‘She has sense of purpose’

Maria Piedad Hernandez is not your typical community volunteer.

This undocumented immigrant from Mexico has been volunteering for Mika Community Development Corporation for the past two years.

She sells tamales for a living but volunteers much of her time at the Costa Mesa nonprofit, by sweeping streets in the neighborhood and serving food during Mika’s holiday charity drives.

The nonprofit’s mission is to build up leaders from low-income communities by organizing neighborhood action committees, and helping them set goals and working together to achieving them. Hernandez’s neighborhood goals focus on keeping it clean, respecting her neighbors and others, securing the place, sharing, and building good homes, both rationally and structurally, said Crissy Brooks, Mika executive director, who has also been Hernandez’s neighbor for nine years.

Her neighborhood has a poor reputation in Costa Mesa. But Shalimar Drive is no longer an unsafe place to live in, thanks, in part, to the efforts of people like Hernandez.

“She has this sense of purpose of serving her community,” Brooks said.

Hernandez volunteers for Mika because she believes in its cause and the difference it makes in the lives of many young people, she said through her daughter-in-law, Daisy Martinez.

Hernandez’s story as an illegal immigrant is a poignant one.

As Brooks describes it, it encapsulates what’s broken in the immigration system.

“It’s a snapshot of what happens when we have invested in kids, but we can’t provide them with a future,” she said. “We have these American values that says if you work very hard, you can reach your dreams, but that’s not true for kids with no papers, who came here through no fault of their own and can’t reach their dreams as adults.”

Hernandez came to the United States 20 years ago with her husband and children. Among them was Roman Madrigal Hernandez, her only son who was a year old when the family crossed the U.S.-Mexican border.

Last summer, Roman Madrigal Hernandez died when he tried to re-enter the country after he was deported a few months earlier.

Roman Madrigal Hernandez had been arrested by Costa Mesa police for petty theft and brandishing a weapon. His mother said that a neighbor claimed that Roman Madrigal Hernandez stole their bike. According to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Roman waived his rights to a hearing and took up an offer to return to Mexico.