Steven Ochoa is national redistricting coordinator for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF). Before participating in a panel on the effect redistricting will have on California, he took questions in our Green Room.
Q. What’s the last thing that made you laugh really hard?
A. It’s been a long week, so I don’t know when the last time I laughed was. That was the last thing that made me laugh: that I can’t even remember what it was. It was probably something on TV.
Q. Who do you think is the most unsung hero in history?
A. I am a big fan of John Adams. I know he has been sung before, but he gets so overshadowed by Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln, and he really did do quite a lot for the founding of our democracy.
Q. What’s your favorite holiday and why?
A. My favorite holiday is baseball’s opening day. That is my Christmas.
Q. How are you different now from ten years ago?
A. In a lot of respects I’m the same, because 10 years ago I was working on redistricting for MALDEF. The big difference was 10 years ago I was just the GIS analyst and now I am the coordinator.
Q. What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
A. Relax, stop stuttering, think before you speak.
Q. What item would you bid for on eBay?
A. Kirk Gibson’s bat, if I had the money, from the 1988 World Series, Game One, that he used to hit the backdoor slider off of Eckersley, 3-2 into the right field bleachers.
Q. What’s something that few people know about you?
A. I have three great ironies in my life. I work with maps for a living but get lost very easily. I have dedicated my adult professional life to Latino community empowerment but I speak Spanish like a gringo, and I work with numbers for a living but can be dyslexic at times in saying them.
Q. What music did you listen to today?
A. I am a bit of an alternative rock fan, so it’s usually anything on KROQ. But that said, when I am redistricting and I really need to focus, the Pandora ’80s rock hair band station does get me through the evening.
Q. If you could have a profession in another life, what would it be?
A. If I had, you know, the athletic build and actual talent and hand-eye coordination, I would love to be a major league baseball player. But I’m about a foot too short and have no coordination whatsoever, so all I can do at this point is click a mouse.
Q. What’s one thing that you’ve been meaning to throw away but haven’t been able to?
A. Probably about half my wardrobe. I just don’t get around to cleaning out my closet and I think “maybe I’ll shrink back into those old shirts.”
Read more about the panel in which Ochoa participated.
*Photo by Aaron Salcido.