North Highlands

And there are a number of those folks who represent that exact kind of behavior.

that uh... that found themselves be released early and it's because of the contact the decisions made by richard pan as an assembly member one such person was uh... was david allen funds to we talk about him a lot on this program i i never had a chance to encounter funston himself but i did in fact deal with his very very very young victim who had been taken from north highlands up into the remote portion of uh... el dorado county up uh... beyond plasterville where she was violently raped by this guy this is a little girl now a little girl not not a young woman but a little girl violent relay raped left abandoned on a street on a rural road in el dorado county where an el dorado county sheriff's deputy found her and caused for her to be transported to Marshall Hospital, which is where I dealt with her back when.

This is back in the early 1990s.

And I will never forget the harm, the evil that that criminal act illustrated so clearly, and the notion of anybody thinking that a person who had been involved in that kind of activity would be a person suitable for an early release from prison because he had reached the age of 50.

This is where I was born and raised, went to local schools.

So, you know, even the new parts of the district aren't really that new to me.

But there are, you know, new issues for specific communities within the district, whether we're talking about West Sacramento or North Highlands or Natomas.

And, you know, I always view my job as being really local in nature.

Yeah, that's a program that we do with the Country Club Optimists.

Robla School District is in the north part of Sacramento in North Highlands, Del Paso Heights area, and it's in a tough part of town.

There are four elementary schools that are part of the Robles School District, and almost 50% of the kids that go to school there are considered unhoused, meaning that they are either homeless or that they are living with another family member because them and their immediate household isn't able to afford rent or a home or apartment of their own.

And so the Saturday before school starts, the foundation actually works with the optimists and we provide a new pair of shoes, underwear, socks.

My mother immigrated here from the island of Tonga.

You know, we grew up in a very poor and impoverished area called North Highlands, California.

And back in the 90s, they reduced the military budget by over $200 billion across the United States.

And they shut down all these military bases.

You told me, Assemblyman, that children's safety and the issues surrounding exploitation were really one of the main driving factors for you to run for office.

Share a little bit about your thoughts there.

So as I said in the beginning, I grew up in North Highlands, California.

North Highlands was one of the number one trafficked areas in the state of California.