Richard Pineda and John Carrillo

[00:00] RICHARD PINEDA: Richard I'm Richard Pineda I'm 47. Today is January 8, 2023. We are in El Paso, Texas. My interview partner is John Carrillo, a colleague of mine from the University of Texas at El Paso.

[00:14] JOHN CARRILLO: And my name is John R. Carrillo, age 68. Today's date is January 8, 2023. We are in El Paso, Texas, and I am speaking with doctor Richard Pineda, and he is a colleague of mine at the university. Richard, I like to kind of take things chronologically, so tell me a little bit. Tell me a little bit about where you grew up.

[00:44] RICHARD PINEDA: Sure. Well, I grew up about six blocks from the university, so it's kind of a full circle for me. I grew up in the sunset Heights neighborhood in El Paso. I was the only child of my mom, and she got divorced when I was really young, so we lived with my grandparents. So the house that I was raised in had my grandparents and my mom, and then for a while, one of my aunts. And it always kind of blows my mind because when I came back to the university about 19 years ago, I would oftentimes pop over to see my grandmother, who lived in that house. I had her for about three years before she passed away. And so my world started there. I went away to different places in my world, ended up kind of right back there.

[01:32] JOHN CARRILLO: Tell me a little bit about your childhood. What was it like?

[01:36] RICHARD PINEDA: I grew up in a very interesting home in that my mom had gotten divorced, and so she was working all the time. She was a payroll clerk for the El Paso natural gas company. And it was. I mean, in my sense, it was a beautiful childhood because I had my grandparents kind of fundamentally raise me, even though my mom was there. But it meant that I had my grandmother during the days. And when I was away at school, when I'd come back, I'd come back to her in the house. And then I had my grandfather, who was a really important figure for me, not having a biological father, that was in my life. My grandfather, he was a world war two vet. He was a city inspector for the city of El Paso. He had all of these little side hustles. And I grew up with him as kind of both my role model and also the person that kind of taught me all these important lessons about masculinity and how to think about yourself. And in some ways, he was really progressive, and in other ways, he was pretty archaic. But it was a good place and a good way to grow up.

[02:45] JOHN CARRILLO: You talk about your grandfather and the role that he played in your life. What do you feel? Are some of the, some of the important lessons that you learned from him.

[02:58] RICHARD PINEDA: I will tell you one that I share all the time with my students. And it's funny, because today, January 8, we have the president of the United States visiting El Paso. My grandfather was a lifelong Democrat and was, was vocal about it in ways that I understood, you know, why he was a member of the party. But I remember as a boy, Ronald Reagan came to El Paso, I think, to speak maybe at the state republican convention, which was downtown. And I remember my grandfather took me to see the president. I mean, we just stood on a corner. It wasn't as if we went to the event, but it was really important for him to take me there. Even though I knew that he did not like Reagan, I think that he understood the gravity of that moment. And so I think, in some ways, he was the first person to teach me about the significance of civility and the recognition of what it meant to have access to those moments. You know, there's little things that I remember all the time. I always carry a handkerchief, and I have, for the longest time, well before any of my friends ever did that. And it was because my grandfather always said, you should always have a handkerchief. And there's little things like that that have always stuck with me. He was a phenomenal cook. And it was funny because when my mom got remarried and we moved out of the house, my mom, partly because she was always busy, was sort of a terrible cook. And I learned all these lessons from my grandfather that I think about even to this day, I love to cook. I think I'm pretty good at it. But I always remember he was big on timing. And so they would have these big elaborate dinner parties, and food would come out of. And there would be 15 or 20 people at the house, and everything would come out at one time so that they could eat, and then the next thing would be ready as they were finishing up that, and he was all about timing. And I remember that because the way that I think he thought about food was in these sequences. And it really clicked with me. And that's something even to this day. Like, I'll sit down before we have people over, and I'll write down what we're going to have. I'm the only person cooking, so this is just for me. But it's because I want to make sure that I can see the sequence, how I do it. And so it was all kinds of things. I mean, it was a way of thinking. It was a way of being. I was very lucky through the university several years ago to travel to Micronesia for a project that we sponsored. And I had always had that on a bucket list. My grandpa was in the service during the war. There were four brothers, and three of the brothers went off to war. One was in Europe, one was in North Africa, and my grandpa was in the Pacific, and he had fought on Guam, and he had fought also on Palau. And so one of the things that was interesting was, I'm sorry, no, Guam and Saipan. And so the trip afforded me the opportunity to go to Guam and to Saipan. And I just remember thinking about the gravity of that moment, that I could have walked in the same place that my grandfather did. And so I think he also, whether directly or because of the life he lived, taught me about the significance of these historical moments. And you couldn't replicate that moment. I mean, that was an amazing experience, thanks to the university.

[06:23] JOHN CARRILLO: You mentioned the memory of your grandfather going to see Reagan for this event. I know that you have a degree in political science. Do you think that that had an effect on what you would eventually end up studying?

[06:42] RICHARD PINEDA: I think it did to an extent, because I think my grandfather exposed me to the political process. He was vocal in his beliefs, and I remember that those rolled off on me. I always have this moment, and I tell my students this all the time. I can be having just the worst morning. But the second that I get onto campus, I think about how amazed my grandfather would be that his grandson was a professor at the university, six blocks away from the house that he was raised in. And that really powers me. I can be having just a terrible morning, and that clicks in. So I don't necessarily know that it was the area of interest. I think that definitely helped me to a certain extent. But he was such a believer. He obviously had his own kids. There were only three grandkids. My uncle had two daughters, and myself. And I had the benefit of being here with him, growing up around him. And so I think he influenced me in those ways. And so I think because he worked for the city, because I think he always had friends that were kind of on the periphery of being involved in politics, I think that sparked it. But it was my grandfather who took me to a political event. I think it was an election. It was on election day, and one of his friends was running for a city council seat. And I always remember this because I met somebody because of my grandfather, who did have a huge impact on the way that I looked at the world. And that was then county Judge Pat O'Rourke, who was the, you know, the county judge in the state of Texas is the highest elected office. And as a result of being there for my grandfather's friend, holding signs and, you know, talking to people before the. The. Before they cast their ballot, I got to meet Judge O'Rourke, and that had a huge impact. The story that I've told, told, actually, to son Beto Rourke, who I was schoolmates with, because that really got me thinking about personality and what it takes to be in those kinds of positions. So in some ways, I think my grandfather made sure I had those opportunities, and I think he loved the idea that I was in high school debate. Like, I think he thought that was cool. He always used to make fun of me. I remember this when we were little, because we would take these road trips. We would leave on a Saturday morning really early, drive someplace in New Mexico or Arizona, and then we'd come back Sunday night, and I would always have a book with me. And apparently this used to just drive him nuts that I was not, you know, experiencing the vistas of southern New Mexico and Arizona because I was buried in a book. But I think he came to understand that that's my personality, and that's kind of what made me who I. Who I was or who I am.

[09:32] JOHN CARRILLO: Tell me, tell me what your favorite memory of your I, grandfather and your mother are.

[09:39] RICHARD PINEDA: You know, my grandfather is easy, and I think about this all the time. So, like, a lot of people that were on their way to college, it became a family affair. So my mom and my stepdad, my grandmother, my grandfather took me to school, and, you know, I wanted to get out of the car as fast as possible and, you know, have them go on their way as quickly as possible. But. But, you know, you go through the motions of letting them set you up and letting them be part of your buildup to the dorm. And it was funny because my mom told me that as they drove away, my grandfather, who was, you know, he was just. He was a vet. He was a manly man. She said that she looked back and she had never seen her dad cry. And as they were leaving, you know, leaving their grandson at college, he was crying. And I was lucky enough to see him one other time that year. They came to campus. He and my grandmother did. And then I saw him at the holidays, and he unfortunately passed that march of my freshman year. But that really, I did not suffer, not having a biological father in my life, because I think my grandfather went above and beyond to make sure that he did all of those things for me. So that always sticks out in my mind. Like it was a powerful memory and it wasn't something that I got to see. But I remember my mom telling me, and I just remember hearing it in her voice saying, you know, I've never seen my father cry. And all of the time at that point, you know, she was in her late forties, early fifties, had never seen her father cry. And so to have that experience, I just, you know, I connect with that idea, and it really just resonates with me. And I think about that all the time. Now that I have a daughter, you know, when I leave her at school in the morning, I don't cry. But I understand the impulse now.

[11:29] JOHN CARRILLO: Well, it's interesting because I only saw my dad cry one time, and because of the mexican culture, men are supposed to be very, how would I put it? Very macho, so to speak. So for me to have seen my dad cry, and it was a time when I was thinking of going to the military, and he told me, he says, I don't want you to go. And so for you to experience that, yeah, I can certainly relate to that. To see someone that you regard as being this one, your hero, and one someone who is so very strong to cry because of you, it's a very powerful moment.

[12:19] RICHARD PINEDA: It is. And I think it's that recognition. That's why I say, and I say this a lot, too. You know, my students and I say this to people that know me well, that it was interesting because in some ways, he was, he was, he was very masculine and very rugged. So I think that these moments of tenderness were not, they didn't come easily for him. And it's funny because you hear stories. My aunts and my mother would tell stories about when he got back, when they were growing up. And he was, I think, still dealing with, you know, what we would call post traumatic stress, which. Which certainly nobody talked about then, and in the same way. And I think he was very gruff. I think he had a son, my uncle, and then girls, and I think my mom and the aunts, I think, helped mitigate some of that. But I think he was very, very rough. And I think he was still having a hard time accommodating, even through their early lives. And I think my aunt always hypothesized that he changed and softened once I was in the house and once I got there. And I think some part of it was protection about my mom, who was divorced and was living with them. I think some of it was maybe not being there as much for his kids when they were little. And so I think that was a big part of it. But, I mean, you know, he had a garage on the side of the house, and he was always. He was always very good with his. His hands. I mean, he was a tradesman, really, kind of by his initial training. I mean, when he got. When he got drafted, he had been working as a welder. So he was very good at building things and repairing things. And I would watch him and, you know, he would give me. He'd give me a set of tools. I was never good at it. I still am not very good at it, quite frankly. But he'd give me a set of tools I could play with, and he would watch me and would make sure that I was doing things. And if I was hammering something wrong, he would show me how to do it right. And I think that those things were instructive, but he was never harsh. And so it's interesting to hear these stories after the fact about how he was harder on those kids growing up, on my uncle and my aunts than he was with me. And some of that is, I'm sure, age, and some of it is just your life experience. But it was so interesting to me to grow up in that kind of environment, because, like I said, there's so many things that my grandfather sticks out for me in that way.

[14:46] JOHN CARRILLO: Tell me, tell me about your favorite memory about your mother.

[14:50] RICHARD PINEDA: My mom is an interesting person. She went to college for a very short period of time. And so the one thing that's interesting is that there was a tremendous amount of pressure that I would go to university, and I think I was going to anyway. I mean, I think my disposition was such that that's where I wanted to go. But this was a huge deal for her, partly because I think she recognized not having a college degree as being something that hindered her entire life. So that was a huge deal. But it's interesting because I always tell people that if I have skills in life that are connected to people, those people skills come from my mother because she was very good at reading rooms, was very good at reading personalities. And the story that always sticks out in my mind is if she saw that you, as one of her coworkers, would go to the candy machine and get a Kit Kat, say she would pay attention to that, and she noticed that you'd get a Kit Kat somewhere down the road, and for your birthday or for Christmas or some moment that there would be some recognition. She would buy you a package of Kit Kats. And I always use that story to talk about the idea of why interpersonal communication skills are so important. But it's also the lesson that I learned from her, which was, you know, you can connect with people in a way that probably gives you more information and connects you more than if you were book smart or understood the world intellectually. And so I remember when I got done with my college degree, this was a really big deal for her. And I remember her saying to me, you did what I wanted you to do. If you want to keep going or if you want to do other things, good luck. You can do whatever you want to do. But it was almost as if I had met that benchmark and I no longer had that pressure from her, because in her mind, it was mission accomplished. It changed our relationship tremendously. There was a lot less pressure on our relationship. I think we became closer to a certain extent, because I think there was so much built into me going to school, and I had a rough go of school. I mean, I was lazy as a student. I was not engaged as a student. And I think, in hindsight, I think about how much private university cost my mom, and it blows my mind that I did what I did. But she, I think, weathered that storm until I got done. And I think her most prized possession, she had this until we moved her out of her house. She had my framed undergraduate diploma, and she kept it. And to a certain extent, I mean, I remember at one point sort of saying, this is mine, and she wouldn't give it up to me. And I think, for her, that was a really important marker. But I think it's the people skills. It was learning what drives people. And she was always very good at that. She was always very good at figuring out people, their inclinations to be good people or to be nice or the people to avoid. And I always thought that was interesting because she, again, grew up without a college degree. So I think that a lot of that intuition and that empathy were things that she picked up herself, probably from, you know, her, her family or the people that she was around.

[18:11] JOHN CARRILLO: You ended up going to Baylor. Correct. Tell me about that. Leaving home. I mean, traditionally mexican american families, they don't want you to leave.

[18:23] RICHARD PINEDA: Well, it's funny you should say that, John, because this is a big thing for my mother, that I would not stay in El Paso. And I think, you know, she had some weird perspectives on that. But I'm grateful, because she really pushed me out. I was a high school debater, and I really loved it, and I was pretty good at it. And I wanted to debate in college, and I still often think about the decision I made. I mean, Baylor was incredibly expensive. It was a hard environment because it was and is the largest southern baptist university in the, in the world. And, you know, I grew up catholic, but not so much. And so this is a hard experience. But what I found at Baylor that made a big difference were the people that were on the debate team, and that's what kept me engaged, and that's what kept me going through school. And so, for me, Baylor was just kind of a difficult choice, but I failed to make the most of it. I mean, I say this all the time when I talk to my students, because I say, you, just by the virtue of paying your tuition, have access to a world. And if you choose not to go to things or you choose not to take advantage of that world, that's on you. And that's what it was like for me. I mean, I distinctly remember in that first year that I was in college for, I think, hispanic heritage month, they had brought in an author, Antonio Burciaga Tony Burciaga, who's from El Paso, sort of knew him tangentially because of family connections. And Tony was there to read from one of his books, and I loved his books. I mean, they were powerful and they were funny, and they were all about growing up in El Paso. And the night that Tony was gonna speak, I'd sort of seen it, and I thought, oh, I'm gonna go see him. This will be great. And, you know, I'm gonna. I'll talk to him and I'll, you know, remind him how I know him and I'm from El Paso. And that night, I opted not to go the two blocks away from my dorm to the. To the big audience or the big auditorium, because I decided that I was just too lazy. And that story not only exemplifies my time in college, but it also is one of the biggest regrets I have, because not going to take advantage of something that literally was on a silver platter, especially at a place like Baylor, that was not, at that point, sort of keen on big diversity experiences, always left me wanting. And especially because what nobody knew was that Tony was already pretty far along with cancer at that. So within, I imagine, a year or so, he passed away. I can't tell you, John, how much that makes me sad, because, again, this was something that was there, that was important to me, that I could have taken advantage of. But as a college student, I just made a bad choice. And, you know, I say to my students, your experience is going to be all about making these choices, some good, some bad. But that's when I regret, because in some ways, the fact that I had the opportunity and was too lazy to take advantage of it was so symptomatic of everything that happened when I was in college. I mean, you know, it was a rough environment. It was an environment where there was a lot of wealthy students. It was an environment that was politically and socially very, very conservative. But that was on me. I mean, I had something that was there for me, and I opted not to take advantage of it. And I just. I think so much of my college experience was about me making a choice that was more about being lazy than it was any sort of political or social stance, to be sure.

[21:50] JOHN CARRILLO: You mentioned that when you got your bachelor's degree that your mom ended up essentially saying, okay, this belongs to me now. You said that you feel that in a way, you had. You had accomplished something for your mom, but you ended up taking it much further, obviously, because you went on to get your master's degree and then went on to receive your PhD. What was it? Was there someone, or was there an incident that something clicked in your mind that said, you know what? I'm just going to keep. I'm going to keep going.

[22:36] RICHARD PINEDA: You know, I attribute what happened when I got back to El Paso to two phenomenal teachers in my life. One was my high school debate coach, Shawn Mena, who knew that I had come back to El Paso, saw me on a Sunday night at the grocery store, wanted to know what I was doing. I didn't have a very good plan. She immediately said, you're going to start graduate school at UTEP. And by Wednesday of that, next week, I was in my first graduate class. Being lucky enough to have a teacher that impacts your life year after year, even though you're no longer her student, I think was the first thing. And the second thing was another phenomenal teacher, Doctor Sam Rosillo, who was the graduate advisor for the program. And there were a couple of things about Sam. The first was that he recognized exactly what I was in a matter of minutes when we started talking, he recognized that I was lazy. He recognized that I had a lot of talent and was not using that talented. And he pushed me. He pushed me right out of the gate. And it was a consistent process of pushing and pushing in a way that spoke to me because he made the classes intellectually interesting. So this changed everything from when I was an undergrad, where you go to a class because you want to check a box. I went to class because I was looking forward to having conversations and looking forward to having him challenge me because it was like being in debate again to have somebody that would push you. And very quickly in that first year, two things happened. I was given an opportunity to travel as a member of the us national debate team. So I got to travel for about three months, from January to start of April, to go to the UK and to go on this really amazing experience. And I got selected. And I remember being very nervous when I went to go talk to Sam. To say this would require that I'm not here for effectively two and a half months of my assistantship and two and a half months of school. And I was very nervous. I expected him to say no. And Sam said, absolutely, like, you're going, and that's really important. And so that opened up, literally opened up a world for me. But then the second thing was he started to say, you need to go get a PhD. And I'd never really thought about that. I had never really put into context the idea that I could do that or that I could be a professor or that this was a pathway that I wanted to do. I mean, when I got back from Baylor that summer, I mean, I thought I was going to be a real estate agent. I just had it in my mind, like, this is a way to make money. I think I can probably be pretty good at it, and that's what I'm going to do. And all of a sudden he's saying, you're smart enough, you've got important things to say. You should think about going to get a PhD. And I hadn't really thought through that. But the next thing I know is I was finishing that first year. I started to get more and more involved in the process. I was now coaching speech and debate. That was my assistantship. But the idea that I could go on suddenly changed everything, because now there was a pathway to do something different and interesting enough. As I'm having these conversations and I'm making these plans, I would go back to my mom and say, well, this is what's on the table. And it was so interesting because as a result of her limited education, and I think, again, that we had already ticked off the important box for her, she would essentially say, that's great. Just work hard, mijo. And it was really hard in some ways because the conversations that I saw a lot of my peers in graduate school having with their spouses or with their parents, they were getting direction and they were getting ideas. Maybe you could write about this. Maybe you should think about this school. Maybe you should think about that. My mom would just sort of keep saying, good job. Work hard, Miho. It'll all turn out. And she was right to a certain extent. But had it not been for Sean to get me into that program and to kind of watch over me from a distance and Sam to make sure that I had the energy to move forward, I don't know what I would have done. I certainly wouldn't have started graduate school. I mean, you know, maybe I'd be the king of real estate in El Paso. I don't know. But at least in the short term, I knew that I wasn't going to be where I am now.

[26:38] JOHN CARRILLO: Obviously, politics is something that you are passionate about because you have a degree in it, and you are a commentator on the tv stations here in El Paso, which means that you could have very easily have become a politician or run for office. Tell me how you ended up instead choosing to become a professor.

[27:14] RICHARD PINEDA: I think the influence of having great teachers every year that I went further in graduate school really changed my perspective on what I wanted to do. And I think that was true when I started to work on my PhD. I had great professors there. You know, what really did it, John, was the idea that as I started my PhD program, I was very lucky, because my high school debate, I'm sorry, my college debate partner, who is Mexican American from outside of Houston, Texas, we debated together at Baylor. He was also in the PhD program. There were no other Mexican Americans in our program. There were very few Latino Latinos that we would encounter as we were going to conferences or connecting. And it became really apparent to me that if I wasn't willing to commit to being an academic, that I was going to shut the door on the possibility of somebody who needed a Richard Pineda to talk to them, to open the door for them. I was closing out those opportunities. And so for me, a big part of what I do now as a professor is really talk to the students about how hard the experience is, how difficult it is to be a student, how hard we as faculty members make it to be a student. And I talk to them all the time about the idea of why just having some guidance can change the trajectory of your world. And I think that's what did it. I've always been fascinated in politics. In my mind, that is the perfect fusion of what I was interested in with policy debate and what I was interested in when it came to language and the symbolic importance of language. But really, I think what changed my trajectory was thinking about how significant it was that the professors that I had got me on this path, and, you know, none of the faculty members that I had that had that influence were mexican american or Latino, Latino, and that didn't change the impact they had on me. But I remember at some point thinking to myself, I wonder what would happen if, as a mexican american academic, I had a chance to talk to a mexican american man or woman that was coming up through graduate school and could say, I understand that you're under a different set of pressures, that there are pressures at home, that there are pressures in how you're expected to live your life and how you're expected to do certain things. And I know those pressures, in addition to knowing what it's like if you're not engaged and you're not putting forth a lot of effort. So having that presence, I knew would make a difference. And that became a big part of why I decided that I would stick with finishing a PhD and go into the professor. And that has everything to do with why I came back to Ut El Paso. I had started a teaching job in California. My first teaching job was in the Cal state system in San Bernardino. It was a reasonably good job to start with. Southern California was unusual. I got there right after 911, so the economy was kind of riding down. But there was an opportunity at the start of my third year to come back to El Paso for a job interview. I did it really out of professional courtesy, like, I'm gonna go because it's very nice that they're gonna offer me a trip. I'll see what they have to say. I'll see my mom, I'll see my grandmother, and then I'll make my way back to Southern California. And I had a conversation with the then president, the late doctor Dinah Natalicio who essentially asked me what I wanted to do. And I gave her some version of this answer about wanting to make a difference in mexican american students lives. And she said, well, then this is done, because there's no other place you can do that except right here. She was like, you shouldn't be in California. You shouldn't be in any other part of the United States. If you want to do what you say, it's going to be here in El Paso. And that left a huge impact on me. I got the job offer and said, yes, I want to come back, because if I can talk to students about what it's like to go to the high school that I went to, or if I can talk to the students about what it's like to juggle the pressures of having homework, but then having to be connected to family responsibilities, to the expectation that you're going to be there for the Saturday event. If I can help in any of those things, to just say, this is really hard, and it doesn't get easier, but there are people that understand what you are doing that I think that has a tremendous amount of power, and it's part of the reason that I love the job that I have.

[31:47] JOHN CARRILLO: Richard, I know that just recently you underwent two major surgeries in your life, and I have to tell you that I was very. I was very impressed by your resiliency, your courage to go through those events. And literally, within. In some cases, within just a few days of you having undergone these surgeries, you were already literally at work answering emails and stuff. And where does that. Where does that courage, that resiliency, where does that come from?

[32:41] RICHARD PINEDA: Well, I appreciate you saying that. There are certainly moments when I'm not sure that courage is the best descriptor, maybe a little bit of stupidity to keep at it. But, yeah, several years ago, I had a serious infection and lost all of the toes on my left foot with the risk that that particular infection would get into my bloodstream. So it was awfully scary. And then in April of 2022, I had a massive heart attack and a few days later had open heart surgery for a triple bypass. You know, some part of that I honestly attribute to my grandmother more so than my grandfather. My grandfather was really, you know, he was. He was a strong person, but my grandmother was truly the stoic. You know, she was a Catholic american, catholic, Catholic mexican american woman who I think had seen some probably ugly things in her life and persevered, and I just would always kind of hear her voice when the opportunity was take some time off or walk away from this or get right back to it. And it was always get right back to it because that's what she would have expected of me. You know, I've said this now on several occasions, that you don't ever expect to confront your mortality in the way that I did. And the. The second time, this. This April incident, you know, John, I didn't think I was coming back from the hospital. I got to the hospital on Friday night, and things looked bad, and so much so that I started writing notes to my daughter and to my wife on my phone because I wanted to explain to both of them what they meant to me and, you know, why I wasn't coming back. And it was hard to do. My daughter, at that point was five years old, and just the gravity of thinking that I was going to leave her and leave my wife was so overwhelming. And I think, you know, in some ways, I think in that moment, what I recognized and what I realized from so much of my life experience was that I could not let the overwhelming dread that I had at that moment overwhelm the love and the joy that I had experienced. And so much of those notes was about saying thank you. Thank you for being in my life. Thank you for letting me be your husband. Thank you for letting me be your father. And to a certain extent, I think having those things to fight for changes your sensibility about mortality. You know, I was lucky. I had really good doctors. I had a great cardio thoracic surgeon who was in and out and took care of the. Took care of the bypass. But in thinking about those moments, there were two things that jumped out at me. The first was, I have an obligation to fight. And it's not just for my family. It's for my friends. It's for my students. It's for the people who I want to make a difference for. And the second thing was this recognition of the way that I was raised and the way that I was taught to be. And if you have breath in your lungs, you fight for that last little bit. And so, in some ways, at every turn, all I could think about was my grandparents and thinking about the way that they raised me, and that made a huge difference, and it even does now. So days that I'm a little bit tired or days that I just feel like, you know, this was a silly decision to try to do this, I kind of see them and I hear them, and I think to myself, okay, take a breath. Take a walk. Get back to it. And that's what drives me on a day to day basis. I mean, I have a job that I love. I'm surrounded by colleagues that I really respect. I have family and friends that are always there to support me, and I think that makes a difference. I mean, people talk about a village, but this is a metropolis. I mean, that's what it takes to make sure that I'm a okay and up and doing what I need to do.

[36:55] JOHN CARRILLO: It's obvious that family is very important to you. I know we're almost running out of time, but very quickly, what are your hopes for your daughter?

[37:07] RICHARD PINEDA: Oh, I consider myself so lucky. I did not want to have kids for the longest time. And when I married my wife, we really had an active conversation, and decision that we were going to do this. And I had two things. I wanted a little girl, and a lot of that was wrapped up in my own worries about raising a son, not having had my biological father. But the other thing is that I really wanted a child who is intellectually curious. Like, I couldn't wait for the moments that she would ask the why? Why? And I've gotten everything that I wanted. I mean, I've got the most amazing daughter, and I know that she's going to grow up to be amazing. And it's interesting because you have these weird moments as a parent where you see the best of yourself in your child and then you see the worst of yourself in your child. And it's a great mirror to make sure that you kind of straighten your course out. But especially this idea of intellectual curiosity. And I love this. She gets bored when I try to explain things, but we have a chance she'll ask about an animal or she'll ask about something. I say, oh, let's go to YouTube and let's take a look. And she can do that for a little bit of. Of time. But I took to writing after the amputation, a journal, and it's sporadic, but they're notes to her. And it's something that I hope conveys both my hopes and my dreams for her, but also explains who I am. So there are little stories about some of these health incidents. There are stories about moments from her life that I've experienced that are really important to me. And there's a lot that's built in. That's an attempt to explain who I am in the fear that, you know, one of these days I don't make it home. I want her to know, and I love that she is empathetic. I love that she is very tender. She takes after, I think, her mother in that way. But I love the fact that she is just this ball of energy, that she is light on a daily basis. And even if you get frustrated, she's just the most remarkable thing. So my hope is that she has access to a world that's better than mine, that she has access to people that will influence her positively. I really, really hope that she's lucky enough to have the kinds of teachers that I did, that she finds people that can connect to who she is and recognize that she has these strengths to contribute to the world. That's my ultimate dream. I hope that she becomes as powerful a woman as she can because of those influences in her life.

[39:38] JOHN CARRILLO: Wow. Well, she's got a good role model.

[39:42] RICHARD PINEDA: Thanks, John