By Melanie Slone
“You never know ‘til you try,” says Mayor Esther C. Sanchez, the first woman and first person of Latino descent to be mayor of Oceanside. Leaving home young, overcoming an assault, fighting for people’s rights—especially for Latinos—, and eventually returning home to be elected as mayor, she’s lived up to her words.
Mayor Sanchez grew up in the multifaceted Oceanside community of Eastside. “My mom worked at a rubber factory in San Clemente, and my dad worked on base…What they wanted was to have a home. And they really put a lot of effort into that.”
Sanchez’s second-grade teacher told her father his daughter would be going to college someday, words she carried with her. Her mom also believed in the power of education, having been homeless as a child and only done one year of elementary school in Tijuana.
Her mother’s stories of survival inspired her, as did the belief she could achieve whatever she wanted. She got a scholarship to Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island, clear across the country.
“I would listen to the stories from my uncle of the Mexican Revolution, Pancho Villa and all that,” she says. But going to Brown, where there were very few Latinos, made her realize she needed to learn about who she was…..
