Enjoying fruits of lifetimes of hard work
Efren Carrillo, Sr., and his wife Margarita of Santa Rosa are the parents of Sonoma County Supervisor Efren Carrillo.
CHRISTOPHER CHUNG / THE PRESS DEMOCRATPublished: Sunday, February 21, 2010 at 2:29 p.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, February 21, 2010 at 2:29 p.m.
They're not rich and their volunteer-built house isn't fancy. Even so, life in America has worked out for Efren and Margarita Carrillo, parents of the 28-year-old Sonoma County supervisor who shares his father's name.
Key to the immigrant couple's success, and to that of their three children, is how hard they've always worked. Both Margarita, 50, and Efren, 54, were just 14 when they took work in clothing factories in their native Mexico.
“I worked nine hours a day, sewing,” Margarita said from a couch in her family's home off West Ninth Street. She met her future husband at a factory in Mexico City. They married when she was 17, he 21.
Not long afterward, Efren was laid off and he decided it was time to see for himself if it was true what he'd heard, that work — very good work by Mexico's standards — was easy to find north of the border.
He slipped into California illegally in the late 1970s and made it to the Los Angeles area, where a brother was living. Getting by as an undocumented immigrant wasn't at all as easy as he'd been led to believe, but there was work to be had. The very day after he arrived in L.A. he found a job in a factory, assembling blue jeans.
Carrillo has had little trouble staying employed through the past 30 years, and sometimes has worked more than one job. This year is his seventh as head custodian at Helen Lehman School. Margarita Carrillo works at Biella and Lincoln elementary schools as an English Language Learners testing technician.
Their eldest child, the county's first Latino supervisor, figures that a strong work ethic is the leading attribute he learned from his parents. “They're willing to do the work and not complain,” the younger Efren Carrillo said.
He was born in 1981 while his parents were working and living in North Hollywood, but he spent most of his first five years in Mexico. His mother took him and his sister, Susana, across the border several times before they joined Efren Carrillo Sr. in the U.S. for good in 1986, the year a reformed immigration law offered amnesty to some undocumented immigrants.
By then Carrillo Sr. was living in Santa Rosa. While he was still in North Hollywood he'd left clothing manufacturing after learning that he could earn better pay at a plant that produced wire. He rose to foreman and when the plant's owner moved the operation to Sonoma County, he moved, too.
After his family came from Mexico to join him, both he he and Margarita enrolled in English classes in Santa Rosa. Both became naturalized citizens. Their final child, Abraham, was born in 1990, the same year the Carrillos applied — along with more than 80 other families — to receive the first home built in Sonoma County by Habitat for Humanity.
The Carrillos won out and dedicated hundreds of hours to helping build the 1,300-square-foot house on Link Lane that is still their family home.
As their three children grew, Efren Sr. and Margarita focused on encouraging them to do well in school and on setting aside the money to allow them to participate in sports and martial-arts training.
“When they were in school,” their father said, “it was hard for me to help them with their homework.” He was limited in that department by his own education, which continued only through sixth grade in Mexico, and his imperfect English.
He did what he could, serving on the Site Council at Lincoln School and urging his kids to take full advantage of education they were offered. For years, he and Margarita ran from soccer practice to baseball game to tae kwon do meet.
“The important thing is to stay with them,” Margarita said.
Her eldest son, the supervisor, said that years before he attended Santa Rosa High and the University of California at Berkeley it dawned on him how much his parents sacrificed for their children, starting with their difficult migration from Mexico.
“I would sit in class and think that these guys really put it out there for us — I'm not going to disappoint them,” he said.
He was 20 and in college, Susana was 19 and also in college and Abraham was just 12 when their father was laid off after 23 years with the then-struggling wire manufacturer, in 2001.
“I didn't tell them I'd been laid off,” the elder Carrillo said. “I didn't want to distract them from their studies.”
As he'd done many times since age 14, he went in search of work and found it — as a part-time custodian with Santa Rosa City Schools. That job that led to his current post at Helen Lehman School.
These days he and Margarita see much less of their children. Efren Jr. lives nearby but puts in long days as the Fifth District supervisor and his siblings live at home but stay busy with classes at SRJC and myriad after-school pursuits. Susana aspires to a career in the medical field and Abraham in the sciences.
Their mother said that not being with them as much is all right as long as she knows they're all three healthy and doing well.
“I always ask them if they are happy,” she said, “and they say they couldn't have better lives.”
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