Sunny Angulo, Part 1 (S9E3)

Sunny Angulo has one helluva life story.

In this episode, meet and get to know Sunny. Today, she does PROPEL San Francisco, a group promoting progressive policies rooted in pragmatism and effectiveness.

In Part 1, Sunny begins her own story with that of her maternal grandparents. Her mom's mom, Amparo Espinoza (née Cruz), was born in Chihuahua, Mexico. Amparo's dad worked on the railroad, meaning she lived a nomadic life when she was young. Eventually, her family made it to Northern California in is now Stockton.

Amparo's husband was younger than she was. He was a gangster back in the day. Both came from big families. He grew up in poverty. He later did fieldwork.

Amparo was already an independent young lady. She helped take care of her mom (Sunny's great-grandmother). She worked, which wasn't common for women of that era to do. She had a car.

The two met at a dance hall social. Parents served as chaperones at these events, of course. He asked Amparo to dance, but had been so nervous to do so that he got drunk to muster the courage. Instead of dancing, Amparo helped her future husband back to his friend's car. As they carted him away, he told Amparo that he'd call her. "No you won't," Sunny's grandma said.

Sunny describes her grandpa as a handsome man, but full of pride and machismo. He asked Amparo out a few more times, and got more no's. Then came the Korean war, and he got drafted to fight.

War changed Sunny's grandad, as it often does. He had never left California. He returned from combat and was hanging out with friends in downtown Stockton when Amparo caught his eye. His friend assured him that she wasn't married. This time she accepted his offer, not to dance, but to get married. They had two kids—Sunny's mom, Susie, and her tia Helen.

Then we turn to Sunny's paternal grandparents. Her dad's dad is from Bogota, Colombia. Papi Angulo was orphaned when he was 16. He took a banana boat to New York City looking for his two older brothers. They had already enlisted in the military at that point. He wanted to join as well, but he was too young.

To pass the two years until Alfredo was eligible, he ran errands for a pharmacy and worked in an actual sausage factory.

Across the country at the time, unbeknown to him, in a little town called Shingle Springs in El Dorado County, Sunny's grandma, Eleanor, lived on a cattle ranch. She was the youngest of three daughters in her family. Her lineage was Swiss.

Eleanor would be taken out of school to help h