Jon Rodriguez: Pouring rain covered the mountainside as everyone quickly hid inside. “It rained cats and dogs,” said Jon afterwards, “and [there were] just rivers of water everywhere.” Jon’s camping trip would not be ruined by such a catastrophe. As the rain was beating heavily on the roof above, Jon decided to turn the disappointing camping trip around by playing a new game. With a trash can in each corner of the room,
A Flower Grows in East Palo Alto
Jon asked for 4 volunteers. Each one was getting ready to run as fast as their little legs could carry them, waiting for the signal. “Go!” Jon shouted, as four kids started to sprint with all their might toward opposite corners, with empty trash cans on their heads. Crash! All the kids rolled out of their trash cans laughing, having the time of their lives. Every child raises his hand to volunteer for their chance to
By Danny Wilson bang things up a bit. As the day came to a close though, Jon’s energy began to dwindle as he told stories of Jesus and played some calming games with them. Finally, one of the tired children fell asleep, but as he slept he began to snore. Quickly the calming stories became pointless as the kids jumped at the opportunity to copy his loud, ridiculous, seemingly intentional snoring. Jon laughs as he remembers
the incident “I just remember trying to get them to shut up and calm down, ha.” Jon Rodriguez is a generous man who not only helps those in need, but balances his time between work, family, and community. These reasons, coupled with story after story of generosity, make him stand out like a flower growing through the fractured concrete of East Palo Alto, where he lives. East Palo Alto is known for being a less privileged area, with a high concentration of Latinos, African Americans, and Pacific Islanders and also has high levels of violence and drug use. Jon breaks this up by giving generously of his time and money, the two hardest commodities to come by. Numerous examples dot his life, from volunteering at Bayshore Christian Ministries (BCM) right out of
college, to simply giving a guitar to a friend named Katie. When we asked her how she was impacted, she told us “ It was neat to me that he, on his own, took initiative to serve me that way, and he just wanted to help. He wanted to make sure I had a cool guitar.” Today, Katie still uses the same guitar every Sunday when leading worship at her church. While Jon spreads roots in the community with
his abounding generosity, he also works at Fujitsu as a full time marketer, and lovingly cares for his wife and two sons. Somehow, Jon has been able to thrive in spite of great obstacles, while maintaining deep connections in his family and showing his generosity and hopefulness to everyone around him. Some of the events that have caused such a great noble flower to rise appear to come from a difficult past. His parents divorced when he was only 7 years old, which he believes accounts for his generosity. “[There are] a couple of different type of responses a kid can have when their parents’ divorce, and one of them is, especially a boy, can feel like they have to be the responsible one.” As a result, the responsibility for other people’s welfare rests on his shoulders. Howev-
er, Jennifer, his wife, gives credit to his mother for the determined generosity he exhibits. “I think he has an understanding of what it is to live more simply from his mom. She’s a good influence on him.” But I believe there is more that led up to who he is now than that. Mr. Rodriguez pursued a general engineering major at Harvey Mudd college, where he learned critical thinking skills, but more importantly learned that there are many people more gifted at technology than himself. This reinforced the understanding he learned as a child of what it feels like to be less fortunate and less gifted, a feeling of not sympathy, but empathy towards others. However, he did not only learn empathy for those less fortunate, but he also learned what it felt like to be “loved”. Throughout high school he had always been
a Christian, but college was when he discovered a church that made him understand what it meant to be a Christian. He learned of how God loves all people and wants us to love everyone as we love ourselves, which Jon has taken to heart. Another way love entered Jon’s life was through a woman named Jennifer who loved him as he loved her, making a strong marriage to this day. These events springboarded Jon into activities like BCM and bible study groups right out of college along with a part-time job at Los Altos High school as a teacher assistant for their “keyboarding and computer skills” class. Two years later Jon was laid off from Los Altos because of a financial downturn, so he got a part-time job at HP.
Nine years after college he spent at BCM working with kids growing up from fourth grade through high school, but finally Jon and Jennifer decided to make a family. Carl was born in 1995, followed by Emmett 3 years later. These new additions were a sign that it was finally time to buy a house instead of moving between apartments in East Palo Alto every year or two. Jon then decided to transition out of BCM and get a full time job at HP so he could pay for the expenses kids bring and to be able to spend time with them. Carl is now a freshman in college, Emmett is a sophomore in high school, and they supported the community by working at Hot Meals (a soup kitchen) and by playing with other kids in the area. Here is some stories of how Jon spends his time.
“Wait, what is factoring again?” says Tessa, a Junior in high school. “Okay, let me explain…” Jon says as he, for the 6th time, explains how to factor at his house. She simply couldn’t wrap her mind around it. After years of tutoring her, Jon could see the pattern happening over and over: one week she would get it, a week later she would forget it. “It didn’t seem like the light bulb for math was ever gonna go on.” Jon recalls, “You sit there tutoring her in algebra and she just wasn’t getting [it].” But Jon kept at it even when it seemed hopeless. That was until one day, a BCM leader decided to start a gene sequencing company. He was a graduate from stanford who had a PHD in micro fluidics who was interested in genetics and, like Jon, had a passion for the community. So he asked Tessa “would
you be interested in working at my company” and Tessa answered with a confident “yes”. To this day, Tessa is working as the accountant at this man’s genetic sequencing company with a family of her own to cherish and nourish, and is still in touch with Jon to this day. A chapter of Jon’s life was coming to a close. HP was laying off people after the economy tanked on September 11th, 2001, and Jon was one of them. With no one hiring, hope for a bright future was slowly dwindling as month after month passed to no avail. He joined an encouragement group in Sunnyvale to release the stress of unemployment and to keep him motivated in his search. As times became more desperate, Jon started to pray with a close friend. “The prayer especially helped me keep a positive attitude, ‘cause it was a long time to go without work.” During this time of hardship, Jon still somehow found a way to see the light in the darkness. “Batter up!” he yells to his son at the park, “Good luck hitting this fast ball”. “We’ll
see about that” Carl replies back triumphantly with his muscles tensed. WHACK!!! The ball curves far into left field with another dad in the community running after it. Quickly he passes it to his son, who passes it to Jon, who tags Carl out as he slides into third Base. Setting up and playing those pick up games of baseball were not only bonding times with his son, but also bonding times with Carl’s friends and another dad in the community. As he did with the camping trip, he turned his unemployment into something positive and
Their personalities clashed time and time again. While Jon would fix a hardware design flaw, the co-worker would figure out how to shift the credit to himself. Finally, after trying to brush off his deception with no avail, Jon made a decision “No matter what he does, I am going to treat him with respect.” This change of heart and attiused the time to build family tude opened up the co-workand community. On Decemer to him. Conversation ber 28th, 2002 he was hired flowed easier, the co-worker by Fujitsu, so ending this 14 gave Jon more credit, Jon month chapter of his life. listened to him, and their Jon has always said to relationship changed from himself, “Okay, I just need to grated to friendly. love them like Christ would” whenever he would encounter a difficult co-worker. But even that would not keep him from feeling the grittiness of one co-worker. “I remember one guy at HP was really annoying. He would take credit for stuff that other people did, including me.”
Jon is still growing into new areas of need in the community. Now that Carl is in college and Emmett will soon be leaving as well, many ideas that were left behind when the family was being created are now returning. Jon and Jennifer have been thinking about rejoining BCM to be able to further reach out to the younger people in the community. Or possibly they might attempt to help a foster care, or even lead a bible study group in the church again. The prospect of being able to increase their active involvement in East Palo Alto is especially appealing to Jennifer, for she likes to meet new faces in the community while still keeping in touch with old friends. In short, whatever they end up doing, they are sure to build up and hold together the community with the generosity that radiates off of their beautiful leaves.
“Love is really important and that in the end, people are really important.”