I grew up here in the desert, where the sky goes on forever and the mountain peaks tower over us.

The desert landscape was my first sense of home. It taught me something: that what looks stark and harsh from the outside is actually full of life and beauty. That life can survive, and produce something extraordinary, even in the hardest conditions.

The people who live here, community members, hardworking families are the same way. I know this not just because of my work here in Doña Ana County but it is also my home and upbringing.

My father was a mechanic for the City of El Paso. My mother was a caseworker at a state mental health facility. Neither of them finished high school the conventional way, they both earned their GEDs and built their lives through sheer determination and a commitment to showing up. They were wage workers their entire careers. We were not wealthy. But we were rich in something else, a family culture of service so deep it was simply the air we breathed.

I remember going to work with my mother on her Saturday shifts as a little girl. The facility served people who lived on the margins of society, people many others looked past or looked away from. I was young, didn't understand things and I was afraid. My mother saw that and she sat us down and told me clearly, every person in this building deserves dignity and respect. Every single one. That was her faith, her character, and her life's work, all in one sentence.

My father was a problem solver. In the garage, in the kitchen, around the church, wherever something was broken or needed building, he was there. He taught me that a solution always exists if you are willing to try. He experimented in the kitchen the same way he approached a repair: creatively, tenaciously, without fear of getting it wrong the first time. I learned about a car's inner workings, how to cook, different tools and their function and much much more. But most of all I learned how to live.

Both of my parents served their faith community the same way they served in their jobs, quietly and without asking for recognition. My mother painted a mural in the children's room of our church and sang in the choir. My father fixed what needed fixing. We were a family of service. It was never a choice we made. It was who we were.

My grandmother anchored our home when my parents were working. She taught me that care does not always come with a title or a paycheck. It comes through showing up, laughing together, sharing a meal and expecting everyone to pull their weight. She had a deep personal faith that she expressed entirely through her hands and her presence. She gave me a model of steady, everyday service that I have never forgotten.

I took all that parents taught me what my family provided for me became myself as a teenager, independent, strong, certain that I would lead a life rooted in the values that surrounded. I was drawn to government and law. I wanted to understand how systems worked and I wanted to use that understanding to support people to successfully navigate them.

And then, when I was 22 years old, I lost my mother.

She died of a heart attack in the emergency room. She was 50 years old. Lupus, a disease that takes women of color at devastating rates, had weakened her heart over the years and the medications she depended on to manage her pain ultimately contributed to her death. She had given everything she had, for as long as she could, in service to her family and her community. And the systems that were supposed to care for her were not enough.

That loss broke something open in me. And out of that opening came a clarity I have never lost. I knew I wanted to live a life she would be proud of. I wanted to honor everything she had built and every sacrifice she had made. I wanted to do the things she never got the chance to do.

I returned to school. I refocused my path toward service, individual advocacy, community organizing, the unglamorous work of supporting people to fight for a road, a health clinic, street lights, clean water. I studied government and economics because I wanted to understand the structures of power that determine who thrives and who struggles. Then I embraced Islam, because when I studied it, I found a framework that felt like the most natural extension of everything my mother had modeled: a life of self-reflection, self-improvement, and service, to family, to community, to humanity, to all of creation.

My faith is not separate from my service to the public. It is the foundation of it. It teaches me that the earth, the life it sustains, is sacred. That every human being carries dignity. That those who have knowledge and access have a responsibility to share it with those who don't. That leadership is not a privilege, it is a trust.

I have spent more than a decade working alongside colonia residents and working families in Doña Ana County and Las Cruces. I have sat in government rooms and watched decisions get made without the people most affected ever being in the room. I have helped residents understand systems designed to confuse them. I have watched brilliant, capable community members be dismissed, talked past, and treated as though their experience did not constitute knowledge.

I am running for County Commission because that has to change.

When I think about this desert, these mountains, this river, this borderland community, they deserve to be protected. Not only because we depend on them, but because they have an inherent right to exist, to breathe, to remain. Exploiting this land for short-term profit, without regard for the people, animals and plants who live alongside it, is something I will not accept.

My mother lived her whole life in service and died too young. My father solved every problem he ever faced with tenacity and creativity. My grandmother taught me that love is a verb. My faith teaches me that I am accountable, to my community, to this land and to God, for how I use and share whatever knowledge and access I have been given.

I am running for District 1 because the people here deserve someone who will fight for them with that kind of accountability.

Not for power. Not for a title.

But simply to service. The way my family taught me.

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