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Sandra Santiago was one of the seven participants of Journey to Mosaic Squared. The expereince was life-changing, she said.

By Regina Wang

August 2008

As a person of color, 21-year-old Sandra Santiago thought she knew all about diversity. But a three-week summer experience in Oakland, she said, has changed her understanding of the world – especially the role of the church – in an increasingly diverse America.

Santiago was one of the seven young adults who participated in Journey to Mosaic Squared (J2M2), an inner-city plunge designed to explore God’s heart for justice. Together they shared a two-bedroom house in East Oakland. In the span of three weeks from July 5 to July 26 they pursued intense, formative experiences that included learning from local pastors, camping on Angel Island, and washing the feet of the homeless in San Francisco.

Her teammates not only came from different geographic areas, they also attended churches very different from hers. Santiago, a junior at California Lutheran University, worships at Nueva Esperanza, a Hispanic-American church in Simi Valley. One of her teammates, Dominique Gilliard, hailed from Georgia and grew up in a gospel-singing African-American church where going to church on Sunday was an all-day event.

“It was a little crazy,” Santiago said with a chuckle, explaining that she had never shared a bathroom with anyone before. But in Oakland she played, cooked, hiked, and most often worshipped with her teammates, whom she came to love, she says. “They had so much to teach me.”

During the second week the team jumped on a bus and traveled throughout California in four days, exploring the history of African-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Hispanic-Americans. They were paired with a group of leaders from various Covenant churches.

Santiago (center) served food with her teammates Domnique Gilliard (left) and Jeffrey Kelly to the homeless in San Francisco.

The most powerful experience for her on this trip, Santiago said, was when an African-American pastor shared her personal fears. The pastor wept when she recalled her young sons being followed in stores. She often worried her six-foot-five husband was being suspected as a criminal.

Racism, Santiago realized, is still alive and divides people- even Christians – as churches in America still remain segregated in ethnicity and class.

When she and her teammates returned to Oakland after the bus journey, she said she did not know what to do with this new knowledge. “I was depressed. I felt powerless to change things.”

“Where is God?” She found herself wrestling with this question during J2M2.

And God surprised her, she said, as she saw him in a place she least expected – inside a county prison.

During the last week of J2M2, the team visited a Santa Clara County prison. Through the help of Peggy Bingham, a Covenant pastor and chaplain, they had the opportunity to meet with some inmates.

Santiago was astounded when the inmates shared their love for God and gave testimonies of miracles. “I knew God had to be there, because it was impossible for someone (without God) to live in that condition and praise God,” she said. “He showed me that he is there – and he wants to use us.”

She had another revelation: The church, Santiago learned, bears the hope to a world thirsty for living water.

“Before, I thought church was all about entertaining and caring for people in your church, watching out for them. Now I see the opposite – people who are outside the church are important.”

The experience of living with people of different ethnicities, hearing their stories and learning about their cultures has broadened her vision of who God is, she said. And she wanted to share this vision with her church in Simi Valley, Nueva Esperanza.

At the same time, she said she understood the challenges that her church faces – as most immigrant churches do. She has seen the tensions that occur between a Spanish-speaking and an English-speaking congregation. Alienation can occur between an immigrant church and a more established mainstream church.

But she said that all churches need to live out the purpose of Christ.

“I want to share the need for the church to go outside, to open its eyes to the reality we are living in, and to make them aware that there are people out there who need help,” Santiago said. “He taught me to be bold and open to whatever he has for me. And to let him show me the way, and I will follow, instead of doing things the way I want. There’s so much more than my selfish plans and goals.”

“I am excited,” Santiago said.

This article was first published on the Web site of the Evangliecal Covenant Church

Lucy Spelman received her DVM at UC Davis in 1990, before becoming the youngest and first female director of the Smithsonian’s National Zoo. “My memory of Davis is extremely positive,” Spelman says.

by Regina Wang/ Enterprise Correspondent

A kangaroo that had fractured its neck, a bear cub that had mysteriously broken both of its front legs, a frog the size of a dime that needed eye surgery: Welcome to the world of zoo vets, where absurdity and unpredictability reign.

Lucy Spelman, co-editor of “Rhino with Glue-on Shoes” and a gorilla doctor in Africa, said being a zoo vet is “never a straight path.”

“You have to be flexible and creative, know the science, but do something no one has ever done before,” she said.

Through her job, she has encountered many extraordinary stories that have changed her perspective on life, animals and herself. “What about sharing these stories with more people?” she thought.

In 2005 she discussed her book idea with co-editor Ted Mashima and her colleagues, and they enthusiastically supported her, contributing to the book with their own poignant stories. The end result was a collection of true but bizarre animal stories by 21 zoo vets.

Spelman, who received her D.V.M. at UC Davis in 1990, was the youngest and first female director of the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington, D.C. She is now the regional manager for the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project, monitoring the world’s last 700 gorillas in central and east central Africa.

A Connecticut native, Spelman attended the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine after completing her bachelor’s degree in biology from Brown University.

“My memory of Davis is extremely positive,” she said.

She remembered the days when she sipped her double latte at Café Roma (it closed in 2007), and studied with classmates who have become lifetime friends.

It was in Davis where she took up cycling (and thus broke both her ankles) and passed by the endless tomato fields and through the foothills. When she thinks of Davis, she remembers strolling down the vet school hallways, greeting her colleagues, mentored by professors like Autumn Davidson and Linda Lowenstine.

“It was about learning and belonging to a part of a community,” she said.

She began to see the fruit of this learning when she directed the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in 2000. She came on the board wanting to provide the best care for the animals, but soon realized the zoo was extremely underfunded and its infrastructure deteriorating — a prevalent problem among many zoos.

Spelman rolled up her sleeves and spearheaded a series of capital renewal projects, such as pushing for federal funding and a multimillion-dollar corporate deal.

Renovations soon got under way — but the animals probably did not appreciate the construction too much, she said.

Spelman now lives in Africa. She travels to Congo, Rwanda and Uganda, where the world’s last 700 gorillas live, leading a group of vets in monitoring their health.

“There are very few opportunities in the world to do my job,” she said. The rampage of human presence — such as polluted air and soil erosion — has touched almost all natural habitats of animals, she said. To protect the remaining gorillas, Spelman and her colleagues climb 10,000 feet in the mountains and learn Swahili and French to train the native vets.

Even so, they and the native vets try to interfere as little as possible.

“Basically we try to do nothing,” she said, explaining that vets intervene only when the gorillas are injured by humans. Human contact increases the risk of gorillas being infected by human diseases, such as polio.

Yet Spelman said she remains hopeful, and that’s why she launched the book project. She wanted to share how zoo vets around the world are trying tirelessly to restore heath to their patients.

“I truly believe when a doctor heals a patient, human or animal, the entire ecosystem benefits,” she said. “All lives are connected.”

Dr. Lucy’s blog: http://www.drlucyspelman.com/

By Regina Wang/Enterprise correspondent

Ever since she started nursing school last fall, Katie Barker of Woodland, 40, said her house got messier and messier.

When she arrived home from hours of lectures and tried to catch up with the endless reading and paper assignments required by her two-year intensive program, there also were piles of unopened mail, dirty laundry and recycling awaiting her attention. Her stress level tripled when her sons asked for rides to their sports events. And she knew she did not want people to see her house.

Two months into nursing school, Barker realized she had to take action. She googled online and gasped with joy when she found out that her dilemma had become so common that an organization, National Association of Professional Organizers, was dedicated to help busy people like her.

She e-mailed her firefighter husband the contact information of a Davis-based professional organizer, Claudia Smith.

“This is what I want for Mother’s Day,” she told her husband.

Now two months after Smith s consulting, Barker said she has seen dramatic change.

“My office is completely free now and I can do all my work there,” Barker said. Smith, she added, gave her a fresh eye on the things she should keep or get rid of.

A former social worker, Smith became a professional organizer five years ago. The two professions, she said, share much in common.  “It s not just about organizing the sweaters but letting go those memories of the sweaters,” Smith said. Her job calls for empathy, sensitivity and confidentiality.  “It’s a difficult and emotional process for people.”

According to Smith, people often accumulate things out of guilt; they tell themselves that they should keep an item because it is either too expensive to discard or a gift from someone. Unused items, like a pair of jeans three sizes too small, represent the people they once were or the people they wish they could be. Thus their houses become loaded with clutter that screams out guilt.

“A person s house should enrich not stress their lives,” Smith said.

Thanks to shows like TLC’s “Clean Sweep” and HGTV’s “Mission: Organization,” hiring someone to rescue a household from clutter has become a welcomed option in the recent years. The demand has also given rise to a new career option for those seeking to share their organizational skills.

Smith said she enjoys the flexibility of her job. Her schedule depends on her 12 to 15 regular clients who call on her for help. And she charges $50 an hour. She also teaches a class through the city of Davis and holds a support group.

The 4,200-membered National Association of Professional Organizers has doubled in its membership in the past three years, according to president Standolyn Robertson. NAPO was founded by five women in California in 1985.

Rather than organizing things for the clients, professional organizers teach people how to be organized. It’s transferring skills, Robertson said.  “We’re putting systems into place and helping people do it on their own.”  Their clients are not limited to families. They also serve corporations, law firms, small businesses.

As people have increasingly complicated lifestyles, it makes sense for them to hire someone to create a system for their office, kitchen or closet, Robertson said. In the past, people just got pieces of mail each week, but now they have their mailboxes, voice mail, and e-mail filled within a day. Kids in her generation, Robertson said, would simply go out to play. Kids now have calendars that include play dates and directions to soccer games.

“There is a lot more to manage,” she said, and that explains the industry’s growth in the last 25 years.

But while people seem to lack time to manage things, they find plenty of time to accumulate – perhaps contributing to another growing industry – storage units.

One in 10 American households uses commercial storage. Usstoragesearch.com, a Nebraska-based online company that helps clients find the closest storage units near their cities, has at least 51,000 visitors a month. Its Web site contains the information of 12,000 storage companies statewide.

“On the industry side we are growing,” said Megan Eckert, vice president of the online company.  “We have more and more hits every day.”

Some facts about storage units: California has the second highest number of storage units, trailing right behind Texas. While most people might think students or military personnel are the top users for storage units, they only make a small percentage. The No. 1 users are single family homeowners, who comprise 53 percent of all users, and the top storage item is furniture. There are specific units for particular needs, such as RV units and climate-controlled units (for electronics, photos or expensive furniture).

Storage units, however, encourage people to accumulate instead of organizing their possessions, Smith said, adding that they should be used for very specific and time-limited purposes.

“You pay bills for storage each month and you feel bad about it,” she said.

But hiring a professional organizer also costs money. While a storage unit may run anywhere from $45 to $90 a month, a professional organizer charges anywhere from $50 to $150 an hour.

And it’s often not the cost that keeps people from hiring an organizer. The stigma attached to a messy house can sometimes stop someone from seeking professional help. In fact, Smith’s neighbors asked her to take off an advertising sign on her car – which she sometimes parks on the street – so that others wouldn’t think they had hired her for help.

Robertson said, though, that hiring an organizer has nothing to do with personal weaknesses. After all, people have busy lives.

“It s not a character flaw that you have a lawyer do your will,” Robertson said.

Barker agrees, and is thrilled she made the decision to get some help from Smith. She remembers the days when the house was in disorder when she had to arrive at nursing school at 6 a.m. and come home to fix dinner.

Besides, a show on BBC America is enough to lighten her up.

“My secret guilty pleasure is watch ‘How Clean is Your House’ – it makes me feel so much better about my house,” she said.

A Yolo County deputy sheriff , Jose “Tony” Diaz , was shot to death on June 15. Diaz’s murderer is a former Davis resident with a long history of gang involvement. On the day of Diaz’s memorial at the UC Davis Pavilion, I interviewed two people about their views on gun control, as the Supreme Court recently overturned D.C.’s handgun ban.

What do you think?

Friday, June 27, 2008

by Regina Wang/Enterprise Correspondent

Davis, CA – A poignant memorial service was held for deputy sheriff Jose “Tony” Diaz at the UC Davis Pavilion on Friday. At least 1,500 law-enforcement officers and community members attended the memorial.

Diaz, 37, was shot to death while pursuing a suspect on Father’s Day, June 15. A single father, Diaz was survived by three children, ages 2, 4 and 16. Family members said that in August he was about to wed his fiancée Julie Yu, who has five children from her previous marriage.

The alleged killer, 35-year old Marco Antonio Topete, is charged with capital murder. Topete was captured nine hours after he shot Diaz with a .223-caliber assault rifle. The bullet pierced through the officer’s bullet-proof vest.

Topete was reported by a Davis resident who found him consuming alcohol inside a blue Ford Taurus with his 4-month-old daughter. A verified Norteño gang member, he had just left jail after serving a 12-year sentence for assault, according to Sheriff Ed Prieto.

Sgt. Rod Rifredi said he was “absolutely shocked” when he heard Diaz’s death. “Tony just always had a smile. No matter what, he always had a smile.”

“Tony is the fifth or sixth officer I was friends with that was taken and murdered on the duty,” Rifredi said, wiping away a tear with the back of his hand.

As somber notes of bagpipes filled the Pavilion, many attendees wept and mourned the life of a man who was admired by family and colleagues.

The third youngest of 10 children, Diaz emigrated from Mexico at the age 4. His family settled in Dixon, a small rural town southwest of Sacramento. Growing up, he spent much time working in the fields alongside his father.

He never attended college, but he taught himself computer skills and worked for Yolo County’s Information Technology Department. While working full-time he started attending the police academy at night, and in 2004 he was sworn in as an officer.

His colleagues remembered him as someone who liked to give traffic violators a second chance. When he caught speeding drivers, they said, he would give them a warning and let them go.

He was also known as a doting father. A memorial fund has been established for his three children.

While Diaz’s death has saddened the community, it has also roused so much fear. Anderson, a farmer in Woodland, says that he now carries a concealed gun with him.

“I’m really feeling like I need to take a concealed weapon just so to protect yourself from all these bad people that are running around,” says Anderson, 69.

He said he was saddened by Diaz’s passing, and it made him feel nervous.

“I’m an old guy,” Anderson said, “I think years ago you had more faith in your friends and neighbors than you do now.”

If you would like to contribute a donation, you can send it to The Jose “Tony” Diaz Funeral Fund and the Children of Jose “Tony” Diaz Fund, both established at Washington Mutual Bank, 1224 E. Gibson Road, Woodland, CA 95776. Account no. 4924913597.

Please check out my photo/audio slideshow.

Bogie plays with his tail. Photo provided by Sara Laufer

Sara and Bogie take on the world. Photo provided by Sara Laufer

Sara and Bogie. Photo by Daniel Jones

This is my first photo-audio production. It definitely has lots of room for improvement. Appreciate any feedback!

- Regina

A Street Chef in Harlem, Harry White hopes to bless people with his singing. But He needs to regain his trust in people first.

By Regina Wang/Enterprise correspondent

June 6, 2008

Members of the Chinese-American community in Davis have sprung into action to raise funds for earthquake relief in the wake of the devastating May 12 earthquake in China’s Sichuan province.

Michael Tan, an engineer at UC Davis, said he was worried when he got the news that an earthquake ad hit his hometown, but he wasn’t sure how great the damage was. Then, when he saw photos of children buried under debris and parents wailing next to the collapsed classrooms, pangs of pain jolted his heart.

“You look at those kids — they could’ve been mine,” Tan said.

The 7.9-magnitude earthquake has claimed more than 69,127 people, with 17,918 still missing, according to the latest government figures.

And the devastation continues. Aftershocks are now hitting the affected region, and heavy rain is compounding the misery as thousands are still homeless.

NewStar Chinese School, a local organization that offers Mandarin class to children, has raised at least $10,700 from the Davis community. The school has 160 students and 90 percent is of Chinese descent.

Donations will be collected for the final time Saturday morning at the Davis Farmers’ Market in Central Park, Fourth and C streets.

The responses from the community have been heartwarming, said principal Ning Wan, whose family is originally from Sichuan. For example, Davis Fire Fighters donated $500, Wan said.

The board members of NewStar plan to use the donations to build a library or a computer lab for a school there in Sichuan.

“This is a tragedy, but I feel so good that so many people care,” Wan said. “We hope to build people’s lives there.”

Bob Jennings, a deacon at the Davis Chinese Christian Church, says he has been impressed with the Chinese government’s response to the disaster. Jennings lived in Sichuan for eight years. He remembers the Tangshan earthquake in 1976, which killed at least 300,000 people, and said the government was unwilling to share much information or receive emergency help from other countries.

Now, 31 years later, the attitude has changed dramatically. The government even approved relief teams and accepted donations from Japan and Taiwan, two neighbors China often treats with reservations.

“They are acting responsibly this time,” Jennings said of the Chinese government.

Tan and his family have attended the 400-member Davis church for 12 years. He said he knows at least two people in the congregation who are also from Sichuan. The church has raised at least $10,600 so far and will give the donations to World Visions, a Christian humanitarian organization that is now distributing tents and medical supplies in Sichuan and plans to rebuild schools and houses there.

As of May 20, authorities recorded 4,700 unclaimed children whose parents presumably died in the quake, Civil Affairs Ministry official Zhang Shifeng said at a news conference today. Tan has two teenage children, but he said if the government allows adoption, he and his wife would like to consider adopting a quake orphan.

Meanwhile, he was saddened to watch videos of grief-stricken parents crying over the bodies of their only children because of China’s One Child Policy.

“I haven’t teared up for 30 years,” he said, as his voice choked with emotion.

What Sichuan needs is long-term relief, said Billy Yip, a pastor at Chinese Christian Herald Crusades, a community outreach organization based in New York.

CCHC is planning to build an orphanage in Sichuan, to add to the two others it has built in China.

So far, CCHC has raised at least $575,000 from all over the United States.

“[The earthquake] came as a shock,” Yip said. “Hopefully, the whole thing draws everyone together.”

Yip said the openness and effectiveness of the Chinese government was “remarkable,” especially its tolerance of the media coverage.

If you would like to contribute to NewStar Chinese School’s relief fund, please write a check payable to the school and send it to P.O. Box 74298, Davis, CA 95617-7429.

If you would like to donate to World Vision, go to http://worldvision.org.

Copyright, 2008, The Davis Enterprise. All Rights Reserved.

Polio survivor immigrates to America, becomes activist and earns title of Ms. Wheelchair California

by Regina Wang
Enterprise Correspondent

May 9, 2008

Before the tiara of Ms. Wheelchair California was placed on her, Shannon Coe had already possessed a crownholder’s dignity and resolve. From an infant afflicted with polio in post-war Vietnam to a refugee growing up disabled and fatherless in inner-city Los Angeles, to a human rights advocate who has traveled to 41 countries, the 32-year-old has led a life that outshines the glory from any overdue crowns.

The fall of Saigon:

When Coe was 18 months old, she was diagnosed with polio. In 1976, Vietnam was in turmoil as the Northern Vietnamese Communist regime was ready to swallow the south immediately after America’s decamping. Alarmed and desperate, Southern Vietnamese, like Coe’s family, made up their mind to flee the country by any means.

Coe, back then under the family name Hy, was considered too weak to endure the journey. Her relatives suggested throwing her into a well.

Her father stood up for his 4 year-old daughter. “Maybe in America we can find cure so she can walk again,” he said, determined to carry her out of Vietnam.

At 4 a.m. Coe’s immediate family and relatives, totaling 20 people, sneaked into a crude wooden boat heading toward Thailand, where they could find refuge and possibly sponsorship to America. Meanwhile Coe’s mother was eight months pregnant with her sister.

Now, 28 years later, Coe remembers the disorienting days her family wandered on the ocean. She also remembers moment their hope surged when a Thai boat arrived to the rescue, pulling them up from the wooden boat. She peeked down and watched the deteriorating wooden boat sink into the deep water within minutes.

After spending time in refugee camps in Thailand, Indonesia and Singapore, the family was sponsored to go to Switzerland, but her father turned it down, determined to go to America, where he believed the more-advanced medical training would promise his daughter a better life.

Coming to America:

Eventually the family was sponsored by a church to America. They were settled into the Lincoln Heights area of Los Angeles – where gang violence and inter-ethnic tensions were the norm. Coe’s father took on a menial labor job and her mother worked in a sweat shop, trying to make do with their three children in a one-bedroom apartment.

Although Coe received her first wheelchair upon her arrival in America, she was quickly sent to a special education school for children with learning and physical disabilities, segregated from the mainstream. It took the school four years to realize Coe was intellectually competent.

Yet things did not become easier when Coe left for a regular public school.

“Hey! Cripple!” a boy never failed to greet her on the way to class.

Right before she reached seven grade, her father – the man who had delivered her out of death and Vietnam – died from leukemia.

“When my father died, I came out of my shell,” Coe said, realizing she had no time to be self-conscious anymore. At age 12, she rolled up her sleeves to aim her widowed mother who spoke no English and had no experience in dealing with the American way. As the oldest daughter, Coe took on the responsibility of translating and interceding for her family.

During those arduous hours, her father’s words whispered in her ears, “Education is the key to success,” he had often reminded her. “You have to succeed in life, you have to be somebody.”

But success seemed unattainable to a struggling refugee family, to a young girl who wondered how she could claim her passion and dreams to a world that held little faith to those with disabilities.

Persistence

She is used to people staring at her, but what she cannot stand, she said, is people holding preconceived notions about her.

Growing up, when her siblings helped her up and down flights of stairs, people often watched with wonder. Coe knew many of them were simply curious, so she would answer their questions and usually, they became friends. But still, it was hard being the only disabled person in various settings.

“It would’ve been nice to have a mentor or role model,” she said.

Since she had never seen a successful professional in wheelchair, Coe remembers the doubt and fear she carried while striving her best in school because she did not know what the future held.

Neither did her relatives. They only knew that in Vietnam, disabled people were beggars. They sighed and predicted she would never get married or hold jobs.

“I need to do something to not be stuck in the box they put me in,” she said, determined to attain her aspirations.

During her junior year at UC Berkeley, Coe applied to study abroad in Hong Kong. But the education abroad office discouraged her, saying few, if any, colleges overseas were accessible to the disabled.

Coe went home and did her own research, “I wouldn’t believe there was not one single school that wouldn’t accept me because I have disability.” She called colleges after colleges – and sure enough, she found one in England, Lancaster University.

After her studies in England, she wanted to join the Peace Corps. She passed the interview with ease, but her disability and turbulent medical records – she had had surgeries to remove one lung and to install nails in her spine – made the Peace Corps reluctant to accept her.

It took her almost two years to clear her medical records, but when it came to placement, the Peace Corps discouraged her again from going to developing countries, where they believed disabled people were incapable of surviving and easy targets of robbery. After much persistence, and some legal action, they were finally convinced of her determination.

They placed her in Paraguay. For two years she organized Special Olympics projects, taught English, and gave speeches to the government.

One day her landlady told her that some idlers in the villages would hide from her when she passed by them every morning.

“They see you go to work and they feel bad just sitting around and chatting with friends,” her landlady told Coe.

And she was the only person on the team who did not get robbed.

“My friends sometimes say to me: ‘You don’t like to hear ‘No,’” Coe said with a smile. “I am not afraid of failures; I am afraid of not trying. There are so many opportunities in life. Why not take them?”

Ms. Wheelchair California

Coe knew she had a soft spot for the disabled in other parts of the world, particularly Asia. She joined a world-renown charity organization, Joni and Friends, to bring hundreds of wheelchairs to the disabled in Vietnam and Cuba. Through her volunteer work, she met her husband, Dominic Coe. It was a pleasant surprise to find out the similarities they share: she is half Vietnamese and Chinese; he’s half English and Italian. And he also lost his father when he was 13. The couple now resides in Davis.

Then at a social event, she met the previous year’s Miss Wheelchair California, Susan Rotchy, who encouraged entering the pageant. That was when she found out that Miss Wheelchair was far from being a beauty contest but “a competition based on advocacy, achievement, communication and presentation to select the most accomplished and articulate spokesperson for individuals with disabilities, ” according to the Web site.

Coe entered the pageant and was crowned the title in March.

To her, the crown shows that contrary to popular notions, having disability does not limit a person. “Women with disabilities can still be confident, capable, attractive – and we are role models to inspire others,” Coe added.

In July she is competing for Miss Wheelchair America in Maryland.

She hopes to win the title so it will help her realize her dream – bridging the disabled in America with the disabled worldwide to empower each other and improve their lives together.

Coe became a Christian during her college years at Berkley. She credited God as her source of strength and compassion.

“My faith in God has helped me realize how fortunate I am, so I can’t forget where I came from,” she said. “I have decided to dedicate my life in helping those that were left behind in developing countries.”

And being a persistent person, Coe is true to her words. In May she is representing Joni and Friends to bring 200 wheelchairs to Ongole, India.

To support Shannon Coe at Ms. Wheelchair America 2009 in Maryland from July 21-27, please contact her at hyshannon@gmail.com or visit her blog http://mswheelchairca08.blogspot.com

Copyright, 2008, The Davis Enterprise. All Rights Reserved.

There has got to be something magical about working in the tallest building in the largest city in the United States of America. 22-year-old Vanessa Ramdat knows it has got to be the case.

Just like immigrating to America after 13 years of yearning, she knows one day her hope of becoming a model will also come true.

“I’m tall and I’m pretty,” Ramdat said. “I’d like to be famous. I want to be a model.”

Her 5′8″ frame stood straight against hundreds of postcards and key chains. Her pearl teeth contrasted her chocolate-hued face. Her sleek long hair runs down her shoulders. If it was not for the ocean blue uniform she was wearing, Vanessa Ramdat could have been ready for her first catwalk.

Growing up her parents promised her again and again, One day you will live in America. She waited for 13 years for the day to arrive. It came true two years ago when she and her mother landed in New York from Guyana. Till this day, Ramdat’s eyes still gloss when she recalls the childhood promise.

And now she gets to work at a gift shop on the 80^th floor of the Empire State Building.

Built in 1930, the Empire State Building represents America’s pride and prosperity. It does not matter to Ramdat that thirty some years ago it fell off the throne as the world’s tallest building and now lags behind eight countries. In her eyes, this building is pure magical.

For example, her uncle, who has lived here for 25 years, has yet had the chance to tour the building.

The best part of her job, Ramdat said, is greeting everyone around the world every day. The second best part of her job is probably working with everyone around the world. 80 percent of her co-workers are immigrants hailed from South Africa, Jamaica, China, Trinidad.

“We have fun together and we understand each other,” she said. Her co-workers nicknamed her “baby” for being the youngest among the crew.

The diversity of her workforce is not unique to the Empire State Building. A little less than 50 percent of New Yorkers speak another language at home. And 37 percent of the city population is foreign-born, the 2000 Census records. The phenomenon makes the city an immediate second home for immigrants.

Ramdat’s worked at Conway where she had just arrived here. Her current manager happened to shop there one day and they struck a conversation. The manager asked her if she would like to work at the building of her dream.

“I couldn’t stop laughing for five minutes,” Ramdat said.

Now her hourly wages have doubled to $14.75. She works 37 hours a week to pay the rent of a tiny one-bedroom apartment which she and her mother share. Her father is still in Guyana.

“It’s gorgeous here. I love it,” she said of the city.