By Ana Gomez Salcido 

Oceanside City Councilmember Esther Sanchez was inspired by her parents to start helping other Latinos in the community. Today, as a candidate for re-election, Sanchez is looking to keep improving Oceanside.

Sanchez, who was born and raised in Oceanside, was elected to the Oceanside City Council in 2000. Sanchez won her first run for local office and has held her seat to this day.

“My parents had a very strong work ethic. Growing up during the depression, they wanted a better life for their children,” Sanchez said in an interview with La Prensa this week. “My dad worked on base as a warehouseman at Area 2200 for 35 years. He never missed a day of work. My parents were also very much involved in the community and in the church,” she added.

Sanchez even recalls her mother being homeless for a short time when she was a child. Esther confessed to La Prensa San Diego that her mother’s perseverance motivated her to strive for more in her career.

“I remember my mom working in the tomato and flower fields, the canneries, then Reeves Rubber in San Clemente,” Sanchez recalls. “She worked the swing shift from 4 p.m. to midnight so that at least one parent would be home with the kids around the clock. She worked at the rubber plant for 27 years until it closed,” Sanchez said.

Her father also had an important role in her motivation to help others. He was very involved in the neighborhood and making an impact in the community despite only having an elementary school education.

Esther Sanchez attended Laurel Elementary, Jefferson Junior High, and Oceanside High, graduating in 1974. She received a scholarship to Brown University in Rhode Island, where she received her B.A. degree in urban studies.

Sanchez’s service in the community started while at Brown, when she started working for United Farm Workers’ East Coast movilization.

After Brown, Sanchez went on to attend the University of California’s Hastings College of Law and received her Juris Doctorate before passing the California Bar exam on her first try.

After graduating from Hastings College of Law, Sanchez decided to go back to her hometown of Oceanside. Back home, she landed a job that involved her in mobilizing the community so they would vote for the protection of their human rights; this motivated her to start her career as a public defender. She has now worked as an attorney for approximately 22 years, in both the public and private sector.

“There has always been a stronger voice inside me to be an advocate,” said Sanchez. “A lot of young people and people of color end up in the criminal justice system so I felt like it was an important place to be. I have always felt very inspired to defend the rights of the Latino community.”

The struggles faced by the Latino community in Oceanside were also part of her inspiration to run for the city council.

“We were having a really bad time in the neighborhood. There were violence, gangs, and the relationship between the police department and the community wasn’t good and I wanted to change that; that was the first thing I wanted to change,” said Sanchez about running for City Council back in 2000. “It has really been a great experience, nothing easy, we had a difficult time but Oceanside is the place that my parents chose as a home, [it] was the place I decided to make better.”

Sanchez has been an Oceanside City Council member for four terms, or 16 years. While holding her first two terms, she continued working as a public defender. In the summer of 2008, she retired from the Public Defender’s Office, after 20 years, to focus on fulfilling
her City Council duties.

Now, Sanchez is running for re-election to a fifth term.

“I’m very concerned about too much density of housing where it is not right,” Sanchez explains. “There is a lot of pressure from developers, which ends up affecting the rest of the residents because the quality of life goes down. When we have more people, we end up having less services from the police, fire department, and things like that. I think we need to find a better balance,” Sanchez said.

Over-development would impact on City services, which are currently in good condition, according to the council member.

“My main concern is making sure that we are able to provide enough of the city services like water; we are trying to provide our own water supply,” added Sanchez, who was also the first council member from Oceanside to ever serve on the State’s Coastal Commission.

The economy is also one of Sanchez’s concerns. Sanchez plans to focus as a councilmember in helping create green industry jobs.

“I want to bring Oceanside to the future, that we get rid off plastic bags, and that we can have economic sustainability while also being a green city,” Sanchez added.