A Big Step: A Brief Glimpse into the Life of Omar Hernandez
My name is Omar Hernadez. I was born in Mexico. My dad died when I was two. So it was just my mom and sister and me at first. Before we came to the US, my mom met a guy that was a “coyote”, which is a person who transports people to the United States. They were married and we came to the US with him. He brought us here illegally. From there, we just started out really poor. We were living in apartments with other people. Everyone was bunched up in a little apartment.
When I was in Mexico I was two, so I don’t really remember anything. Pretty much everything here is home for me. My mom filed papers so she could get documentation and citizenship when she came here, but it took us about 14 years to get papers just for residency. You have to take a test, but my stepdad didn’t pass. But now that I am 18, I can try to take the test. Right now we are just residents except for my little brother and little sister who were born here.
When I was younger, I got into a lot of fights at school. So I got a parole officer and he advised me about getting a job and encouraged me to take my studies seriously. When I became a resident, I used the information my parole officer gave me to find a job that fit me. Because then I could get a job, before I was a resident that wasn’t even an option. My first job was at NHS, Neighborhood Housing Services, which is now known as NeighborWorks. I was with the youth program and we built house on the west side of Salt Lake in neighborhoods like Glendale and Rose Park. We mowed lawns, did landscaping, put up fences in the area, and removed taggings from public spaces. NHS was just a couple of miles away from my school, so I would walk there. Working at NHS helped me realize the importance of community and just helped me make connections. It helped me be open to new opportunities and helped me see new directions my life could take. I learned that the community is kind of a force that helps make you who you are. You know, the community gives you opportunities and helps you know about those opportunities. I didn’t even think about a job before I met my parole officer. I was just going to school and doing whatever I had to do to pass classes. So the idea of a job opened up opportunities: I made some friends; It gave me a sense of pride in the community because of the things that I did in the community; and it made me want to give back to the community.
A good example of how a community can help provide new opportunities is the way in which I recently received a full-ride scholarship to Salt Lake Community College. Maria Garciez, the executive director whom I worked for at NHS, told me about the application process. So I applied. In the same way that I hadn’t thought about applying for a job before I met my parole officer, I never thought about applying for a scholarship until Maria encouraged me. I feel like there are more people that deserve the scholarship besides me but maybe they didn’t apply for it. Maybe they didn’t have someone like Maria to encourage them and let them know about it. I think that a lot of things have to do with being involved in the community and meeting the right people. I wouldn’t have gotten the scholarship if I had not known the people I met at NHS and the work I did in the community there. But it isn’t just who you know. If you the community offers you opportunity, it is possible to miss out on it. You have to be friendly and work hard. A lot of it has to do with your personality. You have to make the right choices.
Through this process I have learned that when you receive a special opportunity from the community, expectations change. The community expects more from you. I think that my expectations were lower when I didn’t have the scholarship. I think the community expects more from me now that I have it. They just expect me to be the best I can be and to succeed; they think that nothing is stopping me. So there’s a lot of pressure from the community. Sometimes it feels overwhelming, because I still have obstacles, though they are much smaller than they were before. For example, I have to work during the school year, but I am used to that. I have been doing it for a long time. Overall, the pressure is a good thing because it pushes me to work hard. As for my expectations of the community, I just want them to be understanding and supportive. They always have been, so my expectations are being met.
I think an understanding of expectations comes from the community. At least, that is where I learned a lot about them. I have been to certain camps where you learn all the –isms and conflict management stuff. They talk about conflicts in the community and how to deal with them. Maybe if I hadn’t have gone to those things, maybe I would not have made the connections I did, the connections that really helped me. Because I learned more about how to socialize with different people by learning different expectations, I was able to develop relationships with a variety of people.
The camps also help you feel like you know people from separate areas, you feel like they’re with you. You feel like they’ll back you up and it gives you strength knowing that there are more people that agree with you than you think. I participated in camps organized by the Inclusion Center, which brings different high school students together and informs them about difficult social issues like race and class. The camps made me feel like other people wanted to know how I feel and helped everyone there develop a similar point view. It was nice to know that there were other people that felt like me in Salt Lake. But when I went to a camp in San Jose, Califronia, I felt even more strength because the camp wasn’t just people from Salt Lake. There were people from all over: people from Florida, New York,
Getting to know people outside of
But my life here hasn’t been perfect. It has been challenging economically. My mom didn’t work because we weren’t residents at first. My stepdad has been working as a janitor ever since we got here. Earning a good income has been a persistent challenge. We are a family of 6 and my stepdad’s job as a janitor didn’t always bring in all the money we needed.
Early on, my mom used to cash checks to supplement my stepdad’s income. People would come to her with checks to cash and she would charge them a percentage of their check. She made a little money doing that. It was illegal, but it was a must. It wasn’t like the money she earned was extra funds for our family. We needed it for basic things that other people don’t have to worry about like food and rent. Another thing that my family did to make money was rent out a house. We owned a house because we couldn’t live in an apartment when there were 6 of us. So we bought a house and we had people live downstairs. It was small though; there were two bedrooms downstairs and two bedrooms upstairs. And some of us slept in the living room. Downstairs there was another family with like 3 kids and a mom and dad so my parents got money out of that. We lived like that until they told my mom not to cash checks because of she was losing money from fraudulent checks. So I started working and helping the family financially for a while. Later, my mom became a resident and she started working for the first time. She had never worked before, so it was a big thing for our family. In the end, we found a way to stand on our own two feet without anyone else’s help. Sooner or later we will get citizenship. We keep working hard and hope things will get better than before.
In the end, the most important community for me is my family. I spend a lot of time doing things with and for my family. And they’ve done a lot for me. My mom has influenced me in a lot of ways — the way I think and the things I think about. I was always a sensitive guy. And maybe it relates to not having a dad. If someone has a dad maybe they tend to be a bit more aggressive, but I had a mom who always cautioned me, “Omar do this. This is how to be nice.” She pounded the saying into my head: If you don’t have something nice to say then don’t say anything. I learned to be sensitive to other’s feelings.
Because of my sensitivity, moving from middle school to high school was a big change. In high school everything was about getting respect. I kind of felt like I didn’t have the respect I had in middle school, so a sort of attitude of rebellion kicked in during high school. I wasn’t completely immature about it, but I did things to get the respect I wanted. I started trying to prove that I was worth respecting to my peers. I got into fights and demand it. But then after some time with that attitude, I just kind of quit. I realized that I didn’t have to prove to everybody that I was respectable. I knew I was and that was all I needed. I told myself, “I don’t have to prove anything to them because I know who I am.” It was a big step.
My community — my friends at school, at NHS, and my family — were a key part of that step. They helped me see my potential and gave me tools and opportunities to realize it. They encouraged me to work hard and contribute to the community. They taught me how to deal with difficult situations and gave me reassurance because I knew there were people who knew my situation and thought like me. I still have plenty obstacles and constraints in my life. But I am confident that there are more big steps in my future. I believe I can find more freedom by working together in the community.
