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vu tw 5 The El Sol Family Many of the volunteers and staff members who work at El Sol have seen their lives evolve in unexpected ways as they have come to see the more human face of immigration. As El Sol’s first volunteer coordinator and the person who opened the doors on the day the center was inaugurated, Lee McCarthy’s story is particularly powerful in this respect. As an undergraduate, McCarthy had studied abroad in Mexico and Guatemala. She and her husband moved to Jupiter in 1989, and ten years later, when Jupiter was experiencing the construction and development boom that attracted so many immigrants, they bought a house in the newly developed Abacoa community. McCarthy’s husband was diagnosed with cancer in 2004 and passed away within a year. Like many other Jupiter residents living outside the charter neighborhoods, McCarthy first learned about Jupiter’s immigrants during that same time period, mostly reading in the local newspaper about the rising tensions. She had fond memories of the people in Mexico and Guatemala from her studies, and she “thought that this would be the perfect time to welcome them into our country.” She began to attend the Friends of El Sol meetings in 2005, and by the time El Sol opened in 2006 she had been appointed volunteer coordinator. As soon as El Sol opened, McCarthy became a permanent and indispensable fixture at the center. Her involvement with El Sol changed the lives of many people, but none as profoundly as her own. While McCarthy’s story is unique, it illustrates the power of El Sol as a place of encounter: a place where Jupiter’s residents are able to forge human connections with each other. These connections represent cross-cultural bridges that are critical to immigrant integration in the long term. McCarthy, who never had children of her own, forged a powerful personal connection with three young men at El Sol: Ulises and José (teenage cousins from the same village in Guatemala) and Isac (a young man from Mexico). Through a series of events 123 124 The El Sol Family facilitated by her role at El Sol, McCarthy and the three boys have evolved into a true family. Their story is a powerful one, and is best told in their own words. Through McCarthy’s efforts, her two youngest sons (José and Isac) were able to regularize their immigration status. Because he was already eighteen, Ulises did not meet the same naturalization criteria. In-depth interviews with Ulises and McCarthy detail their story, and this chapter is told primarily from their point of view. Arrival at El Sol As detailed in chapter 2, Ulises arrived in Jupiter with his younger cousin José in 2008 when he was just seventeen years old, after a harrowing crossing of Mexico and the U.S. border. Ulises and José came to Jupiter because they had an uncle who already lived there. Ulises recalls his trip to Jupiter, his first impressions of his new home, and the mixture of fear and excitement that the beginning of this new phase of his life made him feel. We went from McAllen to Jupiter in bus. It took like a week. What a long trip! There were so many people in the bus. I have seen a map now, and it is so far! We were exhausted. When the bus got on the turnpike there were those toll plazas. There were lights that to me looked like police lights, and I got scared. The lights were just the toll plaza lights, but I didn’t know. I was very scared. I told myself I made it this far, and now there is the police, and now it is all over. But it was just the turnpike, and we made it through fine. The bus was so packed. Most people who were in the bus were also immigrants. In Jupiter, they dropped us off at the McDonald’s that is close to I-95. We arrived here in Jupiter at about 1:00 a.m. My uncle was there at the McDonald’s with the money. We got off the bus. In my town in Guatemala most people think that in the United States all the houses are like skyscrapers, all of them . . . like New York and all that. I got to Jupiter, and the very first thing I did was look around and look for skyscrapers, but there were none! I was happy to...

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