Candidate for
United States Representative; District 13

I was born and raised in San Diego as part of the post-War baby boom. While my father, a flight surgeon based in Tuskeegee, Alabama was at war, my mother wrote all the Chambers of Commerce west of the Mississippi looking for job opportunities and better weather than humid summers of Lima, Ohio. Despite growing up in segregated Southeast San Diego, down the street from the Ebony Inn Motel, I was fortunate that I had good, loving parents.

My parents were big believers in the power of education. The public school rules prevented the grammar school from enrolling me because I was too young. So my mother marched me down to the neighborhood Catholic school that was happy to take me and provided me with a great education.

In the tenth grade I transferred to San Diego High School because students could enroll in college classes during senior year. This was back in the day when California public schools were the best in the nation.

My political eyes were opened early when I participated in boycotts against Woolworth's for its segregated lunch counters. I also marched against 1964's Proposition 14, which sought to bring back unfair housing to California.

I knew the Bay Area would become my home when I enrolled in Stanford University and later went on to medical school at University of California at San Francisco. I loved every minute of medical school and as a student I worked as a patient advocate at San Francisco General Hospital and at the Chinese Free Clinic. After a couple of years of Surgery residency at UCSF, I moved to Boston for my residency in Anesthesiology at Harvard's Beth Israel Hospital.

Upon completing my residency, I moved to Baltimore, Maryland to take a position as an instructor, then an Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital. While the East Coast had its good points, I was more than ready to return to my native California. I was pleased to take a position at the highly ranked Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, a level 1 trauma center affiliated with UCLA. In addition to teaching residents and serving on the Peer Review Committee, it was challenging to deal with transfusion issues during the emergence a mysterious blood-borne disease we now know as HIV-AIDS.

Cedars was a great hospital, but the Bay Area was calling me. I moved to Oakland and practiced at Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley.

Concerned about health care proposals with limited to no input by physicians, I decided to learn as much as I could about the law and public policy. I was accepted to U.C. Berkeley (Boalt) Law School while working at Alta Bates and graduated in 1995, just when my son was graduating from Skyline High in Oakland.

I my law career, I had the opportunity to intern at the National Health Law Project, work at two top law firms practicing insurance and health law. One of my most gratifying and interesting duties was substituting for the Public Member of the San Francisco Parole Board. Hearing the stories about and by the prospective parolees up close and personal gives a lot of food for thought about the criminal justice system.

At the Parole Board, I met a San Francisco Assistant District Attorney who recruited me to teach continuing education courses in the recognition and prevention of elder abuse. In the meantime, back in Oakland, I joined the Board of Directors of the Oakland Youth Chorus. Seeing these young men and women develop through their singing was a joy.

My biggest joy, however is my family: my son, my husband, my ancient cat I found in Redwood Park, and two spoiled rescue dogs.

Now I teach a Constitution class, have a part-time medical practice and worry full-time about our country's future. So now I am moving from letter-writing and making alternate viewpoints heard at redistricting, MTC, and other meetings to running for office.