California 61.14%
District of Columbia 18.77%
Virginia 5.01%
Maryland 2.69%
Other 12.39%
Luis was born in Oaxaca, Mexico and grew up in Queretaro, Mexico.
Luis remembers going to the market with his mother every day when he was kid since they could not afford to have a refrigerator at home, they needed to strategically purchase their groceries for the week. At the market there was a magazine and newspaper stand that sold Disney comic books. Luis wanted to enjoy cartoons as a kid and would ask his mother if she could buy him a comic book. His mother wouldn’t buy him the comic book because she said he couldn’t read yet, in Spanish of course. Every few days, Luis would ask his mother if she could buy him a comic book. In an effort to convince his mother to buy him his first Disney comic book, Luis asked his father if he could teach him how to read. Thanks to the help of his father, Luis was able to learn how to read ahead of his class and started elementary school in the first grade, where he helped his classmates learn how to read as well. This was Luis’ earliest memory of teaching, which later became one of his passions. Luis was finally able to get his first Disney comic book. Many years later, one of the first things Luis did when he came to this country was buy a ticket to Disneyland. When he was older, he asked his mother why she didn’t buy him the Disney comic the first time he asked all those years ago. His mother admitted that him not being able to read was not the real reason for not buying the comic, but rather that they could not afford to buy it at that time. She also stated that she was surprised at how fast he learned to read and what a testament that was to Luis’ commitment and ability to accomplish his goals when he sets his mind to something.
Luis immigrated to the United States with his family in the late 90’s, and came to reside in Castroville, CA. Luis and all his family lived in one bedroom of a two-bedroom apartment that was a part of a group of apartments rented by his employer for their workers. Luis’s first job in the United States was working at an orchid farm that grew and exported orchids. The orchid farm was located near the borderline between Monterey and Santa Cruz County. Luis worked in the laboratory, growing the orchid bulbs that were then planted in nearby fields.
Luis later worked for the High School Equivalency Program (HEP) at CSUMB. At the time, Luis was a part of the HEP pilot program that helped migrant and seasonal farmworkers obtain their GED. The HEP program is now a part of Hartnell College. Luis was in charge of overseeing teachers from the various HEP program sites including King City, Greenfield, Salinas and the CSUMB campus in Seaside, CA. Luis recalled HEP was a great migrant education program that has helped a lot of members from our district and is happy to see how much the program has grown over the years.
Luis worked for CSUMB for approximately three years and then began graduate school at UC Santa Cruz. At UC Santa Cruz, Luis was a part of the Education program and expanded his studies to include Applied Mathematics and Statistics. He obtained his PhD in 2012.
While Luis was in graduate school, he began working for the Salinas Adult School. Luis taught GED at Hartnell College as part of a partnership with the Salinas Adult School.
In 2001, Luis began volunteering at the Castroville Library where he volunteered for the past twenty-years. During this time, he helped tutor students from Elementary School students to college students in math and science subjects.
When Luis finished graduate school, he had the opportunity of teaching math at Watsonville High School. Soon after, Luis was offered an opportunity to teach statistics, algebra and pre-calculus at Monterey Peninsula College. Luis recalled that he taught MPC’s first Spanish statistics class as a pilot program, to expand opportunities for more students. A bilingual statistics class will now be offered at MPC this fall 2022.
For the past ten years, Luis has helped people become U.S. citizens by instructing them on how to succeed at their citizenship interviews in English and in Spanish, helping them prepare and file their paperwork, and translate documents such as the N-400 forms.
When President Barack Obama enacted DACA, Luis was able to help people from indigenous communities go to school so that they were able to obtain legal status to temporarily work in the United States. Through a community effort, more than twenty people from Oaxaca were able to attend a Castroville high school equivalency program that granted them admission without having to show completion of middle school education.
In his spare time, Luis is involved in his local church in Castroville – Our Lady of Refuge Catholic Church. Luis was also a part of a group called Communities Organized for the Relation Power in Action (COPA). During the pandemic, Luis worked with COPA to help members of some communities, now becoming part of District 18, apply for rental assistance that the federal and state governments made available for individuals who were struggling to pay rent during the pandemic. They went around to various communities including King City, Soledad, Seaside and Castroville and set up booths where they helped members of the community submit their applications for rental assistance. Additionally, Luis is a member of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), North Monterey County chapter and a board member for the Foundation of the Monterey County Free Libraries.
