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Linda Chicana- Former SWC Coordinator and Counselor of the Transfer Center Norma Cazares dancing the night away with her husband, Roger, at her retirement party held at the Bread and Salt building in San Diego. Cazares retired from Southwestern College after 26 years of work. Photo by Cristofer Garcia/Staff

 

It was time for a happy warrior to be happy.

All eyes were on Norma Cazares as she danced the night away with her husband, Roger, while a live band filled the room with a cover of Los Alacranes Mojados’ “Linda Chicana.”

“I love to dance,” said Norma Cazares, former coordinator and counselor of the Southwestern College Transfer Center. “I can dance all night long and I have been known to do that.”

A retirement party for one of SWC’s most respected employees was attended by co-workers, family members and prominent Chula Vista residents, including Mayor Mary Casillas Salas.

“I want to really honor and appreciate Norma, not just for the educational side, but for what she’s done for our community through her activism and her civic engagement,” said Casillas Salas.

Cazares is preternaturally friendly, but a fierce fighter for justice, fairness and the underdog. Recently she has been an outspoken critic of the UCSD decision to take more out-of-state students and fewer community college transfers.

Her SWC journey started when she was an employee for the Chula Vista office of California Employment Development Department (EDD).

“Our office and Southwestern College had an agreement where staff from EDD would be stationed at Southwestern College to help graduates (of the office information system program) find employment,” she said. “(They) asked me if I’d be interested to help place those students in jobs, I said, ‘heck yeah.’”

It was during her time there that she decided to go back to college, a decision she called “a smart move.”

“It was (during) that experience when I found myself on campus that I really, really realized this is where I want to be,” she said. “People that worked at the college that saw how I worked with students said, ‘you ought to think about working here.’ I asked ‘doing what?’ They said ‘well, you’re like a counselor, to be a counselor.’ That’s when I found out I needed a Master’s and that’s when I went back (to college).”

Cazares earned her Master’s in counseling education at San Diego State University and resigned from EDD to work at SWC in 1989. She started her 26 years as an SWC employee in the San Ysidro Higher Education Center, where she worked for seven years.

“I got to develop pretty much the whole program there,” she said. “I used to go to every classroom to talk to students every semester.”

She helped students transfer, fostering clubs like Improving Dreams, Equity, Access and Success (IDEAS) and programs like Puente (Bridge), which she said was an answer to the low number of transfers for Latino students.

“Puente is wonderful,” she said. “It was going to be like a familia and you work together. Basically the goal had to be transferring to a university to get a Bachelor’s degree.”

Guadalupe De Jesus is a former IDEAS member.

“In 2012-2013 IDEAS, my team and I were looking for an advisor that could represent leadership, somebody who could empathize, understand and guide a group of students who wanted to bring awareness about the struggles undocumented students suffered,” said De Jesus. “As an advisor, transfer college counselor, mentor and friend, Norma Cazares always supported me. I like her honesty, dedication and her welcoming and supporting attitude.”

Cazares said students saw her as a mentor and there is beauty in the way they stay in contact and ask for her advice.

“That’s a life commitment that I have to them,” said Cazares.

Cazares is a born-and-raised San Diegan. She grew up as one of seven children.

“We were a family of nine living in a one-bedroom rented home,” she said. “Sometimes my dad had a car, sometimes we didn’t have a car.”

At 15 years old, she said, she was too poor to organize a quinceañera. Instead, Cazares started organizing her community.

“(It started) on 42nd and Market, which is Southeast San Diego, 15 years old,” she said. “An African-American male in the community seemed to want to get the community involved and get the streets paved and stuff like that because nobody paid attention to us back in those days. I couldn’t register people to vote because I wasn’t of age, but I was registering people to vote.”

That man was future San Diego city council member George “Chaka” Stevens.

As a self-identified Chicana, Cazares has been involved in various social issues since then. Growing up in her era, she said, provided the perfect environment for the “young and wide-eyed” activist.

“Everything happened in the ‘60s,” she said. “Everything.”

Cazares advocated Vietnam protests, led walkouts at Lincoln High School to push education reform and protected Chicano Park from destruction.

“Word got out that CalTrans was going to try to take over Chicano Park,” she said. “I remember we left (SDSU) and a bunch of us went down there,” she said. “Bulldozers and everything were ready to get in there and we basically held that project up. Those were exciting times. It can be dangerous but long story short, we have Chicano Park today.”

She is now a proud mother of three and grandmother of two and has been married to her husband for 42 years. She said retired life is very busy but she likes it that way as she will “continue doing the work that needs to be done.”

Cazares was hesitant about retiring but said she is certain she will always be an activist.

“You never know where life is going to take you. That little experience, when they asked me (to be an SWC counselor), I could’ve said no and I would’ve never had this experience that I have 26 years later. It was very fortunate.”