TX

Tony Pena

By: Voces Staff

Tony Pena is 29 years old from Phoenix, Arizona, who currently lives in Portland, Oregon. He works at Squarespace, an internet domain tech company, where he has worked as a senior customer advisor for three years. He also works as an employee resources group co-chair for the Queer Resource Group. He first heard about coronavirus back in October 2019, after reading about this virus in Wuhan, China in the BBC or NPR. He didn’t think it was going to impact his life all that much at first, given how far away it was all happening and spreading. 

Elizabeth Villa

By: Voces Staff

Elizabeth Villa is a 51-year-old kindergarten teacher and mother of six. She has five sons and one daughter and is also a grandmother to two girls. She has been teaching for 20 years and has lived all over the country, but mostly in Phoenix. Villa discusses the challenges she has faced during the pandemic and the impact COVID-19 has had on her family. As an educator, she also discusses how COVID-19 will affect the education system and what the future holds for teachers and students. 
 

Yajaira Rangel

By: Voces Staff

Yajaira Rangel, an elementary school teacher in Mesquite, Texas, has had to figure out how to teach her students online during the COVID-19 pandemic. She says the pandemic has impacted her financially, mentally and professionally. 
 

Richard Soto

By Voces Staff

In 1966, Richard Soto of Tracy, California, should have rotated off with his surgical team from a hospital ship off the coast of Vietnam. Instead, he stayed on, going AWOL, feeling an obligation to incoming casualties.“I told the doctor that I was working with, ‘I’m not going home.’ He says, ‘Well ... when they come to investigate, I’ll tell them you were here,’” Soto said. “I think he knew there was going to be a court-martial.” But Soto was not court-martialed; he was honorably discharged in 1968.

Mario Lewis

In high school in El Paso, TX, Mario Lewis was told to forget college, that he “could not compete with Anglos,” recalled Lewis, a Mexican American. But others saw promise in Lewis as he became active in the Junior League of United Latin American Citizens, which put him on a path to law school and a career of service to equal justice. Lewis was born Feb. 15, 1947, in El Paso, Texas. He graduated from the University of Texas at El Paso in 1970. Three years later, he graduated from the University of Southern California Law School.

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