He carefully and meticulously stacked the cans on the shelf.  He swept the floor and gathered everything into the dustbin.  He looked around and wiped his forehead before heading behind the cash register.  He then wiped his hands on the towel behind the counter before handling the items on the conveyer belt.

“ Is this everything?” Miguel Henrique asked the customer.  With a quick hand, he gathered all the swiped groceries and then placed them in bags.  He looked at the machine and reads off, “$20.35 is your total.  Cash or credit?”  After handling all the money, Henrique bid the customer farewell before greeting the next one on line.

Miguel Henrique came to America at the young age of 18 in 2010.  He left his hometown to find work and to try to attend college here.  When I asked him how the process was for him to come here, he quickly replied, “ I came legally ya know”, causing both of us to laugh.  However, with a wave of a hand, he became serious and began to recount his journey to me.

“I left my home because I knew there were better opportunities here for me in America.  I wanted to go to a nice college, meet a nice girl, settle down, and have a family.”  However, like always, life has a strange way of working out.

With a slightly accent in his voice, he began his great tale.  “I came here with my mother and little sister.  When we first came, my mom was able to support us both, while I looked at different high school to attend my senior year.  However, my mom became sick and was diagnosed with cancer.  I gave up my dreams of an education to take of them.”  As he says this, his eyes became misty and he quickly blinked them to prevent them from pouring out and looked down.

He ran his hand through his wavy brown hair before he looked back up at me.  With a sly smile on his face, he said, “But hey that’s life.  Sometimes you make plans, and they work out, but for me, they just don’t.”

When he was asked whether he liked working at the grocery, he simply replied, “It brings food onto the table.  My mom and sister are able to eat and I can pay for my mom’s treatment.  I also work part time for a construction on the weekends.  I never thought I would have to work so hard in my life, but you gotta do what you gotta do.”

As we talked, more customers would come to the cash register, and Miguel would always have a smile on his face and greet them.  When asked if he likes working in Corona and living there, he said, “Sometimes I feel like I never left home.  There are so many other Mexican people here that I feel at home, I feel like I’m part of a family.  Everyone is so friendly and will help you whatever the situation may be.  At first, it was strange to be the youngest one here working, but as time has gone by, everyone treats me like family.  I fell happy.”

As we continued to talk, a little girl came running into the grocery yelling for Miguel.  Miguel put down the soup cans he was stacking and opened up his arms for the little girl to run into.  After a heart-warming embrace, he put her down and looks at me and said, “I would like you to meet my little sister, Lucia.”

While Miguel continued to work, Lucia sat in the corner of the store and pulled out books from her backpack.  One by one, she slowly began the meticulous task all of us greatly hated back when we were in school… homework.  During the slower part of the afternoon, he explained how she would come here after school everyday and wait for him to finish work to go home together.  At first he was worried if his boss would allow his little sister to stay there, but after one look into her big, brown, beautiful eyes, the manager couldn’t say no.

“I do what I can to make ends meet and unfortunately, that includes making her have to wait to go home.  I just want her to be able to live out my dream, ya know.  I want her to go to college and not have to struggle like me.  I want her to be happy.  I want my mom to win her battle with cancer.  I want so many things and I will work to get them.  In the future, I plan to enroll in local college courses to earn a degree and earn even more money to make my family happy.”