Page 22 - Sonoma County Gazette February 2020

Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep
By Mary Rufatto
Many nights I wandered around the streets of Santa Rosa seeking a
warm, dry and safe place to sleep. On occasion I slept near or in the tents
of vulnerable women who asked me to
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tay with them for companionship and
I Am Angela
Life seemed very promising for Ya-Ching Tang in 2007. She had
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protection.
When I was unlawfully evicted during the Tubbs fifire, I stayed in the
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immigrated from Taiwan with her dad at age 6, and had adopted the American name “Angela”. She had learned English and finished middle-school with honors. At 14, Angela was completely assimilated into her comfortable life
in the San Francisco Bay Area with her dad. Her high school grades were
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Red Cross shelter at the Sonoma County
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Fairgrounds, along with people who
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had lost their homes or had health
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omplications from the toxic smoke.
very good, and she had lots of friends and interests. She ran track and cross- country, and participated in student government.
During this time, I lost a job, my car was borrowed by an acquaintance then
Angela’s father, a high-tech engineer, had applied for a green card through his Silicon Valley employer, and the Immigration Service had approved the petition. Mr. Tang was simply waiting for his visa to be available so that he and his daughter could obtain permanent residence in the United States.
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abandoned and eventually towed and
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destroyed before I could locate and
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was causing the swelling and sores on my legs, along with vertigo and an
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ities had diffifficulty determining what
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etrieve it.
Then Angela’s father suddenly died of a heart attack.
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In an instant, Angela became undocumented-- without a visa and without a future. And our immigration laws left no path for her to remain
in the country. Every attempt to keep her here legally failed.
inability to stand, walk or eat. It took two years and multiple hospitalizations for doctors to find the CVST blood clot that was blocking blood flow out of my brain through my left internal jugular.
In the meantime, a known wanna-be street thug weaseled his way into my car and my FEMA hotel room. He exploited my weakness and over a period of three months managed to divest
me of money, multiple cell phones
and computers, and took over the
storage unit I had rented to move my
belongings from my previous rental
of 7 years.
Angela’s aunt and uncle were U.S. citizens and they took her in after her father’s death. They hired an attorney who helped them complete legal adoption proceedings for Angela. But her adoption was finalized too late, and the Immigration Service denied the green card application filed by Angela’s adopted parents. Immigration authorities told the teen-age Angela to return to Taiwan, a country she did not know at all.
When I first became homeless
after the 2017 Tubbs Fire, I was unaware that there homeless folks in Healdsburg, and it took me nearly a year of sleeping outside in Santa Rosa and in hospitals before I discovered Reach for Home and the services they provide. That is how invisible this population is in our town. I was shown where to camp along the East bank of the river, north of the railroad bridge, by experienced campers, who had to “vet” me to determine if I could occupy on of the campsites that had been carved in the reeds.
“Growing up, I didn’t realize how important the
visa thing was,” says Angela. “ It wasn’t even a
word in my dictionary.” Suddenly her immigration status – or lack thereof-- became a reality that shaped her young life.
This turned out to be dangerous for multiple reasons, including flooding, vandalism, violence, drug and alcohol use by outsiders as well as campers, and the mere fact that I was a woman sleeping alone, sometimes without even a tent.
In her first week on campus, Angela met her future husband, Eric Pagendarm. After a four-year courtship, Angela and Eric were married shortly after they graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 2014. Now, Angela lives in Seattle with Eric and their dog, Pesto. She works as a Patient Service Representative at Northwest Hospital & Medical Center, while Eric works as a software engineer.
When God blessed me with an “unadoptable” dog, I became instantly less of a target, and was provided unconditional love and emotional support, along with protection. Freezing in our tent on the banks of the Russian
River in Healdsburg, my rescue dog, Rambeaux Deuteronomy and I huddle together in an attempt at warmth. Many days I was unable to walk into town for food and had to rely on friends, fellow campers and Rick Caferata of Reach for Home for assistance.
Angela finally obtained her permanent residence in 2018,
“I was told: ‘Don’t tell anyone about your immigration status, don’t get in trouble, don’t get in the car with anyone other than your family. Just lay low... for as long as you can.”
“For individuals like myself, we were kind of stuck in the limbo between not knowing who we are individually and where we stand immigration-wise.”
Then in 2013, Angela was granted a reprieve from deportation through DACA, the Obama-era program of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Through DACA, she obtained a work permit and a form of legal status. She was able to attend the University of California at Santa Cruz.
“We have absolutely nothing to hide. We have jobs, we have a college education, we have our families here.”
after 10 years of proceedings with the U.S. Immigration and Citizenship Service. The couple made an emotional trip back to her native Taiwan for the first time a few months later. This year Angela will be eligible to become a U.S. citizen.
Ya-Ching Tang
ANGELA cont’d on page 21
22 - www.sonomacountygazette.com - 2/20