Sarah Reyes is the California Endowment Central Valley senior program officer. Previously, she served in the state legislature. Before participating in a panel on the health of the Central Valley in her hometown, Fresno, she reminisced in the Zócalo green room about her first job as a hospital tray girl and why the year she turned 16 was the most important of her life.
Q. What’s your theme song?
A. “A Hard Day’s Night.” My day is like a hard day’s night. Always running, always doing things, never stopping from sunup to sundown and beyond.
Q. What’s your greatest irrational fear?
A. Bugs-spiders. I hate them. Any kind of little insect. I don’t know why, because most of them are a thousand million times smaller than me. I just don’t like them.
Q. What don’t you miss about politics?
A. The fight.
Q. Who’s your most trusted advisor?
A. That’s easy: my mom.
Q. What’s your favorite condiment?
A. Ketchup. I put it on eggs-some people think that’s strange.
Q. What was the most important year of your life?
A. I was 16 years old. That was the year I realized I had a voice, I could voice my opinion, and I had a right to voice that opinion.
Q. Where do you get your news?
A. A lot of places. Television news, whether it’s local or national-CNN. I get it through newspapers, I surf the web-the Los Angeles Times, the Fresno Bee, radio stations. I’m a former newsperson, so I’m a news junkie.
Q. What inanimate object are you most attached to?
A. Probably my iPad.
Q. What keeps you up at night?
A. What doesn’t keep me up at night? I think it’s just trying to problem-solve the world’s problems, or at least my world’s problems. It’s the young people that we’re losing to violence. It’s the young people we’re losing because people are pushing them out of school. It’s social problems that we created. Work keeps me up at night.
Q. What was your first job?
A. I was a tray girl at a convalescent hospital. See that building right there? I was a tray girl there when I was 13 years old. Worked in the kitchen.
*Photo by Dalton Runberg.