A friend in deed

Elena Pacheco has spent nearly half her life crusading against the policies and practices that adversely affect Mountain View’s downtrodden residents: migrant workers, the infirm, tenants struggling to pay rent. She has advocated on behalf of undocumented children, helped lead the charge to raise Mountain View’s minimum wage and campaigned against the city’s skyrocketing cost of living.

It seems as if every community services group in Mountain View has no more than one or two degrees of separation from Pacheco. Teen health clinics, food pantry programs, legal aid groups and the Dreamers program for undocumented children that she founded — she’s involved in all of them.

“My job has been to have the voice for the people who don’t have a voice,” Pacheco explained. “I’m fighting for the rights of my community — these are the gardeners, the babysitters, the cooks of Mountain View.”

Her activism started two years after she moved here from her native Chile. Sitting in a South Bay hospital waiting room, Pacheco saw a young Hispanic mother struggle to communicate with hospital staff. The woman’s son — a boy no older than 10 — had to serve as a translator. That same day, Pacheco asked hospital staff if she could volunteer her translating services.

Now Pacheco is the one who needs help. This spring, the 58-year-old saw her rent spike, essentially pricing her out of the California Street apartment where she’s lived for the last 20 years.

But Pacheco’s story carries an extra wrinkle: News of the rent hike struck in the midst of a personal health crisis — the activist was diagnosed with cancer.

In recent weeks, as Pacheco received awards for her work in the community, she was in a private panic over having to move out of her apartment, search for a new place to live and grapple with debt from medical bills.

In April, she was honored for her 25 years of volunteering and translating at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. In May, the Mountain View-Los Altos High School District also recognized Pacheco for her extensive outreach on health, immigrant rights and housing issues.

“She has been just a gem to our community. She does not let go,” Marilu Delgado said of Pacheco. Delgado, who was named the 2015 Woman of the Year by state Sen. Jerry Hill for her work with the Community Action Team that serves the neighborhood around Castro School, said that the moment Pacheco heard about the team, she wanted to get involved.

“People admire her and respect her quite a bit,” Delgado said. “She has such a big heart.”

The long list of community improvement programs Pacheco has contributed to includes voter registration, parenting classes, childhood obesity education, teen pregnancy and earthquake preparedness, Delgado said.

“The unfortunate thing is Elena’s been in the community for so long and helping hundreds of people, and all of a sudden she’s in the same situation,” said Marianela Lobato, a Lucile Packard volunteer who worked with Pacheco for years. “You never think it’s going to happen to you.”

Pacheco’s misfortune started two years ago, when she had a seizure while teaching a Spanish class at Emerson School in Palo Alto. She woke up at Stanford Medical Center. A round of medical tests showed she had cancer, including three tumors on her brain, and lymphoma, she said.

To have a chance to survive required a complete lifestyle change, her doctors told her. She had to leave her two part-time teaching jobs. In December 2013, she began an aggressive regimen of chemotherapy and radiation.

The treatment sapped her strength as well as her savings. Pacheco didn’t have health insurance, and the state insurance markets available through the Affordable Care Act were still weeks away from accepting clients. Eventually, she was able to get MediCal coverage, but to cover living expenses she had to to drain her 401(k) retirement fund.

Over the year and a half that she was out of work and struggling with cancer treatments, the rent for her three-bedroom apartment continued to notch up. Despite having roommates, she could no longer afford to live there. And it became clear that she wouldn’t find anywhere else in Mountain View to live, she said.

“I couldn’t afford anything. No other place would take me because I had no income,” Pacheco explained.

Over recent months, Pacheco said, she had to learn how to rely on others. A group of women — Pacheco calls them her “mamas” — looked after her, restocked her refrigerator and cleaned her house. She got rides to medical appointments from church friends and people from the Dreamers program.

“It’s my irony to now be in this situation, to now be on the other side,” Pacheco said. “I find myself protected by all the families who I’ve helped.”

Pacheco would be the first to admit that her situation isn’t unique. Rents have surged in Silicon Valley as the booming tech economy gentrifies Mountain View’s working-class neighborhoods. In a sense, Pacheco’s story is a cautionary tale for how thin the safety net is, even for a professional heavily involved in local civic and community life.

Pacheco said she feared her only option would be to return to Chile, a place she hasn’t called home for nearly three decades. For now, she has a temporary reprieve: An old friend, whom Pacheco took care of when she had cancer, is letting her stay with her in Portola Valley through the summer.

With her cancer in remission, Pacheco is trying to pick up the pieces of her life. She began driving again and is returning to one part-time teaching job. She continues looking for other work, fully intent on trying to stay in Mountain View. But time’s running out.

“I haven’t had a chance to heal. I’ve been from hospital to hospital, and I’ve been looking for jobs and housing,” she said. “I need to have (another) job by August, a place (to live) by August. I have two months to make a miracle.”

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