Young, poor, Hispanic, raised by a single mother — people who grow up like this are supposed to end up as just another statistic. But not Anna. Not in this life. For this podcast, Anna takes you through her story as a Hispanic-American raised by a single mother in southern California. There's no flash, no gimmicks, just raw honesty of Anna sharing her journey from a broken home to entering politics and hosting a podcast.
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Up next, Luna talks with Anna Paulina. Luna part of the gang, which young poor Hispanic raised by a single mother, people who grew up like me. You are supposed to end up just another statistic, another life full of so much energy and potential that becomes trapped in a web of welfare and poverty. But not me, not in this life. Let me tell you how I refuse to become a victim and made my own reality and now hosting my own podcast. Hey everyone, thank you so much for tuning into my podcast. I'm so excited to have this, especially with I Heart Radio. But this week, instead of talking about what we will be usually talking about every week, which is issues not just politically but social and nationally, I wanted to share with you my story. And it's a little bit different because I want you to know exactly who I am. Every single week that we do talk, I said, from this one, We're gonna be talking about other issues, especially the national ones, but I want you to know where I come from, my perspective and why I believe what I do, So please tune in. This one's very special to me, very personal, and other than that each week will have I'm an awesome meeting time where you guys can come tune in, find out information, straight talk, no political influence or propaganda, just my opinions, me and you, and a place where you can come with the whole family. So a lot of people, I think looking at me, the general assumption is that you know, I'm a young woman, probably didn't experience much other than Starbucks and yoga pants right at ug boots. But I think that there's so much more to that. Growing up, I think that my unexpected path into politics was really influenced by God. I think that a lot of times when we look back at previous life circumstances and we might not necessarily have an understanding as to why certain things are happening the way that they are. But what I found is in my journey that a lot of what I've a id on to give me strength and my voice to fight for what I believe is right and for fighting for the American dream in this country has really come from what I experienced as a child and as a young adult and starting out. And I give so much credit to my mom because she really did raise me. As a young single mother. My mom had me at around twenty years old. She had my father actually when she was fairly young, and my mom realizing it now, you know, you see how much I think a young mother would go through. But ultimately, my mom made the decision to choose life over abortion, and that's not I think an easy decision for a lot of young women, especially from the circumstances in which she came from, which was essentially a really rough upbringing. I mean, my maternal grandmother actually died of AIDS studo heroin use. Drugs were prevalent, not just on my mom's side, but really on my father's side as well, and she was the only person that could take care of me. She had no family to rely on. It's not like we had a strong extended network of people that could really care for her and care for me, and so we did it on our own, and I remember those struggles growing up. I mean, the earliest memory I have from toys is actually going to this place called the Giving Spot. And at the time I thought it was awesome. You know, you'd go into it and it was like all these toys everywhere and they were free. But what it was is it was actually a donation center. And I look back at that now and I see all of the success that I've experienced, and then sometimes I bring it up with my mom. But those are some of my early memories as to what I thought was normal and I didn't know any different. With my story, I want people to remember that this is not a victim story. This is about coming across being dealt with cards that might not necessarily be in your favor, but being able to take control of your life and change the outcome if you're willing to put forward the hard work and the effort in order to create your own reality. So moving forward from that, it was hard. My dad was not really in the picture. He as much as he loved me and as much as he loved my mom, ultimately their relationship did not work out because my father really struggled with addiction. And for me as a child, my father was such, you know, a superhero, and I think a lot of younger kids you look at your parents and they're just your night in shining armor. It wasn't until I think I was really in high school that I realized that my dad did have a severe drug problem. He was using meth. Some of the times I actually do remember I would come across different paraphernalia, and I'm actually lucky that I was smart enough to as a child navigate that and not try that stuff or not ingested, because I think, honestly, probably could have killed me. But those stories, especially now when we talk about what's happening, you know with the Southern Board. I'll get into the political aspect in a second. Seeing the direct impact that all of this has had of my family really does give me this fire and compassion to want to share my story and fight the good fight so that other people are aware of the impacts that it has, especially to when we talk about the welfare state and what impacts a fatherless home has on family development and longer term impacts, whether it's the juvenile justice system or whether it is talking about the welfare system, the welfare state and then really setting children up for success, the father is instrumental in all of that. Moving forward from that, just to kind of give you guys some perspective, you know, my dad again, having these experiences my father. If I didn't go through them, I wouldn't be the person that I am today. But you know, I do remember things like we were at this hotel once and my dad was using with one of his friends, and he left actually me there at the hotel with my friend den Hey and her older sister and her younger sister, and so it was just the three of us, and my mom actually ended up having to come get me and found out that I was left at this hotel because later on that day my father had been arrested. And you know, you talk about these experiences and people look at me and they just don't understand the magnitude of what I've been through and why I'm conservative. People so many times you're like, I don't understand. You know, you're half Hispanic, you're half white, like you're a young woman, and they assume because of how I look, that I'm going to vote a certain way, and it just it could be the farthest thing from the truth. So that broken home mentality really did again provide me with a lot of insight as to what things work and what other things don't work, especially when it comes to policy. But it wasn't necessarily all bad. Some of my youngest memories with both my mother and my father is you know, my my my own side. As much as she tried to shelter me, I remember going to visit her family on the weekends, and they would have these massive, I want to say, like house parties, not like crazy drinking. But we have a very musical family on that side, so a lot of people would be singing and playing the guitar, and very large family extended on that side. And then on my dad's side, when I would go to see him, you know, on the weekend instead of going out, and you have like the ice cream truck guy. When I would be with him on visitation, we would have the alote guy, and so he would go around with this basket and he'd be squeezing this horn, you know, kind of getting people to go outside, and for a dollar you could get two pieces of a lotte, which is basically corn with mayo and and the chili pepper on it and everything. And we'd got there and we sit on the curb and eat that. You know, we'd have the carne sava and tacos and or chata, or we'd stop by my uncle Phelippa's house. And it was interesting because as a child, you know, I grew up actually with my father speaking Spanish around me, but I didn't necessarily learn that, and I actually to this day. Sometimes I asked my dad, I'm like, you know, why didn't you teach it to me growing up? And I think that from my father, he more or less wanted me to assimilate. He grew up going back and forth to Mexico City a lot, and for me, for whatever reason, he wanted me to, I guess, embrace being an American. He you know, he was first hin, I was second generation. But you know, it wasn't ntil later on in life that I realized, you know, being able to speak Spanish is actually important, especially culturally to me as well. And so I actually was able to spend a couple of years in high school and college learning that. But you know, you have these memories and then back to kind of as who I am. You know. One of my best memories as a child was with my great grandma Luna, and she had come to visit my mom and me, and we were sitting in the living room and there used to be back in the nineties. It was a Spanish soap opera and it was called Luz Gladita, and it was about this young girl and she would always wear her hair in two different braids, about three quarters braided down and My grandma loved watching this show, and so I would sit there in the living room with her, and she would actually sit there pet my head and do my hair like the little girl in the show. And you know that, to me, whenever I thought about the bad, I also remember the good. So I think that that's actually been in part a big reason why I've been able to push through is because everyone, no matter what walk of life you're in, I think people are going to have both negative and positive experiences, and it's how you choose to move forward with that. You don't ever fully dwell in the past, because that won't help you as an adult moving forward, and it won't help you or your family in regards to how you can better your life for everyone. So, when I turned about fourteen years old, my mom had actually gone through a pretty crazy divorce and we moved to Los Angeles, and for me, growing up in southern California, especially during that era, what I experienced I thought was normal. I didn't think that anything that I was going through at the time was anything that anyone else didn't go through, right. It wasn't until I actually joined the military that I realized how abnormal those conditions were. But when I moved to Los Angeles, I think that was the time where I started becoming a teenager and my world just expanded, you know. I started working from the time that I was sixteen, and having gone from basically being in Santa Ana area and South Orange County and then moving to Los Angeles, you do have a change in the education systems. But it's not just that. It's it's a change in the demographic as well. Right you have inner city Los Angeles being probably one of the most prevalent gang infested places in the country, and here I was this young girl basically moving into that with a young single mother and then my younger two siblings. It wasn't just a shock for us in regards to some of the things that I would experience, but for me it was eye opening. I mean, one, I ended up going to six high schools, and one of the six high schools I went to was really, really bad. They had tried to bust in kids from Crenshawn Inglewood. And what a result of it was is that you had gangs, you had gang wars, and you had people fighting over turf. But there was also I think this aspect of racial fighting between the predominantly black and the predominantly Hispanic gangs in the area, and I saw that. I remember the riots at Santa Monica High School and basically all over you'd hear rumors of them calling in the cops and shutting down because they were having these serious gang issues. We're about to get into my story where I tell you guys about the gang shooting on my high school campus, So stay tuned. We'll be right back after this quick break. I remember being on campus. It was in the afternoon, and I remember hearing two gun shots. I ultimately ended up being right outside my classroom. There was a gang shooting on campus. Between it was a I think an older boy and a younger boy, and I think they're actually I don't know what they're fighting over, but I remember leaving the classroom. I didn't know what to do, Okay, I was like someone pulled the fire alarm. We heard the shots. I'm walking out of the classroom. I walk out to see this group of kids huddled around. I get it was the boy who had been shot, and another boy runs away crying. And at the time, like we didn't really have cell phones, so I just walked home and I remember getting home and my mom grabs me. She's like, oh my god, are you like kissing me on the forehead. She's like, I just heard what happened. I'm never sending you back to that school. And that this is, mind you, after I had been jumped at that school, actually got a concussion, This is after, you know, I was basically at this point, so traumas highs from I think the education system there. I mean I had girls in my Spanish class that would come back in after fighting people in the bathroom and one store in particular. And I know you guys are probably thinking this is crazy, but it's true. Her name was Paula, and she had come back in from the bathroom and I noticed her hair was messed up. I was like, are you okay? And she had told me that she had literally just cut some girl's face in the bathroom. Okay. So I got home, I told my mom this, and I think after this, in conjunction with the shooting and then obviously me being jumped to my mom made the good decision of pulling me out of that school, and then I ultimately ended up graduating barely. But the point was is that, you know, these experiences. Again, going back to who I am talking about being battle hardened. I really feel like I kind of went through all of the fire early on in life and it prepared me for this political arena that I'm now stepping into. But you know, through all that, I did have dreams. I wanted to go to college. I just I didn't know how. And I know that's a weird concept, but I didn't know how to apply. I didn't know that you had to take the A C T or the S A T. In fact, I didn't even know what that was. I didn't know how I was going to pay for it. And the one thing that my mom always told me, she goes, you know, like, try not to take out loans. And I give her so much credit for this because now I think a big discussion is about the student loaned up. And for me, I just remember my mom saying, you know, you're so caring, you would be an incredible doctor, but but don't take out the loans, like, try to do it on your own, try to pay for it, because she's like, you don't want the debt. It can really you know, like her you in the long run, And so I always kind of kept that in the back of my mind. And I stayed in l A probably about a year after my mom had left, which would have made me about eighteen nineteen years old. And then I remember being at a party. Of course, you know, being a young kid, that's what you do out there, especially when you're on your own, and I met this really incredible girl in her name was Julianna. It was actually Juliana Redding, and you know, I was out close with her, but I would see her out and I just remember her being so pretty and so kind. And then one day I get a call from my friend Michelle to tell me that Juliana had actually been murdered. And when that happened, I think that that was when I basically cashed in my chips with l A. I said, I'm not I'm not doing this anymore. I like it was just too much for me. And I ultimately ended up basically going back to my mom's for a little bit and and I just I was like, it actually traumatized me. Think, And after I got back to my mom's, she was she lived near Ocean Side, which is where a large Marine Corps based installation is, and I actually ended up being out at a house party and I heard these two guys talking and they were about my age, maybe nineteen years old, and they're talking about how the Marine Corps would pay for college. And I really had no immediate family in the military, and so I was obviously eavesdropping, and I apologized for that, but I said, I'm you know, excuse me, but can you just tell me a little bit more about that? And I asked them everything that you could possibly want to know about the military, was like, do you guys live on your own? How does the schooling work, what is your training like? And they basically convinced me at that point in time, at least with their responses, that I should consider going to talk to recruiters. So I went on Google. And this is at the time when people printed out map quest directions. I know everyone has it on their phone now, but I printed out map quest directions to go talk to recruiter and I showed up, and I think the recruiter thought I was joking at first. He took one at me and he's like, can I help you? Like, are you lost? Are you looking for a CVS? Where are you? And I said, now I'm here to talk to you. And so I actually I met with my recruiter and I was considering joining the army at first, but then settled on the Air Force. And I didn't even tell my family that I was doing this for me, especially being that young. I was excited about it. I looked at it like an adventure, but I was also looking at it as kind of a way out, a way that I could find some form and type of way to help my family. And so I enlisted. And mind you, this is in the middle of the war in the Middle East, And of course, the minute I told my mom, I like had to hold my phone away from my head because she was like freaking out. She thought I was going to die. She was crying. She's like, oh my gosh, what have I done, Like You're gonna get hurt, And obviously I did not. And then you know, later on, especially right before I ended up leaving, she was the one that actually drove me out to MAPS, which is your military in processing station, with my dad, and they dropped me off and they ended up being okay with it. But having that experience, having joined the military at such a young age, if there's one thing I can say that was probably one of the best decisions I ever made in my life. And having been that young from that type of environment and upbringing, a lot of people like me are supposed to end up statistics like I should have probably been sixteen and pregnant. I probably should have a rap sheet, but I don't, and I think that that's in large part because I was able to literally find some form of structure and find a way out that was going to empower me to help myself and to help my family. So I left for the military in February, and it was in the military that I actually ended up meeting my husband. I also shortly thereafter started going to school full time after I finished my training, and it was also in the military terry that I was able to not just pay for college, but they literally sat me down, helped me and roll told me what the a c T was, and I think it helped me develop as an adult, right like I spent my young adult life for the first time in my life with a structure that I needed to excel. I knew that I had rent paid, I knew that I had a car because I was getting a reliable job. I had health insurance, and my sergeants at my base, wherever I was at, they almost more or less took this i'd say parental type of role with me and really did look out for me. And that's something that I think a lot of times when the military, when people, especially politicians, they talk about the military said, they say, you know, the military, according to these people, unfairly targets minorities. And I look at these people and I just I'm shocked because if these people saw the environment and the circumstance that some of us come from, and the opportunity that the military allows and gives you to really succeed in life, I think that these people would have a different opinion. You know, I worked from people all the way from the inner cities of Chicago, Detroit, two kids that were trust fund kids that wanted to just prove to their parents that they could essentially do it on their own. So you're talking about the one place in the country probably that everyone is created the same. You were the same uniform. You show up to work. You're working with people who you would probably never outside of that environment maybe talk to because of how they look or how they dressed, or where they're from. And yet it's in the military where you can come together and work towards a common goal and put the mission first, and that again is probably one of the most incredible experiences I could have had early on, and it was in the military that I think I started developing my leadership skills. So I was obviously awarded the Air Force Accommodation Medal, and when I got to my first duty station, I also became the President of the Airman's Council, which at the time I didn't think was a big deal. I mean, I would help younger airmen work on their EPR, which is our enlisted performance reports. I would put together food drives and donation drives across base. But I realized looking back on it that that was basically me, I think early on taking this leadership position, and it was one of the first that I had. And also too, I was able to work with different airmen to organize them for Airmen against drunk driving, which is kind of a I say the military did it first, but it was basically our version of UBER for military members. If you went out, we would actually um come pick you up and you would just call a number and then we would log it and bring you home safely. So that we could avoid DUIs and drunk driving. So that was one of my first i'd say big taskings in addition to the military that I really wanted to make change and I saw a way to do it, and so I took that initial action. And then it was in the military that again going back to how I met my husband Andy, we actually had a mutual friend and at the time I did not want to at all get involved with anyone. I was trying to just focus on my education, kind of like that Beyonce Song. I wanted to be a young independent woman. And yet I met him literally eight months into joining the military, and he obviously busted out of the friend zone because we were not romantically involved at first. We were just friends, but ended up being one of the best things that could have happened to me life. He really is one of my best friends, and we actually had a looped in secret. We did our paperwork at a small coffee shop in Missouri, and that was mind you, after finding a Justice of the Piece who could literally do our paperwork for us on Veterans Day, so that's actually it was twenty bucks Veterans Day and we got our marriage paperwork signed and then It wasn't until a couple of years later that we actually announced publicly that we had been married, but that was already after the fact. And then, unfortunately, my husband was shot in Afghanistan. And at the time, I had actually just separated from my first enlistment to start going to school full time UM at the University of West Florida. And when I got that phone call, I mean, talk about your heart just sinking into your stomach. Leading up to that, Andy and I when he would deploy, and we would have these time periods that we would set up for us talking on Skype, and that's because you have your you know, you're there's basically like almost like a twelve fourteen hour time difference, and so I would want to make sure that I was available to speak with him. And I remember talking to him earlier that day because he was going out on a mission and he tells me, he's like, yeah, this team isn't really they're very aggressive, and Andy typically didn't use that language a little bit, so I knew something was off. And he had been the second j tech which is a joint terminal air controller to be replaced on that team because the other guy had also been hurt. So I was already uncomfortable with the situation. But then he told me, he goes, you know, these guys they don't really want to get to know me, like they're kind of guarded. And I was like, okay, I'm not liking the situation. And I had been on the call with Andy before at different deployments where I could literally hear gunshots in the background, and I was like, Okay, this is not just like you don't ever want to have your significant other, I think in those circumstances. But for me, I was like, Okay, I'm just gonna push through it, pretend like it's all good and mind you. That day and he missed his skype calling time, which I think was supposed to be around like six or seven, and then I just knew at that point in time that something I had this incredibly powerful premonition and I will get to more of that after our quick break. And I remember it was my friend's birthday and I told her. I was like, I there's no way that I can actually go out with you, like this is not going to happen, Like I know something's wrong and so um so I fell asleep and I told her. I couldn't go. I fell asleep watching Netflix, and then at a round four o'clock in the morning, I got this phone call, and I'm so angry because I like saw the numbers, like it looks like twenty something numbers long, it's like a plus whatever the numbers are, and I was like, I figured it might have been Andy Boda wasn't sure, so I answered, and he goes, hey, babe, what are you doing? And so, of course, being sarcastic and ticked off, I go, I don't know, sleeping. What do you think I'm doing. It's four o'clock in the morning. Why don't you call me? I was stressing out word and before I could even finish saying what I was going to say, Andy literally on the phone, he goes, well, you know, nothing's missing, but I got shot. And so I heard that, And you want to talk about going from like kind of being half asleep and ticked off to just up. And I just completely at that point in time, like really I didn't know what to expect. I freaked out and I saw I was up, and just like my heart dropped and then it just went radio silence. And at that point, you know, you have so many emotions going through your head and you don't really know what's happening. And then I'm like, hello, is this a joke? Like Andy? And then I realized he wasn't talking and I just maybe for about it seemed like years, but it was probably about just ten seconds of silence. And then this really sweet man gets on the phone. He goes, oh my gosh, Anna, UM, I'm so sorry, this is chaplain so and so are you okay? I this wasn't supposed to happen like this, and so I'm still trying to figure out what's really going on. And he had told me that Andy had been shot in Afghanistan and that it had happened actually because I asked him the time frame around the same time that Andy had missed his call in time with me that I was freaking out to my friends saying I can't go out with you, something's wrong and had actually happened around that point in time, and I didn't I wasn't notified several hours later. So, I mean, I do believe that, especially when you're really connected with someone, that you can just pick up on that. I mean, they talk about these twin studies and how people see, you know, their family members after they passed, or they just know, And for me especially, it was one of those things. And it's kind of funny because my mom always says that our side of the family, that the lunas have this ability to just sense things. And I really do believe that after this. I mean, my mom knew when her mother passed away. There's been other stories about my grandmother, my Grandma Juty, actually knowing about when her family members were in trouble or so I I really do. I think I have that spiritual aspect of me that feels like I had this connection with Andy and I was able to just know that something was wrong. But after that happened, it wasn't easy recovering from that. Andy was actually medivact obviously out of that situation, and then he did his He was brought to Walter Reed, which is in Maryland, and it was in Maryland that I really saw the aspect of war that I think a lot of people miss out in Hollywood movies. You know, Hollywood tries to make war glamorous. They try to make it this romantic thing, and it's anything but that. You know, you're talking about being in a hospital with young kids, sometimes like seventeen years old, because with parental permission, you can actually join the military at seventeen, eighteen, nine, twenty years old that probably should be off in college. And you're seeing them, you know, missing a limb here, like quadriplegics because they got hit by an i D. And they're there for years recovering and through this process, and you're seeing all this and at the time, I must have been maybe twenty three years old, and this is what I'm going through now with someone that I really very much so love, And then I'm realizing, oh my god, Like when my mom was freaking out at that call so many years ago, it's because she was worried that this would happen to me. Granted, my job wasn't anything combat oriented, and I never deployed, and it wasn't because I didn't want to. It's just because my deployment, my bucket number never came up. But when I told that I was leaving, that's what she was worried about. And then I understood. But it was after Andy left the hospital and we started the recovery process that I realized how much information. Although I had been a military member and although I sat through so many of those briefings talking about post traumatic stress disorder and what happens, you know, after a military member comes home, it wasn't real to me until that happened. And I think that for a lot of military members, there's this stigma that exists about PTSD or about what happens in these deployment situations. And because that stigma is there, because they call it a disorder, people don't want to get the help that they need. And we saw it happened with so many of our friends. You know, they deploy as one person, come back as someone completely separate. Granted, of course, if you're experiencing those things, those circumstances, you're going to change, right Like I had nowhere near I think any of this war situation experience, but it changed me as a person. So I could only imagine people deploying every six months coming back to an environment that's completely different after having seen some of probably the worst atrocities that exist in human kind. Is it's what's shown in war, and then they come back and they're expected to be normal, and it's anything but that. And so Andy and I together we reconnected and we started and again after experiencing all this part of what kept my marriage together as I was able to be Andy's friend first and foremost. And I think that a lot of times, especially in marriages, people are like, Okay, well, how do I reconnect with my spouse? How do we work through this? And so I realized with Andy it was ultimately friend first, wife second, and and that's really what kept us together. So we started shooting together at a range actually on the Panhandle, and after that I started using my social media to really start working with different veteran nonprofits that were specifically dealing with post traumatic stress disorder. So at the time, I'd like to make important note that I had separated from my first enlistment to essentially focus on my undergrad which was in biology study for the MCAT and apply to medical school. So during this time period Andy gets shot, I started my first full time semester of college. I fully withdraw, which pushes my medical school application timeline back a full year because at that point, having to lose that semester, it was going to push all of my classes back literally a year. So I was fine with that though, because obviously I wanted to be with Andy and he needed my help, and I don't, you know, regret that decision at all, But had that not happened, I would not have gone the political route. And so it's interesting again, Sometimes things happen in your life and maybe you don't understand why God is working behind the scenes. But let me tell you, if that had not happened, hands down, I would not be where I'm at today. It was through my work with different veteran nonprofits that I came across one in particular that was dealing with human trafficking at the US Mexico border. And this veteran nonprofit specifically dealt with child trafficking. And at the time, like most people my age twentysomething year old, just graduating from college, trying to apply to medical school, there was a lot going on. So I wouldn't say that I was necessarily all that political. But this organization, after I started reading into child trafficking, I was so almost like frustrated but upset and then heartbroken at the same time because of what I saw that these kids were going through the whole concept of trafficking that's not a conspiracy theory. I was able to request actually wrote the State Department and I asked for their human Trafficking Report, and they have actually sent me the entire copy of it every single year since, and I've gone through it, especially reading on Mexico South like portions of South America and the United States, because that's right here and in our backyard. And when I read through that, I was I just knew I had to do something about it. So at the time, I started using my social media in order to talk on this topic. And I remember posting a story about a young woman. Her name was Carla jssin though, and I had actually found the article on her that was written by CNN, and I think it was written in I could be wrong, but it was no. It was written so clearly we know that CNN is aware that this is an issue. That there had been other organizations that at the time, I didn't know that they were liberal, but other liberal organizations had reported on it, to include Uni Seth. And I had all this information and I'm putting it online. I put this article about this girl named Carla, and it was simply the headline, her photo and the CNN title saying she was raped around forty three thousand times other the time period that she had been trafficked and I saw that, and I mean, you see that number, and it's almost unbelievable, right, But the fact is is that people that are trafficked are raped, and they're forced into doing things that they don't want to do, and they are treated like objects. And so those numbers are real. And the alarming thing to me was, though, is that so many people after I posted this were uninformed as to what was happening. And to give you a time period, this was tail end of beginning of but so many people were uninformed that they thought that was a made up story, that it wasn't real, that wasn't happening. And at the time, I had maybe on my Instagram around thirty to forty people. So what I decided to do is I decided to continue posting. And then my kind of light bulb moment where I realized that I would have to take a political stance on this was in the beginning of mind you, this is prior to the November elections. I had heard kind of murmurs of a candidate Trump, but I didn't necessarily know who that was, and I really I wasn't even registered to vote. So to give you some perspective. I didn't grow up in a political household. Although I didn't know that my mom was actually and I found this later on, she was a staunch Democrat. I did not know that at the time, but I remember hearing a little bit about the border, and I agreed with strong border policy because I was now informed as to what was happening on the trafficking. And also, to mind you, my family is part Mexican, and so I'm not looking at this because I'm xenophobic or I'm anti immigrant. I'm looking at this because it's it's a literally humanitarian crisis and there's bad things happening. And this is happening because people are literally able to easily access this country through the southern border. And so I started taking a political stance. And I remember, at the time I was watching CNN. I did not know that political propaganda exist. It does. For those that are listening. You're probably nodding your head with me. It absolutely does. I was sitting in a hotel room and I was working on something for school, and I had the TV on in the background and it was on CNN, and I wasn't actually really listening until I heard them cover a segment, and the guy said, this train was stopped because there was women and children and cartel members on board, and so at that point I kind of just turned from what I was doing. I started watching the segment on television, and as the reporter continues, they were talking about a train that was coming up from South America that had been stopped in Mexico City by the federal police because of what was all on board. And as I'm listening to the commentator, at first I'm thinking that he's going to start talking about trafficking, but I was completely wrong. He started talking about how here at CNN or here, we believe that everyone has the right to access this country. And so they actually ended up, from what I remember, putting together money someone at the network put together money to bring these people to the border, and then they filmed border patrol turning them away, and then they ended the segment with this Donald Trump person is apparently, according to this segment, anti immigrant, and then it was like that was it, and it cut to like a pillow commercial. And I remember sitting there and I remember looking at this looking at the TV screen like I was shocked. And then at that point I got angry because I realized that these people were being exploited for this political agenda against someone who was running that I agreed with as a half Hispanic. But I agreed with this person because I knew, I was informed as to what was happening at the border, and so I didn't know what to do except take my phone and I recorded this video and I wish I still had it because it went pretty viral. Actually ended up removing it though, because I got so much hate from this video, and all I said was, look, I have worked to kind of help expose what's happening with trafficking at the border. I am not racist, I'm not xenophobic. In fact, I'm half Hispanic. My grandmother literally is from Mexico City. But I don't agree with open borders, and I don't agree with what they did, and they were literally making the political and it should not be political. This is something that's a humanitarian issue, and every single person, if you care about people, if you claim to care about this country, if you care about humanity, you will know that open borders hurt an open border hurts people on both sides. And so I posted that video, and oh my gosh, it was the worst digital abuse I've probably had to this day. I mean, some of the messages that I was receiving from people were absolutely vile. They were calling me a race trader. They said that I was too that I was whitewashed, that I would never be Hispanic, that I should be ashamed of myself, that I was just, that the Hispanic culture would never accept me, and that I was being used by white people to pedal a message. I mean, it was so vile that even just saying that today on this episode, I mean, think about that these people didn't know who I was, and yet because of the color of my skin, because they were on the other side side of the political spectrum, they were going to make such racially charged and abuse of comments to me. And by the way, I'm not ashamed of the fact that I'm half white. I'm not ashamed of the fact that i'm half Hispanic. In fact, I'm very proud of both. And I'm not going to hate just one side because of political ideologies. That's completely wrong. That's not how I was raised. And in fact, my mother, my sister, my brother, and my own father were all different colors of the rainbow. Okay, we're all different shades, and so I've never looked at someone's skin color to decide for them how they should politically vote, or to decide what they were ethnically, because the fact is is that the United States is such a cultural and ethnic melting pot that there are many people of many different mixed races. And I was not raised to treat people like that. And so after I saw that, I mean, I remember reading through the comments and then I stopped myself halfway through and I said, I'm not gonna do this to myself. Obviously there's a lot of angry, negative people, but it's because they don't know. And how can you expect people to understand if they don't have all the facts. And so that's when I made my decision to use my social media to educate people. I realized that I had somewhat of a platform, and I figured, I'm going to medical school. That's my game plan here. I already worked with some incredible organizations and shout out to Global Surgical Medical Support Group because Dr Epstein there. He was actually my mentor for the route that I was going. And it was Dr Epstein that actually helped me decide to pursue politics. Instead of medicine and moving forward from that. Maybe a couple of months later after I posted that video, I came across Turning Point USA, which is a conservative nonprofit. It was founded by Charlie Kirk. They called me no kidding the day before I was supposed to go to medical school to offer me the position as their national Hispanic Outreach director, and at the time, Charlie Kirk calls me, and I didn't really know who Charlie was, and he goes, Hi on end. I remember I was standing out in front of my house and he goes, We've been looking at what you're doing on your social media and you're one of the only young Hispanic conservatives doing that. And actually that was kind of the first time that someone had actually called me conservative, because I know this sounds weird, but I didn't know what a conservative was, and i'd even really know, you know, what views I grew up with. I know, I never thought about that. I was like, that just never crossed my mind. But everything that I was fighting for was a conservative value system. And this also ties into my story growing up. I mean, you want to talk about experiencing violence and especially that of quote unquote people that would like to pass anti gun legislation. They always used stories like mine. I had been I had walked into an armed robbery at nine years old. I had a cousin that was actually shot in the head by her boyfriend. I had experienced the gang shooting on campus. I had a friend later on in life, Juliana, that was murdered when I was a nineteen years old. And then when I joined the military, I had a really scary experience of someone that was breaking into my house. So my story, it never once occurred to me that guns were bad, but I always knew that it was the people that were the problem, not the fire. And it was in fact myself that got my concealed carry that really empowered me to protect myself again. And I was talking about all of these things, but I didn't know that that was part of what the conservative value system was. And so Charlie calls me, goes, you're the only young Hispanic conservative talking about this, and and really people media that are Hispanic aren't even talking about it, but you are. Can you come work with us? And at that point in time, I remember kind of earlier that those last couple of days I had a feeling that they were going to reach out to me, but I just wasn't sure. And I remember walking my dog and having this I guess coming to Jesus moment where I was like, okay, God, I really was hoping to go to medical school. And I assure you that being in a library somewhere would probably be more relaxing than a political endeavor. But this is how I can best help people. Then then this is around a minute ago, and I talked to Dr Epstein. He said, you know, on a you can help more people through legislation, then you would entiree your entire lifetime as a physician. And that's not to throw shade it physicians, because I've met some incredible physicians, but he was right. Legislation impacts nationally, and it impacts people's lives. And if I really wanted to make this change, I had to do it through legislation, and that meant eventually running for office. And so Charlie calls me, and I didn't want to end up like Joan in the whale in the Bible, and so I asked Charlie said, well, well, Charlie, I'm supposed to leave tomorrow to go to medical school, so you know why me? And he again he's like, we we need your help, like there a lot that we're up against, and you have this incredible voice and your story. And he's like, we're working alongside right now. Currently we have Candice Owens who is our director of urban Engagement. Would you consider coming to work with us? And so I googled Candace Ellens and I was like, Okay, she's pretty cool. She lines with me, people like you had to google her? Yes, I had a Google her. And I took the job. And I wrote my admissions director at the university that I had gotten into and I said I will not be in attendance. And it was the next week that I flew out to Arizona to meet with the Turning Points staff and then I came on board as their national director of Hispanic Engagement. And it was through there that I started doing outreach, grassroots activism. I was able to travel the entire country and really through that talked to kids from all colors and creeds. Kind of reminded me of the military a little bit, actually, to be honest with you, and I was able to debate ideologies, which is so important. But I was able to do it in a respectful fashion, which I think for most people, especially through social media, it's something kind of that we've lost, is being able to respectfully debate your opinion. And it was through those experiences that I realized very shortly into that job, probably two months after taking it, that I would have to run for congressional office. I realized that the media did not If I wasn't talking about what stories the producers wanted me to talk about, they weren't going to book me on television. And so I noticed that every single news station, even if they didn't like the political official that they were talking about, they were talking about what the legislators were doing in d C. And And that's the biggest Mike is being able to get into office and change the discussion nationally, to help focus America's attention on what issues are truly going to help save this country and how we can take our position as a world superpower and use that to make a world a better place. And so for me, it has been on the immigration topic, and it has been on this whole topic of trafficking. Is that's why I got politicals because I wanted to help people, And so shortly thereafter I started trying to figure out how to run for office, and there's no how to run for Congress, and I'll actually be doing a separate episode on the process of that entirely. But it was after I ran and then I fully saw the process and actually was able to win the Republican nomination in Florida for Florida's third team congressional district, that I fully now understood how DC works. I understood about the corporate lobbying. I understood about why the media does what they do, and how much propaganda is a thing within the mainstream media, but not just that, how they will lie to entire demographics of people, whether you are black, White, Hispanic, or Asian, in order to get a certain voting base, or whether you're a woman verse as a man. They do use divisive politics in order to get people angry so that they'll vote. And I realized all of that, and so my story, I think, is again something that I've been able to and I felt comfortable sharing because I realized how much of an impact it has on people. Knowing that you can essentially come from nothing, and only in the United States can you come from nothing and attain everything. Through hard work and effort. Only in the United States can someone like myself who literally grew up young, single mother household, had family members literally that were and and drugs and violence infecting my family. Would I be able to join the military, pay my way through college debt free, and essentially become the Republican nominee for US Congress, and move forward to not just write a book, but have a deal with I heart Radio, but also to I think, in the future be one of the most important voices to the conservative Hispanic demographic, which is now the largest voting minority in the country. And it is through my experiences, through that of my family, that I have developed the character that I have, And instead of choosing to be a victim about it, I embrace it. I use it as my armor to help me move forward and fight for what I believe is right the American Christian to jail value system here in this country. I've experienced these things, whether they were bad at the time or not, they empowered me to fight what I believe in to this day. And I do believe that that was God working in my life at an early time, and so I could not be happier as to where I'm at today, and for all of those tuning in, just remember you are the captain of your ship. You are so gifted. You are born and lucky to be born in one of the greatest countries in the world. So don't let that slip by you. Use that be empowered to tell your story, to help others and to help save this country. Before we go, I wanted to thank you guys very much for tuning into my very first episode. If you enjoy today's show, please leave us a five star review on the Apple Podcast. You can also find me on Twitter, Parlor, Facebook, and Instagram at real Anna Paulina. And a very special thank you to our producer Drew Steele, writer Aaron Kleigman, researcher sets In Bryson, and executive producers Debbie Myers and Speaker new Ingridge, part of the Gingridge three sixty network.