Francisco Hernandez:  

Life I was born and raised in El Paso, Texas. I attended Alta Vista and then Austin High School. My family left El Paso when I was 15 and moved to Roseville, California. My father had moved to Roseville two years earlier to work for the Southern Pacific Railroad. He had been laid off in El Paso and had been offered jobs in Tucson, Los Angeles. I am very grateful that he chose Roseville. My family immigrated to El Paso from the area around Camargo in Chihuahua, Mexico. According to our DNA our family is 38% native american and rest a mixture of european backgrounds. We also have catholic, muslim, and jewish ancestors. All of made sense after we visited the southern part of Spain and saw the great mixture of races, religions, and ethnic backgrounds that left from southern Spain for the Americas. I came to Roseville High in October of 1964. Although I had not been brought up in Roseville I was able to make some friends and to graduate without too much damage to me or to the school. My favorite teacher was Mr. Titus who taught us English. I still remember the vocabulary words that he made us memorize on a weekly basis. After I graduated from Roseville, I attended Sierra College for two years trying to be an engineer. Calculus and chemistry convinced me that my talents were best served in other areas. After watching Berkeley in the news and visiting the campus, I decided to apply to the flagship campus of the UC system. I applied in the area of computer science, but then quickly decided that it was a field without much of a future. ...Expand for more