Six years ago, Dora and Erick Tobar — now 17 and 21 — moved to the Bay Area after living in Guatemala.
Their father, whom they lived with while their mother lived in the San Rafael area and cleaned houses, had been killed not long before.
“It was the hardest day I ever lived,” Mr. Tobar said. He remembers vividly hearing gunshots as he headed to an uncle’s house, followed by the horror of learning that his father and uncle had been gunned down.
At first, the siblings stayed in Guatemala with relatives. But it became too difficult, so their mother brought them to join her.
In the United States, Mr. Tobar said school was a top priority, but when their mother had to stop working for health reasons, it was up to them to keep the family afloat.
For Mr. Tobar, that meant working at a carwash and an elder care home while finishing high school and, more recently, attending community college.
[Read the first part of this series.]
There wasn’t much time to hang out with friends or for extracurricular activities.
This year, Mr. Tobar will start school at U.C. Davis.
“I want to get into a U.C.,” he recalled thinking, “so I can prove to myself I have the capacity to do it.”
He wants to become a certified public accountant. Eventually, he said, he wants to continue on to graduate degrees and start businesses, like a cafe with his brother.
His sister, Ms. Tobar, credited her older siblings for helping her take advantage of opportunities to volunteer and travel.
In high school, Ms. Tobar visited Arizona for a solo backpacking trip and helped build houses in the Dominican Republic.
She got into several colleges, including U.C. Merced. But Ms. Tobar will instead attend San Francisco State University, because it has a criminal justice major.
“As a Latina, I want to show women they can also work as a police officer,” she said.
Ms. Tobar said that she understood why protests erupted calling for justice for Black and, in California especially, Latino victims of police violence.
[Read about calls to defund the police in California.]
But she said she believed that “there are officers who want to take care of us and make sure we’re safe.”
Ultimately, Ms. Tobar said she planned to become an agent for the F.B.I. before starting her own security company.
She was inspired, she said, in part by the loss of her father.
Both Tobar siblings said their mother has watched their ascent proudly.
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Dalia Rangel Perez
Recently, it’s been hot in Thermal, the small Coachella Valley community where Dalia Rangel Perez, 18, has been gearing up to start her career at U.C. Berkeley.
“The weather is around 120 right now,” she said late last month, speaking from the trailer where she lives with her family.
She thinks about her parents, who are essential farmworkers, and others like them.
“It’s incredibly difficult,” she said. “It’s heart wrenching.”
Ms. Rangel Perez grew up with the language of farmworker activism in her home, she said — her father, brother and sister all work with United Farm Workers — and it’s shaped her desire to become an immigration lawyer.
Her family immigrated from Mexicali when she was 3.
At first, they lived in a labor camp not unlike the ones where many farmworkers still live, packed together and vulnerable.
Ms. Rangel Perez said her memories are vague of her first home in California, but she recalled “the whites of the walls,” and that there was “nothing except for a mattress,” for her family of five.
Later, when they lived in a one-room trailer, she remembered roaches almost like pets, everyone sleeping on the same bed, “our skin being kind of like a marshmallow being melted into each other,” when it was summer.
“I hated it,” she said.
Ms. Rangel Perez said she’s sad she won’t be able to get to campus soon to start her first semester. She plans to stay with her sister in Bakersfield to study, since she doesn’t have internet access at home in Thermal.
She still hasn’t been to Berkeley. And although she’s nervous about being in a new environment, Ms. Rangel Perez looks forward to seeing it for herself.
(This article is part of the California Today newsletter. Sign up to get it by email.)
Here’s what else to know today
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A small group of pro-charter-school parents in Orange County rallied in front of the Santa Ana teachers’ union, calling on the state to reopen physical classrooms. [The Orange County Register]
Read about the details of the state’s plan for schools. [The New York Times]
Also, please help us understand how you’ll be teaching in the fall. If you’re a teacher, what will your remote classroom look like? Are you preparing to get back into school eventually? Please fill out this form. [The New York Times]
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Small businesses in ethnic enclaves like South Los Angeles, Chinatown and Boyle Heights are some of the most endangered in the coronavirus economic crisis. If they close, it could accelerate gentrification. [The Washington Post]
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California lawmakers are scrambling to prevent an eviction catastrophe. They don’t have much time before some protections are set to end. [The San Francisco Chronicle]
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And more than half of the members of the State Legislature signed on to a call to Gov. Gavin Newsom to immediately pay unemployment benefits to Californians caught in what the lawmakers described as a broken system: “Millions of our constituents have had no income for months.” [The Los Angeles Times]
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Following reports of restriction-flouting mansion parties, including a high-profile one that ended in a deadly shooting, Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles said he’d authorize the city to shut off power and water services to violators. [The Los Angeles Times]
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The timing couldn’t be more on the nose: With the Chinese-owned TikTok mired in a geopolitical morass, Facebook-owned Instagram released Reels, a direct competitor that allows users to create and share 15-second videos. [The New York Times]
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The idea of the lone culinary auteur is eroding, as the food world confronts toxic kitchen culture. Now, Tejal Rao, The Times’s California restaurant critic, wonders if there are ways to acknowledge the work of everyone who makes a restaurant. [The New York Times]
California Today goes live at 6:30 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes.com. Were you forwarded this email? Sign up for California Today here and read every edition online here.
Jill Cowan grew up in Orange County, went to school at U.C. Berkeley and has reported all over the state, including the Bay Area, Bakersfield and Los Angeles — but she always wants to see more. Follow along here or on Twitter.
California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U.C. Berkeley.