, I was the very first agent he ever hired that had no experience. That was 40 years ago. I’ve been with his company – that he just sold – for 39 years. I will have sold real estate for 40 years in March of 2018”

Sciacca attributes his success to the facts that he loves people and loves putting transactions together.

“The real estate industry is very difficult,” he said. “We are working with some property that doesn’t belong to us, it belongs to our client. We have to be able to market something that doesn’t belong to us. I learned the way to do it, because of trial and error – mistakes that I made through the 40 years and the new people that I met that were more talented than me – that taught me things,” he said.

Influences

Sciacca says many people influenced his life, and he named a few.

“Al Sindlinger was the auto shop teacher at COS. “He was one of the biggest reasons I went to college – I don’t know if I would have gone to college [further on to Fresno State].

“Another man at COS, Joe Gaurisco was the dean of industrial technology – he convinced me to get into secondary education field, and I got my teaching credential.

“Both of the men became clients. I never forgot either one of them – both of them were very self-motivated people. And they saw something and convinced me that I could do.”

Sciacca went on to say, that while he didn’t end up in a profession that he studied in college, he does not feel any of that time was wasted.

“When I got into real estate, I quit my job at A&W and I started working long hours. My dad used to tell me if you’re going to be successful in the world . . .”

Tears filled Sciacca’s eyes as he spoke.

“Who is my biggest reason, that I am successful? My father.

“He thought I was lazy. He told me that many times. He said, ‘you don’t work as hard as I do. You don’t put in the hours that I put in. You need to understand, son, if you’re going to be successful in this world, you’ve got to work. You can’t go on vacations, you can’t go out to dinner, you can’t do those things’ – so, I had never been to a hamburger place until I was 20 years old (except working at A&W). I never went to the theatre, I never went to a show. He wouldn’t let me buy a class ring, he wouldn’t let me buy a yearbook. I never went to a dance. I didn’t do any of that – all I did was work as a kid.

“So, my biggest influence, after my father had died, was my [second] wife. Marlene stood with me all the way. She was there for everything. She worked at First American Title. She’d get up at 5am, I was still sleeping, because I got home at 11pm. I got up at 7am – she was gone. When she came home at 5pm, I was here working until 11pm. I got home – the plate had cellophane on it and it was ready to put in the microwave, so I would eat dinner at 11 at night, and she’d be asleep.

“That went on for 20 years. She supported everything I did and she knew, I guess, that we would be successful. She waited it out and if you ask her today, ‘was it worth it?’ she would tell you, ‘yes.’

Developments and Family

But Sciacca had not just settled for a career in real estate – he went on to become a property owner and developer.

“My family bought land in Sicily – my grandfather owned land in Sicily; my father’s brothers and sisters owned land, here in Visalia – Burke and Tulare was my dad’s, Conyer and Walnut was my uncle’s, Mary’s Vineyard was my aunt’s,” he said. “I don’t know how they knew to, but they all bought land.

“People tell me that I didn’t just go to Pete Manuelle and learn to be a real estate agent because it was a fluke – it was in my blood. How could I not get into the business?

“My very first project was a lot and I bought a house, and there was a lot next to it and we split it and bought another house. I thought, wow, that’s pretty good. Then I bought a rental house, then I bought another rental house.

“So, I started buying land and I’d say maybe 10 or 15 years into the business I hooked up with a guy named Mike Fistolera and some other builders, the Williamson (brothers) family. I watched these builders and they started buying lots to build houses. They were buying lots from developers and they were building houses and selling the houses. And I decided I am going to try this – I like this. I don’t think I am going to build, but I like buying more land.

“I bought my first piece of [development] property on Houston and Giddings from Les Jamieson – he was a big developer in Visalia. It was kind of an awkward deal, he said, ‘you just give me so much down and I’ll carry the balance – you can pay me when you get all the lots developed. And, I am going to give you a horse to bet on – he was a horse guy – if you win, then you’ve got to pay me interest. If the horse loses, you don’t have to pay me any interest.’ The horse lost.

“So I ended up buying it with practically no money down. He built the houses and we developed 44 lots and it was called Houston Acres – my very first project.

“That went on for about 20 years, and I still sold real estate – my passion was listing and selling real estate. During that time, a lot of things happened. I had kids.”

The Sciaccas have four children – Shane, Marlene’s son, who came into Sam’s life when they were married; Chet; Concetto, named after his grandfather Sciacca; Michele Margarita, whose middle name is after her grandmother Sciacca; and Gina, named after a nickname of her grandmother Sciacca.

Life Goals and God

“The last person who influenced my life was Bill Jordan,” Sciacca said. “Bill Jordan probably taught me more about real estate than any other person how to analyze people, how to figure out what properties were a good buy, how to determine costs and expenses. And, because of that I showed my loyalty to him for 39 years.

“What I really, really desired to do was to build an estate so that my family would never have to worry about anything.”

Sciacca is a man of God, he said. And, his first goal and priority is to Him.

“My second goal in my life – other than trying to be happy with God, and making sure to do the things that He tells me to do – is to make sure that I take care of my wife,” he said, “to make sure that she is really in good shape.

“These are my goals, today, and third of all is my family – I want to make sure that my family is in good shape.

“And then, money comes after that – after God, my wife, my family – then I worry about making money, so that I can support them.

“Let me tell you how it was before I realized those were more important – money was first, money was second and money was third – there was no wife, there was no family. I was not a very nice person.

“I’ve done very well,” Sciacca said. “We finished several projects. But, the most dramatic project that I have done in my life was to help my kids.”

The Sciaccas first purchased the Chelsea Street Boutique about 30 years ago and moved it from its rental location, to a property on Mooney Blvd., which Sam purchased and developed into a five-unit retail development. They thought it was a project they would work on together, but it turned out just to be another job for Marlene – so they sold it. The new owner, turned it into a bridal boutique, and let go of the name.

Finishing college, the Sciaccas’ daughter, Gina, wanted to get into design, but couldn’t find a job she was happy with. Sam suggested a clothing boutique, and so, they purchased the Togni-Branch Stationers building on Main St. with the intent of it being developed into the family’s clothing business and they again opened Chelsea Street Boutique at that location.

“Finally, I decided that above Chelsea Street Boutique, there was space up there that wasn’t being used – it was storage,” Sciacca said. “I told Marlene, you know what, we’ve got this space up there that we’re not doing anything with. What do you think if we build an apartment up there?”

The Sciaccas had been to Sicily to see where his family had come from, and had found that his mother, along with a sister, had lived in an apartment over a boutique where she had sold hats.

“My mom lived above commercial development. So, I got the idea that if they can do it in Sicily, and become successful. Why can’t we do it in Visalia?

Potential Fall Out

“I was finding myself looking for another residential over commercial – couldn’t find anything. I ended up buying a large piece of property on the north side of Visalia that I was intentionally going to use for development.

“We had a financial meltdown in 2009. A lot of things created a tough market.

“The big boy builders – they no longer bought lots. The days of developing lands and selling lots to the builder started drying up. And, I had all this land up there with the intention to develop and it wasn’t happening. I had over 20 lots in this subdivision that I couldn’t get sold – nobody wanted to buy lots anymore.

“I wasn’t sure what to do. Then, I had another 60 acres – all zoned, but I was reluctant to develop. We even considered giving the property back to the bank.

“What now, Sam?

“I get a phone call – the Visalia Unified School District calling me, saying, well not in these words, but ‘Mr. Sciacca, we want to build a school on the property that you were going to give back to the bank – that you were going to walk away from – we want to buy it.’

“In 2009, we had more debt than we had income – we had servicing debt, and I said, ‘yeah, I’ll sell it to you!’

“We closed the escrow and liquidated that debt.”

And then,

“‘Hello, Sam, this is Lennar Homes, we’d like to buy the rest of your property.’

“I couldn’t believe it. The first call was the Visalia Unified School District. The second call was Lennar Homes. And there was a third call. And it was from DR Horton.

“‘Hi Sam, this is DR Horton, we’d like to buy the rest of your land.’

“I was dumbfounded. I realized that if I sold all of this land now – that I hadn’t planned on – that the tax consequences would be so high that I would not know how I would be able to get through it. About that time, the phone rang again.

“‘Sam, this is Bob Link. Hey, I need to talk to you. I want to sell my building across the street [on Main St.]’ and I had looked at it a long time ago. I had said, ‘you guys need to put residential upstairs.’

“They didn’t do it – they had a clothing store.

“I bought it – I subdivided the bottom – I built a beautiful salon, I build a beautiful wine bar. And, then for three years, I worked on residential and now the most dramatic project I have ever done and we named it, kind of after my mother. We call it Casa de Sciacca – the Sciacca home.

“They all said I was crazy.

“‘Have you heard about Sciacca? He’s lost his mind. He sold $2 million worth of property – he traded for the Links Building, and he traded for a multi-million dollar walnut dehydrator in Farmersville – called the Moody Walnut Dryer.’”

Sciacca and his son purchased the Moody Walnut Dryer, at his son’s suggestion, wanting to take his grandfather’s old walnut dryer and remodel it to do a higher volume.

“The Sciaccas did a 1031 tax deferred exchange paying off the loan, so that debt was basically vacated, took the rest of the property and bought the Links’ building – now generating income from that, and we bought the Moody Walnut Dryer and basically improved it and it did close to $1 million last year in gross revenue,” Sciacca said.

Downtown Visalia

Sciacca has fond memories of the downtown area from his childhood, working at A&W, and now owns property there.

“Who taught me to love downtown, was Bob Cary,” Sciacca said. “Bob Cary was running the Jaycee’s, he was putting a little hot dog stand on Main St., and he was part of the Downtown Visalians.

“So, I decided that since I had a store on Main St., I was going to have a mission – to make our downtown the most successful downtown in the San Joaquin Valley. So, that’s my hobby, besides being a pilot. I love the downtown. My passion is the downtown.

“My wife has been the president of the Downtown Association. She’s leaving in June – she termed out. I don’t want the Sciacca name to go away. I’m sorry, I think the Sciacca name needs to stay downtown – I’m like a mother hen with her chicks. Sam Sciacca is going to run for board of directors and I am going to get on that board and I’m going to be part of it – which I never have done. I have helped with promotions – sidewalk sales, expo, anything you can think of. But, I’ve decided that it’s time for Sam Sciacca to be part of Downtown Visalia – I think it’s time.

Winding Down

“My other motivation is to try to spend more time with my kids and wind this real estate career down, so Mr. Chet Sciacca can pick up where I’ve left off,” Sciacca said. “I have a daughter who is picking up where my wife left off [in Chelsea Street Boutique].

“I think that my developing career is just about done. I think that there will be one more project and I’m going to tell you what it is. I believe that the last real estate project that I will do will be north of the so-called scenic corridor, between Preston and Shirk. There’s an 11-acre walnut orchard out there. Along the freeway, the first 200-feet is the designated scenic corridor. The council has endorsed zoning there to keep that Ag.

“So, I’m involved with them on a walnut orchard that I planted for the city and I maintain it. Next to that, where that 11 acres is, there’s a house. North of the house, there is about eight acres left. I’ve owned that walnut orchard for almost 35 years. And I feel that I need to develop that.

“I won’t develop where I live. I live on the corner of Burke and Tulare, and people have asked me, ‘when are you going to develop that?’

“That was my father’s. My kids to come to visit and they see that and they say, ‘that’s our grandpa’s.’

Tears welled up in his eyes, again.

“I never got to see them with my dad. It hurts me inside that my dad never got to see his grandkids,” he said. “If he was alive today, he would say that ‘my son is doing it right. He’s not selling my property, he’s farming – he’s doing all the things I wanted him to do, except he’s not fixing the cars – he’s not a mechanic.’

“I didn’t want to fix cars.”

Other Activities

Sciacca volunteers for the Downtown Expo, which raises funds for battling breast cancer by donating to the American Cancer Society. He has worked closely with the Portuguese community, as that is Marlene’s heritage. He also has long worked with the Sons of Italy, helping with an annual fashion show to raise funds for hospice care.

As a father, Sciacca coached basketball to be close to his daughter, who played, and baseball, to be close with his son.

He is also a hobbyist pilot.

The family has a home on the coast. He loves to dance, and he loves eating tri-tip sandwiches, he said.

The Sciaccas have been married for “39 wonderful years,” he said. “And, when I go home, I am excited about seeing her again. Every time I come home, I can’t wait to see my wife.”

Watch the Valley Voice for an upcoming article on the Sciacca development of the downtown former Links building on Main St. including the eight residential units upstairs.

The post Sam Sciacca – A Lifetime in Visalia appeared first on Valley Voice.

Blankenship moved to Exeter following her marriage to Tim Blankenship in 1979. She has a brother and sister who have retired to Florence, Oregon, along with their mother. The Blankenships have a son, Brian, and a daughter, Stefani. Brian lives on his late paternal grandparents’ farm, and Stefani, who was married last year, lives in Visalia.

Before the couple had children, Sandy Blankenship worked for Security Bank. When she had young children, she elected to stay home. But, as they got older, she worked as a part-time bookkeeper for her church, and some other part-time jobs, which kept her busy while the kids where in school.

A Job at the Chamber

“Then, Molly East [an Exeter Chamber employee] called me one day and said that they needed someone at the chamber to help with bookkeeping a couple of days a week,” Blankenship said. “Gina [Butler-then chamber director] had gotten things to a point where she thought she could hire someone to help with the bookkeeping. So, I came down here and talked with Gina, and she hired me. I was supposed to work two days a week, just to do the bookkeeping – but, I never worked only two days a week.

“I had no idea, really, what a chamber of commerce was, or did, and Gina was eager to teach me all about it. Once we got to know each other, she said, ‘I’m going to teach you to do my job.’

“She saw something in me, I guess, that I didn’t recognize. I credit what I am doing now, to her. She was really the only one who encouraged me to learn more. ‘You’re going to take over my job one day,’ she said, ‘I’m going to teach you what you need to know.’”

That was in January of 1991.

“I still follow a lot of her philosophy,” Blankenship said. “She knew a lot of things and a lot of it is not necessarily book-learning, or things you can learn at a conference – she knew people. She knew a lot about how to deal with business and people, and what was important for the community. She really did love the community and she showed that to me. I think that is what I have in my heart, even though I am not native to Exeter – Exeter is real important to me. It is my home.”

Following Butler, other chamber directors came and went. Blankenship, at that time, was not interested in changing her own position.

“I never really applied at that time – I had young children. This job is not really conducive to a young family – too many nights, weekends. It’s hard to do when you have an active young family. It wasn’t until Delora [Buckman] left, that the board approached me and asked if I was interested in taking on the position. At that time, the children were pretty much grown. And, I thought, OK, yeah, maybe now was a good time. It was scary. I had to think long and hard, because it’s a lot of responsibility.

“I was pretty happy doing what I was doing, and not having the ultimate responsibility. I was pretty comfortable, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to step out of my comfort zone. I had seen a lot of the pitfalls that the others had encountered, and everybody encounters them – it is impossible not to. Everyone has issues, there’s always controversy, there’s always something – because you deal with the public. It’s how you handle it and I had seen it all.”

While managed by Blankenship, the chamber is managed by a 12-person board of directors.

“You have 12 personalities to deal with – you don’t have to make one person happy, you have to make 12 people happy, or at least the majority. It sometimes can be kind of stressful. You have to all work for the betterment of the community and you all have the same goals in mind – the businesses and the community are your focus, and that’s what you’ve got to work for – there can be no personal agendas.

Hiring on as Director

Blankenship said she consulted her husband, friends and an interim church pastor about accepting the position.

“I was flattered that they came to me and thought that I was worthy of the position – so I accepted,” she said. “I took over as director 12 years ago – in October, 2005. I was surprised when I realized that it has been 25 years that I’ve been here. It went by pretty fast.”

“We used to have a lot of down time around here – but not anymore. The activity level has increased – there’s the demand for social media – we’ve gotten so much busier. We are definitely 411 in the community. When people don’t know where to call – they call us. We’re happy to share information.

”People don’t realize for businesses and organizations, that if they have something going on – it’s really important that we know about it. Organizations sometimes don’t feel that is it necessary to be a member of the chamber, but when they have an event, and we don’t know about it – people call us and we can’t help them, if we don’t know about it. And, people kind of get mad at us – what do you mean you don’t know? If we knew, even if they aren’t a member, we’d still share.

“Required reading is the newspaper. If you catch my staff reading the newspaper, it’s because they have to – even if they only have time to read the headlines – they have to look at it and skim the paper, so they are aware. And sometimes people get things mixed up, and we’re able to tell them, ‘no, no that’s in Lindsay – you need to call the Lindsay Chamber,’ [for example]. We always try to give them an answer. We don’t say, ‘I’m sorry, we don’t know,’ unless we honestly just can’t help them.

Service clubs and organizations receive a discounted membership.

“And, we sell tickets for most everything happening in the community,” she said. “We’re happy to sell their tickets for them, we promote it on our website, in our e-blasts, on Facebook – anywhere that we possibly can. Really, for their membership, they get quite a bit. Most clubs don’t have a location, so we can be their location. We’re a pretty good bargain for them.”

Managing Personalities

Blankenship said she has no regrets in having taken on the position.

“Most of the time, I enjoy it a lot,” she said. “I love the community. I love the volunteers that I get to work with. Over the years, I have enjoyed all the people.”

She shared a story about one difficult volunteer recently at a Toastmasters meeting, she said. The object was to tell a story about turning a negative into a positive.

“We used to have [someone] come in and say, ‘you should have done it this way, you should have done it that way,’ all the time. She was a good worker – I didn’t want to turn her away. So, one time after she came in and said, ‘you should have done it this way, you should have done it that way, blah, blah, blah,’ I said, ‘That is a great idea, you know what, I’m putting you on the committee and the next time you can help us plan it.’

“She looked at me and said, ‘ah, well, I don’t want to be ON the committee.’ And, I said, ‘well, you’ve got great ideas, you’re going to help us plan it next year.’ And, she never complained again – well, she did a little bit, but not nearly as bad.

“And, since I’ve used that several times on people, when they think they know everything, ‘next year you can help us.’”

Blankenship said her favorite aspect of the job is the social part of it, and the people she gets to be around. She likes meeting with the new businesses and business owners. She enjoys the activities in town, from planning through fruition.

“It’s all part of it,” she said, and it’s always fun to give a little shine to an old activity. After 25 years, things get to looking a little dull sometimes and so it’s always nice to put a new spin on it and make it shine a little more. You’ve got to change with the times – it’s kind of nice when you have young people come in and are interested in what you are doing, and they have a little different way of thinking and I welcome that. It makes it exciting and maybe a little more attractive to the younger generation.

“We’re pretty lucky – we do have young people who attend our events, and they’re in town and they’re in business. And that’s exciting!”

The most difficult part of the job, she said, is worrying about the budget, and making sure that the chamber is meeting the needs of its members.

“That goes hand in hand,” she said. “If we’re not meeting the needs then that makes the budget suffer – we have to have money to survive, and everything goes up, every year. So, money is always an issue. And being able to keep up with technology is an increase in cost.”

Blankenship also commented on the age of the chamber facility, which is more than 100 years. There are continual repairs that need to be made, adding that that costs money as well.

Walter – the Chamber Cat

For several years now, the chamber has had a mascot. It wasn’t just a whim.

“We never really had a pest problem, but one fall, we had mice in here like crazy, and we don’t know why. We had to set traps all of the time, and I just hate those things. We thought, maybe we need to get a cat. But, one of the part-time staff, she liked cats, but she was allergic – so that was out of the question. It wasn’t too long later, that she and her husband moved out of the area, and the problem had cleared up with the mice.

“We forgot about it a little bit, but we still thought it would be fun to have a cat in the office. And, Sarah [Blankenship’s assistant] came in one day and showed me the face of this cat that Pacific Crest Equine had put out on Facebook. They were looking for a home for this cat, they had rescued from the emergency vet. The cat had come in and the owner surrendered the cat, because he had a cut on his leg, and they took him in and doctored him back to health, and he was ready for adoption.

“Those big eyes, and round face, ‘oh my gosh, he’s adorable,’ I said. He was probably all most a year old at that time.”

The staff, which at the time included another part-time employee, mulled it over.

“We called and asked what they thought about having him here in the office, rather than a home,” she said. “They were thrilled. They had already named him Walter. We weren’t sure we liked the name, but after a while, it just suited him.

“He loves it here – he loves people – he greets everyone. We have had more fun with that animal. There was a couple here during the storms this winter – they couldn’t get up to the park [Sequoia National Park] – they were from North Carolina, they had one of our magazines and they saw Walter in the magazine. They came down, they were missing their cats from home – so they took pictures with him. Everyone who comes in, and if they happen to like animals, they fall all over him. He has been a very good attraction for us. We couldn’t have gotten a more personable animal.”

City Growth, Chamber Growth

Over the years, the chamber membership has grown.

“I think things have grown for the better. I remember [what it was like] before the murals and I think everything has been such an improvement – I can’t imagine where we’d be if the murals [which started with a mural committee in 1996] hadn’t happened. Just the pride – everyone improved their buildings – things just changed. The whole attitude changed – business came in – everyone started sprucing things up after that. It was gradual – it wasn’t just one person, it was the community – the businesses, the building owners.

“The things that people say, that your town is so clean, everyone is so friendly – they just can’t get over the atmosphere. People talk to you – anywhere you go in town – people just can’t get over it – they didn’t know any place like it existed, and we live it.

“When my sister moved up to Florence, having lived in San Jose all those years, she said, ‘Sandy you wouldn’t believe it, you have to come up here, everyone is just so nice. They talk to you, they do this, and they do that.’

“And, I just kind of looked at Tim and said, ‘well, we already have that.’ I have that all the time, but I realized that they hadn’t, and so I understand her amazement at it. I thought good for you – I’m glad – that’s what I’ve got it.”

Accomplishments

The best things that have happened during Blankenship’s tenure as chamber director include the creation of an Exeter chamber magazine, she said.

“I created the magazine – it was my idea – we started that when we started the summer concerts. It was a way to promote Exeter to the crowd and it’s evolved to what it is today. It started out very simply, we did it very quickly. This will be the 10^th year. It’s designed for anyone visiting Exeter – given out on all the mural tours, to visitors and locals.”

The chamber also started a Women in Business group, which meets about five times a year.

And recently, a huge accomplishment, Blankenship said, was fundraising for new holiday decorations.

“Joanne Dodson [a volunteer] is to credit for this and in a little over a month, we raised $18,000 for new Christmas decorations for downtown,” she said. “I think this is a huge accomplishment. The last time, they were purchased by the city with redevelopment funds, which we no longer have available, and the city didn’t have funds to purchase them, and the chamber didn’t have funds to purchase them. She wanted to do it and volunteered – she is very exuberant and positive. She met with the different clubs and organizations. I wrote letters. We were only going for part of it this [past] year – because we didn’t have a lot of time, but we raised it all. I am really proud of that.”

Blankenship has no immediate plans for change or retirement. She enjoys her work.

“I like what I do and my husband is still working,” she said. “I think I would probably get bored if I was at home all the time.”

The post Sandy Blankenship: The Face of Exeter appeared first on Valley Voice.

Brazil, who grew up in Glendale, got married young, she said, because that is what was expected in the late 1950’s. She had attended Glendale Community College after high school, but then she met her husband, a Tulare native, moved there with him and had two children.

While the marriage did not last, her love for the Tulare community did. She did not consider moving back down to Glendale following her divorce.

“When I got divorced, my parents had moved to Costa Mesa,” she said. “And, in Glendale my parents hadn’t known my friends or their parents [while she grew up], and here I could keep track. I felt I could be move involved in my children’s lives here. Tulare always felt so friendly.”

Brazil worked at Bank of America as a teller, which worked out well timewise, she said, as her 9-3 hours allowed her to be home when her kids got home from school. Later, she went to work in the law office of Joseph Soares, where she worked for many years.

Brazil met Dr. Lionel Brazil, a local veterinarian, and they married in 1973. Dr. Brazil had graduated from the second class of veterinary school at UC Davis, she said. Upon graduation he returned to establish the Tulare Veterinary Hospital. He also got into the dairy business.

When he retired from his practice, the couple sold the dairy and moved to Marina del Rey.

“We were boating, and it was fun – for two years,” she said.

But it was a tough time for the dairy business, and their buyers had not been able to make it work, so the couple returned to Tulare taking over that business once again, and moving to property very close to the dairy. While Dr. Brazil obtained a partner, he continued to manage the dairy until it once again sold. Dr. Brazil passed away in 2007.
In the meantime, Terry Brazil’s two children with first husband, had moved north – her son, Ray, to Washington and her daughter, Cindy, to Oregon.

A Museum Job

For several years, Brazil had worked many temp jobs. She learned of a part-time position as the assistant to the director of the museum. The woman who had formerly been in the position, had just been named as director. Brazil nabbed the assistant position.

“Ellen retired in 2008 and recommended me for the job [as director],” she said.
She got it, and, it is this position by which she is most recognized in the community.
“I kept things going for eight years,” she said.

While Brazil was working as director, Chris Harrell was named curator in 2013. In 2016, the museum underwent some reorganization of work positions creating a full-time position of executive director/curator for which Harrell was named. Brazil was not interested in that position, and was named museum director, retaining a part-time position.
“He always had an eye. I didn’t, I just kept things going,” she said. “He has a real deep-seeded love for this place.”

Brazil said she was relieved by his taking over a lot of the work load that she admitted feeling nervous about.
“It’s been just wonderful,” she said. “I didn’t want to be committed to full time work.
She now considers herself Harrell’s assistant.

“I didn’t want the responsibility of it [being executive director] – coordinating school tours, arranging for docents, making sure someone was in the give shop, organizing club meetings,” she said.

But, her new position has meant she has had to learn some new things – especially with regard to working on the computer and multiple programs.

“I have had to learn new things, but that’s getting me into this century,” she said.

For one thing, the museum schedule is now kept on the computer, and so she has to stay abreast of that via her computer, now.

“It makes things run more smoothly,” she said. “He has a lot of plans.”

“But, I love it when somebody tells me what to do,” she added. “I get to do things I like more now – interacting with the people who come in. I like organizing for meetings, opening and closing in the evenings, getting refreshments – it’s flunky work, in a way, but I like it.”

Another thing she doesn’t miss is speaking to service clubs on behalf of the museum. Public speaking just isn’t her thing, she said.

She would like to continue working in the museum for three to four more years.

“But, I want him to have somebody he can rely on, too, and that’s important,” she said. “They’ll need to be training someone.”

Providing Housing for UC Davis Extension Students

As if she hadn’t been busy enough, Brazil has made room in her home for visiting UC Davis extension students to stay, while studying in Tulare.

“Since 2010, I’ve had several students from UC Davis. Many of them are foreign – I’ve had students from Spain, Iran, Argentina and two from the US, and I currently have a young man from Stockton,” she said. “The first student I had was from Egypt.”

The shortest term was two months, and she has had students live with her for a little over a year.

“They pay rent,” she said. “They buy their own groceries and cook their own food, and clean up after themselves.”
It’s strictly an agreement between the homeowner and student, she said. The university has no involvement other than by ways of introduction. Since she started, she has recommended the “gig” to others.

She never was too worried about having a student live and have access to her home.

“I felt that if they are cleared to go to UC Davis, and they’re paying the money to go, then they are probably OK,” she said, “and I have never been disappointed with that assessment.”

The other option for these students is student housing in mobile homes at the Tulare extension center, where they can live with other students. But, living with a local family is cheaper, she has been told, and some of the professors urge their students to live with a local family to see how life is in Tulare.

“I have no regrets at all,” Brazil said of her student housing.

While some students, especially Sonya, a girl from Spain who had live with Brazil, stay much to themselves, she said, others, such as a Steven, a student from Northern California would watch television with her in the evenings. Some have shown an interest in her museum work, while others have obtained from paying a visit to the facility.

When they move on, Brazil generally knows what will be next in their lives, but she has not stayed in touch with all of them. She has, however, stayed in touch with Sonya, who had returned to Spain, but then moved to South Dakota, for further schooling. The student from Egypt who lived with her, now works for the USDA and lives in Fresno, she said.

Memberships and Clubs

Through the years, Brazil has been active in Sundale School, where her children and granddaughter had attended. She joined the Valley Oak Garden Club in the 1980’s and remains a member today. The club’s monthly meetings are held at the museum. She is a member of the Tulare Republican Women Federation and is a longtime member of the Tulare United Methodist Church.

“I find the history here of Tulare so fascinating – I didn’t really know the history of Glendale,” she said. “They’re just so understated about what accomplishments people have made here in Tulare. They act like, well, yes, we did this, but it’s nothing. And, they’ve kept things going here, even though farming is not always easy.”

She’s also found that people always seem to return to their home in Tulare.

“That’s the thing about Tulare,” she said. “There are so many natives – they always come back.”

The post A Tularean at Heart – Terry Brazil appeared first on Valley Voice.

In some respects, Jim Kliegl’s life turned out just about how he expected – after all, he was a teacher for nearly 40 years. In other ways, his life took unexpected turns, but is seems it all turned out for the best.

Born in Ames, Iowa while his dad was attending Iowa State, the family later moved to Fresno, where his father accepted a teaching position with San Joaquin Memorial High School. Kliegl grew up there and attended Fresno State, earning his teaching credential.

“When I went into college, I was told that they need teachers, they need teachers bad, ‘so go be a teacher,’” Kliegl said. “But, I didn’t start out to be a teacher – I started out to be a chiropractor. Then, I found out I really hated biology, so it wasn’t much fun. But, I loved writing, I loved English and I loved math. But, my dad was a math teacher, and I didn’t want to be just like my dad. So, I thought, ‘OK, I’ll be an English teacher – I like writing and I like reading.’ So, I became an English teacher.

“My first job was at Lindsay High School and that ended up being my only job. I stayed there for 39 years, from 1970 to 2009. I retired, and then I went to work – with the theatre and ‘honey-do’s,’” he said. “My wife had quite a few projects she wanted done around the house – building things and putting in walkways and stuff like that – which was kind of fun.”

Kliegl also started to play golf. He had played a bit in the past, but, in general, he enjoyed more active sports such as racquetball and tennis.

“I actually won a few tournaments. But, then I blew out my knees and that was it – couldn’t play racquetball anymore, or tennis,” he said.

Kliegl has had orthoscopic surgery on each knee and had his right knee replaced. He also has had a hip replacement on his left hip.

“I am becoming bionic,” he said. “My days of playing racquet sports were over, and now I try and go out and play golf two or three times a week, if I can, just to stay in shape a little bit. That wasn’t my first choice, I’d rather play tennis and racquetball.”

Kliegl met his first wife in high school. They were married and had three children – Karen, James and Katherine, who were all born in Lindsay.

But, the couple split and Kliegl kept the kids. He was set up on a blind date, which lead to his second marriage to Janet after dating for three months. She had one son, Roy, who it turned out was the same age as James.

“And that was 35 1/2 years ago,” he said.

Janet was a speech pathologist, and she became a Special Ed teacher. She was able to pick up a position in Lindsay.

She later became district office administrator, and then superintendent for the Lindsay Unified School District, from which she has since retired, and has gone into a private consulting business.

“When I retired, I didn’t get another job that paid. But, I am a fulltime, unpaid employee at the Lindsay Community Theatre,” Kliegl said. “I am the theater manager. I kind of inherited that title from Hal Munter, who was here forever until he passed away. And, so, I kind of stepped into his shoes and tried to keep the theater running.”

Kliegl’s interest in theater began with adding drama to his teaching curriculum.

“I moved here in 1970, started teaching and found out that the theater program was defunct at the high school,” he said. “They had no theater program, because the man who was doing theater got mad. When they built the new high school, they didn’t build a theater and they tore down a perfectly good theater at the old high school [which is now the junior high]. He just said, ‘forget it – there’s no place to do theater.’

“In 1973, a couple of years after I started here, I asked a group of students in my Advanced Writing class how come there was no theater here, and they told me the story. And so, I asked, ‘Do you guys want to put on a play? We’ll just do it as a class project.’ And they said, ‘OK, that’s a good idea.’

“So, we did it in the cafeteria. We did, A Christmas Carol.”

And that was Kliegl’s foray into theater.

“Sporadically, over the next few years, I did plays in various locations – outdoors, in the cafeteria, on the stage at the end of the junior high cafeteria – wherever I could find a place,” he said. “I started a high school drama club – it got to be fairly active and we enjoyed doing that.”

In 1983, the Lindsay Community Theatre Company bought its theater. The school district partnered with them, Kliegl said, and rents use of the theater on a yearly basis for school events such as bachelorettes, promotion ceremonies and, of course, theater productions.

“I started using the theater in kind of a dual role – because I was also working with the Town Players, while working at the high school,” he said. “And, in many of the plays the Town Players did, high school kids were involved in. And, in many of the high school plays, some of the adults were involved.

“The high school drama club was fairly affluent. We made money by selling See’s Candy throughout the year, and we would make enough money that we could buy gifts and things for the theater – the spotlights, the light board, the soundboard, the portable, wireless microphones, and a piano – all bought by the high school. And, we would make money on our shows, too.”

Kliegl sited Cats as being the most profitable show ever.

“In 2006, it was released for amateur production, and we spent a lot of money putting that show on because of costumes and stage props we had to rent, and the royalties. That’s when we bought all of the wireless microphones – so it was about $20,000 we spent on that show. And, we only charged $8 per ticket. But, we ended up making $13,000 and that was one of the two only sellouts we ever had. The closing nights of Cats we had to turn 50 people away, which was unheard of because we never had had that happen before. It was a really good show.

“The next year, we did another production that was really good. We thought, this is great, we’re making money, and we’re doing fun things. So the following year, we decided to do Beauty and the Beast and we spent about $6,000 renting costumes. They had to be shipped from New York and they were fantastic – they were Broadway quality costumes! We thought, man, we’ve hit the jackpot!

“Two weeks before our show, Goldman Sachs went broke, everybody else in the world went broke – instead of having 200 people at opening night, we had 35. And we pretty much lost all of that money. We had a little bit of money left in a drama club account after that, but not much. And, that was my last show [with the high school]. That was in 2008, and then I retired the next spring.”

Unfortunately, the high school drama program has not been the same since.

The turnovers of teachers has been high, and the drama department has suffered.

“My wife was still superintendent and asked me, ‘you want to teach one class?’ and I said, ‘I don’t think you understand the concept of retirement,’” Kliegl declined.

OK, so he still keeps extremely busy, but he doesn’t have to be at a classroom every morning at a specific time, he said. However, this year there is a teacher who has a play scheduled at the theater in March. Kliegl said he is not sure what they might be doing, but he hopes it comes through to fruition.

Prior to teaching in Lindsay, Kliegl had little experience in theatrical arts. He did a bit of drama in high school, but the school wasn’t very active in theater.

“I got involved in theater again, when I got involved with that first play that I did [as a teacher],” he said. “I think at last count, I’ve directed 96 plays. And, I’ve been involved in a lot of other plays that other people directed.”

Kliegl has performed, too. He portrayed Bumble in Oliver and Max Bialystock in The Producers.

“I’ve had to do both (direct and act) a lot of times, when people quit. Like, I had to be Billy Crocker in Anything Goes,” he said, ” because the guy who was supposed to do it, quit three weeks before the show, and I was the only guy who knew all the music because I was the director.

“Then we had a stage play called Noises Off, which I was assistant director for, and on Saturday we had a rehearsal, and we were opening the following Thursday. The guy [the actor] is supposed to fall down the stairs at the end – well, he fell down the stairs and he got a double hernia. He had to go to the hospital. I had five days to learn his part, which was the lead part. It was really a challenge, but I managed to do it. I’m pretty good at memorizing lines. I worked on that for like 18 hours a day – it’s a good thing I was retired.”

Kliegl said that his love for the theater keeps him involved at the age of 69. It is, for him, an acquired taste.

“The very first play, that I directed, was just magical – when I saw it actually happen, I thought, that’s magic,” he said.

“You can rehearse, but when you get an audience out there, and they [the actors] get on the stage and they do their thing – there’s something that happens to them – the students, or the actors. It’s something that doesn’t happen in rehearsal. Sometimes they have a little trouble with it at first, because they’re a little shy or whatever, but it just changes them somehow.

“And, I’ve had lots of kids that have said, ‘I can’t do it, I can’t be in a play,’ and I’ve said, ‘oh, come on, it will just be a small part, take a small part.’

“One kid, Patrick Escobar, was a student who came with his friend when we were going to start rehearsals for Cats. Cats was the show that we had the longest rehearsal time of any – it was like six months. We had tryouts in May, and if they wanted to be in the show, they had to go to a six-week dance class in the summer – three hours every afternoon, 1-4, five days a week – dance! That was intense! And, they really became good dancers.

This one kid [Escobar], he was kind of reluctant, he said, ‘oh, I can’t see very well’ – ‘you don’t have to see, just dance! You can’t just stand around here – you’re going to go out there and do it, or go home.’ So, he said, OK – he was a freshman at the time. And, he did a really good job, and he fell in love with theater. He did like 17 plays, back-to-back. And, now, his life goal is to be a director. He’s down in Hollywood. He really didn’t have a lot that he wanted to do – so, every once in a while something like that happens and you go, WOW!”

Kliegl continued.

“Being a director, it’s a little bit like an artist. An artist has a medium, a canvas and paints, or a piece of rock that they’re sculpting, or a mosaic, or whatever they’re doing. A director, he’s got all those things. He’s got the visual parts, he’s got the sets, the costumes, he has to find the right actor for the right part – casting is so important. And, then he’s got the music to think about and he’s got to get them to be able to sing the parts. So, that’s his medium. It’s a creative process – that’s what I really like. I love the creative process.”

Kliegl sees himself working with theater, for as long as he can. But, there are other things he’d like to do, too. For one, he’d like to travel more, he said.

“I like doing things and going places with my wife, he said. “I try to get her to travel – but, she’s still committed to her career. She’s a lot younger than me. She’s only 65, I’m 69. She’s working pretty much full time and she’s supposed to be a part-time consultant.”

The Kliegls did spend a month in Ono, Japan last fall, which is Lindsay’s sister city.

“I was asked by the mayor to stay there for a month and teach English in school,” he said. “It kind of morphed into something a little bit different. We became, sort of like, United States ambassadors. He wanted the citizens in Ono to be exposed to, and be friends with, people in the US. So, we visited a lot of schools, and a lot of retirement homes. Ono is a remarkable city with about 50,000 people. They have like six different boroughs, because the town is sort of a conglomerate of a lot of different villages, banded together and became Ono City. But, each of them retains their own personality. We were their guests for a month – it was a month’s vacation and they paid us.”

Kliegl said he’d like to go back, but there’s more, too, such as England and South America.

All in all, his life has fallen into a good place, he said.

“I almost can’t imagine not having been a teacher,” he said. “My daughter is in the financial world, she’s a banker. My son’s a computer programmer. My other daughter is a teacher and is working on getting her credential to teach Special Ed. My other son is an architect.”

“I enjoy my kids and my eight grandkids,” he said, all of whom currently live in California.

“I guess I’m lucky – my dad was a teacher and we didn’t grow up with a lot of money, but we did OK,” Kliegl reflected. “The love of teaching, I guess, was born in me. I grew into the love of drama, as I became a teacher and started to do more and more in dramatic arts. I was a coach, too.

“There are a lot of advantages to being in a small town. My kids had a lot of advantages going to school here.”

“I was raising the kids and then, when I met Janet, she had one son and I had three, and we kind of put a Brady Bunch together. Janet has been great for me. She’s really my saving grace. I am very disorganized and she’s extremely well organized. When people come over to our house, she closes the door – let’s put it that way.”

Kliegl started teaching more than four decades ago, and while he is retired from his day job, he continues to teach in various other ways, including through theater.

“I’m happy with the way things have turned out. Life has been a challenge at times, but not overwhelming. I’ve had some bad times and good times, and we’re still rolling along,” he said.

The post The Heart of Lindsay Theater: Jim Kliegl appeared first on Valley Voice.

The 22nd Congressional District encompasses much of Tulare County and parts of Fresno County. Devin Nunes, a Republican from Tulare, currently occupies this seat, developed following reapportionment in 2013. He formerly represented the 21st District (in its former boundaries) for 10 years, which in 2013 was filled by David Valadao.

Opponent Louie Campos is a Democrat, born in Dinuba, who currently resides in Visalia. While each feels they have nothing but the best in mind for their local community, they are deeply divided on issues concerning the Valley and the country.

In the fiery battle for the White House, Nunes remains a supporter of Donald Trump. Campos, on the other hand, says he is appalled by Trump, his voice and his actions.

Here’s what Nunes has to say –

Devin Nunes has been involved in agriculture all of his life having grown up on a farm in the area between Tulare and Visalia. His family are Portuguese descendants, whose family came to the South Valley in search of farming opportunities and a good life.

Nunes and his brother started a custom harvesting business for alfalfa and wheat, while Nunes attended College of the Sequoias. He later transferred to Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, where he obtained his bachelors in Ag Business and his masters’ degree in Agriculture. He and his brother had saved up some money, he said, and purchased farmland in Tulare County to start farming alfalfa. He also ran his family’s dairy operation during this time.

Nunes had always had an interest in and studied policies. His introduction to politics followed his return to Visalia.

COS Trustee & Bush Appointee

When he returned home from San Luis Obispo, and started farming, he was asked to run the campaign of a man running for the COS board of trustees. But the day before the filling deadline, he and another candidate both backed out, Nunes said.

“Well, look, why don’t you just run?” Nunes said he was asked. “And they put me up as a sacrificial lamb,” he said. “Nobody thought I was going to win – I was 22 years old. And I won.”

Nunes sat on the COS Board for six years prior to running for congress. In 2001, he was appointed as the State Director for the US Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development Section by former President George W. Bush.

A Rising Politician

About six or seven months later, reapportionment occurred, following the 2000 census, and new congressional districts were formed. This opened up a new seat in the Valley.

“I decided I was going for it,” Nunes said.

“My main interest in policy has always been water and trade issues,” he said. “I focused a lot on water when I was in high school and college.

“It’s not a new issue, not at all, unfortunately, it just keeps getting worse. I knew it was going to be a problem – I knew it was going to be a limiting factor to our economy here, so I always had an interest in it. I figured I might as well stand up and do something about it – no reason to sit on the sidelines and complain.”

He was elected to the 21st Congressional District, and won subsequent re-elections. His district changed with the 2013 boundary changes and when he was elected it was to hold the 22nd District seat. The bulk of his constituents remained the same; others remained in the 21st District, currently filled by Representative David Valadao.

Concentrating on the Issues

In Congress, Nunes serves on the Ways and Means Committee and chairs the Trade Committee. He also serves as Chairman of the Congressional Intelligence Committee.

“I try to take complicated problems and study them, and build out solutions in legislative form,” he said.

“I have focused on a lot of issues over my career – but water and trade were my initial [focus] and I still work on those a lot. Trade is immensely important to this Valley – exports and imports are very, very critical to the success here, because we grow things here, and build things here in California, that are not grown or built around the globe.”

Nunes cited almonds, pistachios, walnuts, grapes and various types of citrus as some of the items to which he was referring.

“I’m not saying they don’t grow anywhere else,” he said, “but in terms of large production, competitive, being a low-cost producer, the specialty crops are really tough to beat outside of California.”

“The tax reform bill, I would say is one of my major accomplishments to this point,” Nunes said. “The tax code, I think, is really inhibiting the growth in the United States, and we’ve come up with a solution to this problem. My main core, the ABC Act, which switches us to a cash-flow tax, was incorporated into what we call our Better Way Agenda that Republicans have in Congress.

“At the core of economic growth is my tax policy, that I have spent all most a decade working on and perfecting. And, the reason why is because it is complicated and you have to build coalitions. It has taken a lot longer than I ever wanted it to, but I feel like we’re a long way down the road, and we’ll likely be passing a major overhaul to the tax code, for really the first time. This will be the first replacement bill, hopefully, knock-on-wood, that will get rid of the income tax and replace it with a cash-flow tax. It will revolutionize the tax system for the United States of America.

“Instead of having a big, complicated return, and it would make filing taxes a lot easier, what is your income and what are your expenses. Right now, we have complicated depreciation schedules, complicated tax credits, as we do business activities in the United States. So, what this does, it basically says, what is your income, what are your expenses? And, that’s what you pay – whatever is left, you pay tax on it, for all business activity. So, it can be a lemonade stand, or IBM computers.

“I only looked at the business activity, because that is basically the core of economic activity . . . Once you harness all that, that is what the people of the United States are consuming. And, by doing that, you hit most of the economy.

“On the wage side, we simplify it down to three rates. But, that’s not mine, my proposal was taking all business activity and creating a cash flow tax. That’s what’s taken me all most a decade.”

It is, however, all in one bill.

Where’s the Water?

“Water issues continue to be a struggle. It’s just sad, honestly,” Nunes said, “Because, I think we’ve made a strong case, but we can’t get the Senate to move on any legislation. And, the White House blames global warming.”

Nunes said, the poor quality of water in some locations in the Valley, is a “symptom of not having enough water. Dilution is a solution, which means you need a lot more water into the region.”

Before 1992, water wasn’t a problem for the Valley, he claims. This is what really peaked an interest in politics for him, he said.

“Watching the debacle in 1992, when the federal government took over one million acre-feet of water away from this Valley – that’s what really honed in, because I realized at that point that where we were farming in the south part of Tulare County – that water policy was going to lead to no water being available to the South Valley, which is basically where we’re at now.

“So, we’re looking at a million acres of farm ground coming out of production within the six-county region – some has come out of that, but there’s going to be a lot more if the senate doesn’t pass a bill. We’re roughly about 2 ½ million acre-feet short of water between Madera and Bakersfield. The solution is using the infrastructure that we have – that gets back most of the water, and then building Temperance Flat. It’s only federal laws that have shut the pumps down – nothing else.

“We’ve presented plans out there to do it. We’ve passed legislation out of the House, but at the end of the day, we haven’t had support from our senators, or our governor, or the president.

“This is water that just goes out to the ocean. Believe it or not, California has a plentiful water supply – all you have to do is move it, and most of that infrastructure has been built. We’ve lost 16 million acre-feet this year alone to the ocean – remember I said we need 2 ½ million? I’d even take a million-and-a-half, would solve a lot of our problems, two million would put us in good shape. Two-and-a-half million acre-feet, we’d farm every acre in this Valley.

“It’s easy for me to speculate and it is only speculation, but I believe that the extreme environmental groups want this land idled. That’s what they’ve told me. And, I’ve said this several times – when I was first running for office. To be precise, they said, 1.3 million acres needed to come out of production – so they’re almost at their goal, because they are going to get about a million, if we don’t do anything.”

This area is known for good soil and was recognized by the early pioneers, he said.

“This year, we’re not in drought,” he added. “If we would have been at ’92 pumping levels, we would have farmed nearly every acre on the west side [this past year]. Because, the way the system is built, it is built to take water when we have a good supply. Even if you are slightly below normal – even at 80% of the average – we’re still moving a lot of water. These reservoirs were all built to withstand five years of drought. Pretty much every acre would have been farmed [this year], if we were at ’92 pumping levels.

“I say Temperance Flat is needed because those pumps don’t necessarily get the water to the eastside. Which is why you need Temperance Flat, to be able to catch the water in the big, heavy years, and move it into the different water basins between Madera and Kern County. That’s what the eastside needs.

Global Warming – Fact of Fiction?

Nunes said he does not believe in global warming.

“No. I think the climate changes,” he said. “We know historically, if you look back at data going back several thousand years, you can tell that the climate has changed. It’s gotten warm; it’s gotten cold; it’s gotten warm. Just in my lifetime alone, when they said we were going into a global cooling trend and that we were all going to freeze to death – that was in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s. Now we’re in global warming, supposedly, but now they’ve changed the rhetoric to climate change, to meet their objective, which is, I think, it is an attack on development.

“If you really think climate change is the world’s biggest problem, you can build nuclear power plants, which produce massive amounts of clean energy – but, this state’s not doing that. This state’s shutting down all the nuclear power plants – they’ve just announced that their reactors are going to close in seven years, eight years. So, this is not people that really believe in climate change, because if you really thought the oceans were going to rise and that people were going to be decimated, you’d be doing everything you could, not only to keep those two reactors running, but even building more. Just those two reactors alone are like, 10%, of the state’s energy.

“That tells me there are probably different variations of thought, that go through one’s mind when they’re pushing these extreme ideologies. But, the bottom line is that this mostly goes back to they don’t want a lot of this land farmed, and they don’t want people on a lot of the land. They don’t want people up in the forest and they’re all extreme environmentalists, and unfortunately, have control over the Democratic Party.”

Reaching Across the Aisle

“If one deals in reality and is honest about negotiations, then of course you can work together,” Nunes said. “But, as I pointed out, you asked the question about global warming, if the governor of this state, and the senators were really worried about global warming, then why would they be proposing a policy to close down the nuclear power plants? I don’t think those are people dealing in good faith, or being honest with the American people, or the people of California.

“I would have total respect for one, if they said, ‘Oh, gosh, global warming is the number one issue,’ which basically we’ve heard basically everyone in the democratic party say – that it is the number one issue facing America today. So, OK, then why wouldn’t you be coming up with a plan to produce as much clean energy as possible?

“I would say on the intelligence issues, as it relates to the Intelligence Committee – I chair it and my ranking member [Adam Schiff, D-Burbank], we’re both from California, and we both have a very good relationship – we agree most of the time – not always, probably 80-90% of the time. We try to work in a bipartisan manner.

“I have no problem working with people – I don’t care what party they are, but, we’re going to deal in fact – fact-based legislating, not rhetoric. And, I’m not being critical of just, of course the extreme environmental groups that control the Democratic Party, that’s a big problem, but I’ve got people in my own party that do the same thing.”

Nunes said he is running again because he wants to keep America safe.

“Which is what I do every day with the Intelligence Committee,” he said. “It’s one of the biggest honors you can receive to be trusted by your colleagues to be put in this position – one of the most important positions in the United States. So, that has just been such a tremendous honor and there is so much work to be done there, as the world becomes a more dangerous place every day.

“Second – the water fight goes on. You can never give up – whoever the members of congress are from this region, we have to continue to fight for water.

“And then, I talk about the tax policy – it has taken a long time to develop, but you also take what I believe to be the nation’s biggest problem is our debt. We have $20 trillion in debt now, and we have about $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities, at the federal level. And, those are only going to be fixed by economic growth, and reforming health care and social security – so reforming the entitlement programs.

“This president hasn’t wanted to deal with those, but clearly the American people have to ultimately deal with what they decide. So, the American people voted to put someone in who says that global warming is the number one challenge to America – not what I think it is – but you have to make your case as best you can in the legislative government.

“I think what people want here in the San Joaquin Valley is to live their lives free, and government is best run by the locals and the state. The federal government needs to stay out of our lives here, and they need to stay out of lives of others around the country.

“What’s the most important job of the federal government is to protect the people – it’s to have a strong national defense.”

On a Personal Note

Nunes admits he doesn’t know what his future will bring. But, for now, he’d like to continue to work in Congress.

“Every day, in this job, there is not a shortage of problems to deal with, and so I get up every day and go to work on the most important issues at the highest levels – every day, all day, and I enjoy it.”

Nunes’ wife, Elizabeth, and their three daughters continue to live within the district. Elizabeth Nunes also grew up in the South Valley, and the couple was dating when Devin Nunes we first elected. They were married about a year into his first term in congress.

Devin Nunes admits that it is not easy living part-of-the time away from his young family, but “that’s what we signed up to do.” Having a large, supportive family helps, he said.

Nunes said he does not have a lot, if any hobbies, outside of his work. He keeps his hands in agriculture with a small ownership in a winery in the Napa Valley. He enjoys watching NFL football and NBA basketball, as well as the Fresno State Bulldogs. He also enjoys spending time with his daughters, who are currently into Star Wars.

“Tax reform is a big hobby of mine. National security is a hobby. Yep, so there’s never a shortage of things to do, which is kind of nice,” he said.

The post The 22nd Congressional Race: Incumbent Devin Nunes appeared first on Valley Voice.

The 22nd Congressional District encompasses much of Tulare County and parts of Fresno County. Devin Nunes, a Republican from Tulare, currently occupies this seat, developed following reapportionment in 2013. He formerly represented the 21st District (in its former boundaries) for 10 years, which in 2013 was filled by David Valadao.

Opponent Louie Campos is a Democrat, born in Dinuba, who currently resides in Visalia. While each feels they have nothing but the best in mind for their local community, they are deeply divided on issues concerning the Valley and the country.

In the fiery battle for the White House, Nunes remains a supporter of Donald Trump. Campos, on the other hand, says he is appalled by Trump, his voice and his actions.

Here’s what Campos has to say –

Louie Campos was born in Dinuba. He is passionate about the culinary arts, civil rights and political activism.

Campos’ family has roots in the Tulare, Fresno and Kings counties, dating back more than 80 years. His dad’s family had settled in Dinuba – his great, great, great grandmother is buried there. His mother’s family settled in Ivanhoe. They were immigrants, he said, so they moved around following the crops, but their home base was Ivanhoe.

During his high school years, Campos began working in restaurants. His interest in the culinary arts took him to Kettleman City, Bullhead City, Arizona and Laughlin, Nevada.

“I was doing culinary work, and you want to get exposed to different kinds of stuff – so, I decided the best thing to do, was just go there,” he said.

“The culinary arts were an artistic outlet. I just really liked the ability to be creative, so I tried different things.”

Activism & Unions

His education and experimentation took him to a position at Corcoran Prison, where he worked in the kitchen and oversaw inmates working in the culinary field. He found himself gaining further interest in unions and activism.

“I started in politics when I was with the SEIU 1000 in 2000,” Campos said. “I was a union steward at Corcoran Prison. When I was working in the kitchen there, I was supervising inmates – I did a lot of representation and helped people out with things.”

Ultimately, Campos lost his job as a result of his activism.

“I witnessed an assault by a supervisor on another employee. I reported it, and the investigation said that I didn’t see what I saw,” he said.

Actually, Campos was one of four men who came forward, each with similar accounts of the alleged assault.

“As a result of the investigation, they said that we were not telling the truth,” he said. “He put his hands on another employee, and the investigation by the prison determined that we did not see what we saw. There were four of us, who saw this. The three of us who worked at Corcoran, ended up getting terminated – the one who worked out of a different prison, his institution wouldn’t discipline him for it. He was there [at the time] as a union rep.”

Following this job loss, Campos had a renewed interest in returning to school while continuing to help people.

“All that time I had always been an activist, starting when I was with the union,” he said.

“I was one of the original group of people who did the Occupy Visalia, Visalia’s own little version of Occupy Wall Street. I was among the original founders of Tulare County for Families – initially they were doing a lot of stuff around immigration reform. Now, they are focused on trying to get people in touch with the history of Tulare County, and the role that the Latino culture has played in Tulare County, among other things. I’ve been involved with LGBTQ rights – I’ve been a supporter, actually an admirer, of that movement.

“At Corcoran – I was a job steward, and then I became a bargain union rep, where I was a liaison between the bargaining team, in Sacramento and the Locale, I was with. The district I was in covered Avenal, Corcoran, part of Fresno County and part of Kern County. I also used to be the deemer for the janitors of the DMV, here.

“That’s when I found out I had an inclining for being an activist, and helping to represent people. If someone were to come to me with a work-related issue – be it health and safety, or a scheduling issue, or even as a disciplinarian – I was able to learn a lot about our own system, as well as be able to provide a little comfort, with some place for someone to go for a fellow worker.

“I enjoyed that, and I realized that there is a need. You know, when you’re working in a prison, especially in ours, we’re not CO’s [correctional officers] we’re cooks, and a lot of times we were out there by ourselves. There could be a bunch of inmates and there would be a few CO’s, but there is only one cook out there, so who do you talk to?”

Campos is currently majoring in philosophy at College of the Sequoias and plans to advance onward through law school. He is involved in a program, offered by the California State Bar Association that helps with tuition funding for minorities, in some law schools, universities and community colleges, he said. If elected, he feels he would still attend school, part time, to follow those ambitions as well.

Why Run, Why Now?

Until now, Campos had not run for a public office. He attributes his role as an activist, for attaining experience for a role in Congress.

“As an activist, I have been involved with a few different things,” he said. “I’ve been able to, over the years, get a real grassroots feel for what I think are the needs of the people in this area, and this community. We’ve got a unique thing over here. It is hard to find anything like it in the rest of the nation, even in California, it’s hard to find it. So, a lot of times, we feel a little bit left out by what is going on in Sacramento, and even more so by what is going on in Washington.

“I just feel that being on the ground floor – talking to people, going door-to-door, knocking on doors, and talking with people – I’ve learned, and I’ve got a better sense of, what is going on here and what people’s aspirations are, what they are capable of, and what their expectations are with their government. I don’t think that a lot of their needs are being served right now.

“We’ve got a lot of issues. We’ve got water issues, we’ve got to deal with climate change – we feel the brunt of that stuff here, whether the people who represent us believe it or not. These things are still affecting us, whether you believe it’s real, or not.

“Why don’t we just take an objective look at this thing, and start addressing the problems?”

More People, Fewer Jobs

“We’ve got a growing population. Our economic base is still, and will always be, in agriculture, but frankly, it’s not able to sustain the amount of people we have here anymore, on its own. There are fewer agriculture jobs this year than there were last year, and fewer than the year before. Efficiencies, and what they are doing, have taken a lot of jobs and we cannot expect them to not.

“Nobody is out there dragging a sack, picking cotton anymore. And, we wouldn’t expect to see people doing that anymore, either. So, we’ve got to start looking at ways to diversify this economy and I say, with the combination of what is ailing us and what is good in us, we can start putting people to work. We can use ingenuity. We can start working toward fixing our problem with the drought. How will we capture more water? How do we recharge the aquifers?

“When we feed the nation that’s a national-level topic. I just think our current congressman has missed the boat on a lot things – he didn’t agree with the stimulus program, but that was money that could have been here, and put people to work here – addressing some of the problems we have now, here – taking a principled stand. We are all out here parched to death in the frickin’ desert, and trying to make a living. That’s really nice of you to be principled, but we can’t feed our families on your principles.

“And, I think we are capable of doing that – I think we have the ability to do that.”

A Long Shot

Campos admits that a Democrat running for the 22nd Congressional District, a traditional Republican stronghold, may be a bit of a stretch.

“The shot is long, but that is not a reason not to take it,” he said. “I’ve developed a great affection for the people whom I have come in contact with here, and have great admiration for what they’ve been able to do and how they’ve been able to manage to eek out a living, and, in a lot of ways, prosper. I want to be an ally for that – I’ve always wanted to be an ally for that. I want to do what I can to help fix our problems.

“Playing the partisan game – you’re under water, as a Democrat. Being a Democratic candidate in CD 22 [Congressional District 22] makes it a long shot.

“Incumbency can be a daunting thing, but I think that, increasingly, the voting population is getting more and more disgruntled with incumbents, and it is no longer as sure a bet as it once was. It’s more a matter of getting your people out to vote – recognizing who is representing their issues, telling your story and listening to the stories.

“And that’s another thing – I have heard a lot of stories, before, about what goes on here. I’ve heard a lot more since I started running, because I have talked to a whole lot more people. I’ve gone to places that I hadn’t really visited that much before – areas in Clovis, and they’ve got a whole lot of different issues there than we have in Visalia and Tulare County. It’s interesting to see how we are all clumped together here [in this district] as one group.

“When you take a representative from LA … you can throw a rock from one end of the district to the other. Out here, it’s wide open, and every little town is its own universe. It’s interesting to see all the different dynamics work.”

Wages & Water

Campos feels he could be effective in Washington because of his experiences and his motivation through the people who live in the district he would represent.

“I can speak as to what my aspirations are, and what I represent, and what I would try to work for – to make sure that somebody who does a hard day’s work, gets paid what they’re worth. I don’t see the problem with raising the minimum wage – working people need to have money to spend, too. I would work to do that.

“I don’t understand why, after 80-plus years, how we haven’t addressed that the issue of the FLSA [Fair Labor Standard’s Act] isn’t extended to farm labor workers. I would work to address that. I think that is something that needs to be fixed, needs to be remedied.

“I’d work at ways that we could apply federal funds to help address some of our water issues here in the Valley. I don’t think it is just the Valley that has them. But these are just the ones we know, because we are living them. And, I know that that kind of money does exist.

“We were able to build an atomic bomb in less than four years. Amazingly, where some of those minds came from, was this state – California was home to a lot of those scientists who were able to do that. So, you can’t tell me that we don’t have the mental capacity, in this state, in this country, to really seriously address these problems, if we recognize and accept the fact that, yes, this is a problem. I would fight to do that.

“I would fight to do something about education – making it to where it is affordable. I don’t like the dichotomy that they say, ‘I am paying for someone else to go to school.’ No, we are investing in our country. This is an investment in our country.

“We’ve got to let people know to stop looking at every tax as a tax. Some taxes are investments in the future. And, I look at things that go toward education as just that. Things that go toward fixing our infrastructure, are just that – they are investments in our future. Yes, you are paying some money to go fix that road, but you are going to make 100 times that, transporting your goods across that road, so let’s maintain it and keep it up.”

Climate Change is Real

“It’s important to acknowledge that climate change is real,” Campos said. “Somethings are not subject to opinion anymore. I can see the moral argument, and the moral struggle, with something like capital punishment or abortion – reasonable people can disagree, and there are legitimate moral things on both side of those issues. It’s not just two sides, there is a whole in between. But, when we are talking about something like climate change – that’s an objective – true. And, you can call it global warming, or climate change, I don’t care.”

If Campos should lose the election, he will continue on with his education, and his activism.

“I will still be advocating on things that I’ve been doing anyway,” he said.

And, he plans on keeping options open for other possible ways to make a difference.

“Honestly, two years ago, if you had asked me if I could see myself doing this, I would have said no,” he said. “But, here I am.

“I’ve looked at the problems that we have here, and I see that a lot of them are not getting any better and they’re not getting addressed. How long can I sit here and say, ‘Someone needs to do something,’ before I say, ‘I need to get up and do it.’

The Personal Side

Campos is not married. He turns 44 this year. His parents and sister, along with a lot of other family, live in the 22nd Congressional District.

He likes to read, and write, and is a Tolkien fan. He enjoys lifting weights and the Martial Arts. He also enjoys walking his two dogs. He’d like to travel and spend some time in the cultures of New Orleans and Jamaica.

He also would like to serve the community in which he grew up and lives.

“I come from this area, my roots are from this area, my family is from this area – my family still lives here,” he said. “The house that was my great grandfather’s, [in Dinuba] my aunt still lives there. The house that my [another] great grandfather owned– the original house had to be taken down, but on that lot is the house that his daughter, my great aunt, lives in. So, I’ve got a strong connection here.

“It would be nice to see some of the values that I was raised with represented in congress. The values of this county, the values of this district, the values of the people who feed this country. I hear a person [Donald Trump] talking on the radio, or talking on TV about, ‘THEY send rapist, murderers and drug dealers … ’ – you know, when my great grandparents came here, both sides of them, Campos and Rivas, they both sent their sons to fight in WWII. Which one of them was a rapist? Which one of them was a murderer? Which one was a drug dealer? I am a descendant of these folks – he’s demonizing the people, I am a descendant of.

“The values of hard work, standing together, working together, helping each other out, and the respect that that gives you – every person is deserving of that. I think that that is important. I think that we are forgetting some of that.

“We need to live by our mission statement – ‘All people are created equal.’ We’re equal under the law and should receive full protection, under the law. That’s something to aspire to.”

The post The 22nd Congressional Race: Opponent Louie Campos appeared first on Valley Voice.

Ruben Macareno

Ruben Macareno grew up in the farmlands of California. The 11th of 13 children, his family followed the harvests, making Tulare their home base in the mid 1960’s, and building a permanent home in Farmersville shortly thereafter. Macareno attended Farmersville schools and graduated from Exeter Union High School.

He feels as though his life and professional experiences, as well as his education, make him a good fit for becoming the next 26th District Assemblyman.

During high school, Macareno took a journalism class. With that, he was able to do some part time writing for local newspapers. Upon high school graduation, he landed a job as the newsletter editor for Proteus, which provides education, job training, job placement and other support services to farm working families and other program participants.

“That was really a good experience – it opened up my eyes, at a young age, to folks who were trying to get ahead and that was very difficult in this area,” he said. “They would tell me their stories of heartaches, and how difficult it was to work in the fields, how difficult it was to just pay the bills, because there still wasn’t enough income coming in, and, how difficult it was because of the type of work it was.

“That gave me an awareness– even though my own family was a migrant family, my parents, pretty much, kept us away from all those discussions of how bad it was and how hard it was.

“At the same token, I would also hear the success stories – how organizations like Proteus would actually help people get out of the field and into a vocational career, that they could actually build on and do more for their families. So, I saw how people could actually make a difference in other people’s lives.

“That is when I decided that I really wanted to be part of this kind of work. This was more personal and it was satisfying to see that I was able to help somebody, in one way or another.”

With this in mind, Macareno moved to Los Angeles to pursue college. As a student, he looked for part time work. He had always had an interest in politics and wanted to learn more about how representatives help their constituents. Although he had no political experience, and was just starting out in school, he decided to check in with a Los Angeles congressman to see if he could find any work there. Thinking it was a longshot, he found himself meeting with the late Congressman Ed Roybal (D-Los Angeles).

“I told him about my experience with Proteus,” he said, and he shared his ambitions.

Roybal gave him a shot as a summer intern. Macareno admitted he was taken aback, but at the same time delighted. He talked with constituents and primarily worked with them on immigration and tax issues.

“That gave me some good training in working constituent services. I didn’t know all these services existed. If you have a tax problem, or whatever, I just thought you call the IRS and or a hotline. But, what people don’t realize is that they can actually get assistance from their legislatures or congressman when they have any issues pertaining to federal or state issues,” he said.

With that under his belt, Macareno was ready to take on a full load at college, but Roybal had other ideas for him.

“’Oh,’ he said, ‘we’d actually like you to go to Washington – we have an opening there – I think you’d be great for it. You would be working for the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials,’ which the congressman was the president and founder of.

“Of course, I didn’t hesitate. I said, ‘Yes, I’ll go!’

“When I went to Washington, that was a different type of education – it was for citizenship advocacy and Latino advocacy, and nationwide interests, as opposed to just local. We also kept track of who was getting elected around the country and where there was potential for an increase in Latino participation.

“And, so I was getting a full-rounded education in terms of serving people. From working with Proteus and working in a congressional office, to working to a more vast type of focus with NALEO – I really got that sense that it is people helping people through services and resources out there. It was very exciting.”

Eventually, Macareno returned to Los Angeles to continue working on his education. His sister urged him to consider applying for a position with the Los Angeles Times, pointing out they have an opening in their customer service department. He applied, but the human resources staffer felt there was a job that his skills were a better fit for, in public affairs. He took the job and ended up working for the Times for close to 20 years in various capacities while attending school part time, at Los Angeles City College, and then Cal State, Los Angeles.

In 2007, his younger brother, Martin, was murdered at the Central Coast. Macareno had been considering a buyout program with the Times anyway, so he took it, and moved back to Tulare County. He was one class short of obtaining his bachelor degree, but felt he needed to be close to family and home.

“I just felt a great need to be here,” he said. “I was concerned about my family and their state of mind – but one thing that I didn’t know it would do for me that it did was– it gave me great empathy– empathy for others in similar situations, and for those in other difficult situations.

“Something I realized when I came back here, was there hasn’t been a lot of change. Everything was pretty much the same. I also noticed that there were a lot of people who just felt that they weren’t being listened to– or that their vote didn’t matter– particularly in the rural areas and particularly the Latino community, in general. So, I had decided that I am going to jump right in, and I am going to do something and get involved.

“I am a Democrat. I went to our County [Democratic] Committee and they said, well you can come to our meetings, but you’ll have no vote. That seemed kind of uninviting.

“So, I decided to form the Latino Democrats of Tulare County – that way I would get to engage with the community that mostly feels marginalized by the political process, and I got to get involved politically with basically like-minded people.

“Two or three years later I was asked to chair the County Committee, and I did. I had the opportunity to meet a lot of people within the Democratic Party, elected officials in Sacramento – other assemblymen, state senators – that were really doing things for their community. I would talk with them about what it was like to serve in office– what are the pros, what are the cons and that sort of thing– so, I kind of got another education in regard to that, which was good.”

Local Concerns

Some of Macareno’s current concerns within the district, are about jobs, senior citizens, air quality, and water quality and quantity. He’d also like to see a public university within the Tulare-Kings counties area.

“Water is a humungous issue that needs to be addressed consistently and we need to be able to be a cheerleader for our Valley and our District, so that we can:

Figure out how we can retain that water.

Figure out how it is going to be safe– not contaminated.

Figure out how it is going to be distributed among farmers and residents– that’s always a tug-of-war.

“These are valid issues, real issues that people have and when I go back to the empathy part of what I’ve experienced – I think about when people have talked about it and I truly put myself in their shoes – oh my God! What would it be like to be without water – to not be able to shower, or eat, or boil water? It’s just unimaginable that their voice is not being heard because they are in the big, giant mix. It’s a big, big job! This job of being a state legislature, it is truly one where you should NOT have a partisan badge, but it should be a job of public service.”

Macareno ran for the same seat two years ago. Devon Mathis won the seat. Macareno said he was not disappointed. He felt at the time that, although Mathis is a Republican, his promise to reach across the aisle was good. It was with that promise, Macareno said, that many Democrats, progressives and moderates helped Mathis win the election.

“And at the beginning it seemed like he was holding up to his end of the bargain, or his public persona that he would be one to reach over the aisle. He came to one of our Democratic openings and I thought that was very big of him, especially in the political scene– that rarely happens. He didn’t only do it once, he did it twice. He had a staff that mirrored, to some degree, the district and I thought that was also very good. And, at the beginning, he would visit other organizations that perhaps in the past weren’t visited by others like community groups in rural towns. So, I thought that was good,” Macareno said.

But, then, he added, something happened.

“I met with some of his staffers, who were not happy with him. So, that gave me a flag up with regards to him,” he said.

“And, also there was a [Assembly] Bill for East Porterville, and that bill was to give state loans to people who live in East Porterville, so they could dig their wells deeper. It was passing the Assembly, unanimously, but it was held up by Senator Ricardo Lara (D-Los Angeles) and it never got to the Senate floor, or to the Governor’s desk. And one of the reasons that happened was because when it reached Ricardo Lara’s desk, Devon did a last minute amendment to it – he wanted to make sure that the monies would be under local control, and not the state water board – so that halted that and Ricardo Lara put it to the side, and it basically died,” he said.

“The people in Porterville needed this to happen – you need to be able to have your contacts, or to have the support a number of people who will back you and say – ‘this needs to happen, Ricardo, this needs to go, because these people are suffering, these people need the funding so that they don’t live without water.’ But, when you play the political ballgame, that doesn’t happen.

“My argument with that is that our assemblyman should have been fighting for those kinds of services from the very beginning– working with the Governor’s office and others to bring in this type of service, months and months ago. And, I say that because of the critical urgency of having water.”

“I think a fundamental difference between us two, truly is with Assembly Bill 1066, the farm worker overtime bill – that is, it would have been a no-brainer vote for me. Having gone through working for Proteus, having been raised in a migrant family, knowing what it’s like to have worked in these conditions, and also having just been a regular hourly worker at one time – if I work over eight hours, I want to get paid overtime – I’m sorry, I do. If I work over 40 hours, I want to get paid my overtime. And, I think that everyone who is an hourly person deserves to get paid that overtime. I don’t even see it as a farm or farm worker issue. It’s a worker’s issue, and it’s very clear to me.

“My opponent, not only did he vote against it, he was very vocal against it, saying the farm workers don’t want it. That’s not true. Saying that it will hurt them because there will be less work for them, because there will be new crews – well, where do you get all these new farm workers? Especially, if you are talking about documented workers – there is a major shortage. If you are talking about undocumented workers, where are you going with this? It makes no sense.

“He has also said the unions are exempt from this law. NO, everybody who is an hourly worker will get their overtime. Furthermore, it is going to grandfather into the full overtime in 2020, or something of that nature. I think this was a good thing – both sides had to come together, whether you voted for it or not, to have some type of compromise. HELLO – the art of politics. That’s what we do, and that’s what we should be doing – not the partisan part of it, not the lining your pockets with big money part of it sort of things. This is what we are suppose to do – come together with some type of solution.

“One of the things that I am very, very, very concerned about, more than the local election, is the whole presidential election. I have never felt so concerned of the outcome. I’m worried about Donald Trump because of his temperament – he lashes out at Latinos, at women, at everybody and that’s just his style. And, I recognize that that’s just the way he is, but what worries me is that having someone like that as president, could truly put us into some type of international chaos and, also what it has done locally, what is has done locally to unleash this separation – I see it more and more every day and that really worries me – at a time when we are under this international threat – gosh, if there was ever a time we had to be together, it’s now!

“Yet my opponent thinks he can lead us to greatness, despite all he has said and done, and continues to do so. My point is that my opponent prefers to play partisan politics, instead of what is best for the entire district, which is contrary to his campaign theme ‘People over Politics.’

“I tell people to make sure to vote. Make sure to vote your conscious, your heart and make sure that you have America in mind. All of us together – we are still one people. I don’t tell them how to vote – but to vote – it’s important.”

Macareno is 53. He and his wife, Leyda, have two grown sons – one lives in LA and is a music engineer; the other is living in New York, while studying musical theater.

“I think that when elected, I am committed to not just be the voice of the constituency, but I’m willing to cross the aisle when necessary,” Macareno said. “I’m willing to be the cheerleader – the advocate for the district. I am also one who will look for folks to help me lead and to help me represent, because it is not just one person, but it is a coalition of leaders who know where the issues are and I am committed to doing that.

“I’m running because I truly care. I’m running because I think I can be effective. I’m running because I know I am qualified. And, I’m running because I have the ability to get support for things that need to be addressed in Sacramento.”

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