Interviewer-"Did you end up graduating high school?" Ms. Rizo-No, I dropped out of high school, I got married and my husband would not let me go to school even through I was a very good student and wanted to, but, you know, so." Interviewer-"What age did you get married?" Ms. Rizo-Pardon me? Interviewer-"What age did you get married?" Ms. Rizo-15, mm, very Catholic, wasn't supposed to date, your supposed to marry your first boyfriend, remember by grandparents, I was raised by my two grandmothers and they were both very Catholic and very Conservative even for their generation. So, I did, I got married, had babies, four beautiful fantastic children that had now given me ten grandchildren. Interviewer-"So, what age was your first child?" Ms. Rizo-16, eleven months after I got married, good Catholic girl, LOL!, Yea. Interviewer-"So, you were talking about your experiences in school and the humiliation, the anger that you felt because of it, has given you or started driving you to become involved in the community is when you had children and how did you managed that getting involved?" Ms. Rizo-Well, let me back up a second and I'll give you an idea. Interviewer-"Mm" Ms. Rizo-My awareness level, my Mexican grandmother that I was named after-Francisca De Castillo Rizo. It was my grandfather that Rizo. She was raised by nuns, she was raised as an orphan, but she was an only child and her mother had left away because her father was a Picado in the bullfights [picadorres] the one on the horse that throws the spears on the back of the bull and he was, the bull attacked the horse and he was thrown and the bull killed my great-grandfather. So, that's how my great-grandmother became a widow with a daughter to raise by herself, she took her to be raised by the nuns because there was no such thing as childcare centers in Porto Cieta at that time, ok, so everybody was on their own. So, she went to work and she took the money to the nuns to take care of my grandmother, that was for childcare. So, she was raised extremely proper by the nuns, so, thus, here I am. So, she always brought me outfits, the [?] outfits from Mexico, you know, she was born and raised here, so, she always made sure that I understood our culture and history and stuff like that. So, they lived in Little Mexico, they used to have a store, we used to call it, Pozo, used to be a barrio [?] under the bridge at the bridge which is called, Malcolm X Bridge Boulevard. In fact, the reason my grandparents were buried in Oakland Cemetary, on the other side, which is now Malcolm X Boulevard, but they had a little store, this is all before I was born, it was burned down, but with the insurance money, they got this house on Carlisle Street, second house from Hall, which is down the street from [?] Park. Interviewer-"Mm" Ms. Rizo-Ok, so on the weekends, when I got to go, growing up, I spent the weekends with them, I would get to go play in [?] Park. You know, so, weekends, I was in Little Mexico and during the week, I was in West Dallas with no indoor plumbing, LOL! So, I got to grow up in this duel exposure and through all of that, a lot of the kids that I got to go to school with, never, hardly anyone left the neighborhood, you know, they might go downtown, they might have family in South Texas or something, but to go traveling and go spend the weekend somewhere it was almost unheard, I'm not saying no one got to do it, I'm saying it was unusual. So, I had that advantage as well. So, at the age of eight, my grandmother took me to San Luis Porto [?] to meet my great-grandmother, never forget that and that was my exposure to, like extreme exposure to Catholisism because apparantly it was a part of a pilgrimage for her and she took me to San Juan De Los Lagos, which is a religious site of the Virgin Mary, miraculous site and I never seen so many Mexicans in all of my life and I'm not trying to be funny, I know its funny. I can laugh about it now, but it was a little freaky, you know. I mean, I was in the majority in West Dallas and always went into the majority in Chicano schools, but everybody in Mexico is Mexican lol! So, as a little Chicanita, you know, seeing more people and all this stuff [?] you know, this is, I didn't know what to think, but, but on the religious pilgrimage, people go to church on their knees with a candle and you are so tight, you can barely breathe and because my grandmother was elderly and had problems with her knees, she could not go in on her knees, but she had me go in and she told me I'll be here on the left exit, I'll be waiting for you, when you come out, be sure you come out this side [?]. Well, I don't know how long it took, it took like an eternity to, you know, go on your knees all the way out there and when we come out, she was hysterical, she was already there with two policemen cause she thought that I had been lost and that, I mean that, you might as well have an engraved video in my head about that cause I'll never forget that a lot of things about that trip, she took me to a bullfight, she also took me to a cockfight, she wanted to be sure that I, I mean we were there for like a month, traveled to different places and so, that's embellished in my brain and here, in Dallas, in West Dallas everyday, day in and day out with my maternal grandmother, uh, who taught me about, you know, we had a vegetable garden in the back yard and on the other side, was the chicken coop and you know, I had to help with the garden and she start cooking and I had to go get the vegetables out of the backyard and all that. So, I grew up eating really healthy and taste, you know, you can't eat tomatoes from the store and have them taste like anything anymore, they taste like cardboard, so, we now need to grow our own vegetables, again, we need to go back to that, but its hard to do in West, Dallas and you had all that pollution. And, you know [?] by now, its decipated, but for a long time, we had to live with it.......