Immigrant as someone who came here having lost everything.

I saw my family work very hard to rebuild what we had lost.

Um savings became a very big part of my uh individual identity.

You know, there's so much sometimes you're gonna make.

And so uh the best thing to do is to save as much of it as you can so that you're investing towards yourself in the future.

Um I I early on started investing in 529 plans for my kids, um right as they were born, uh, because I wanted to them to make sure that they know that there's something for them to pursue college.

Uh I wanted them to know that there's they have a backup.

Something is there to tell them that we believe in you, we're invested in you, and you're gonna do this.

And I thought, well, why not do this for the entire state?

Uh we already have the 529 program in place.

What if government was to come in, state government at the time I was in the state legislature, come in and say, if you invest in your family and put in a minimum of $5 into this plan, the city will, the state will match it and give you another $50.

And through incentive-based through honey, try to invigorate savings.

Um, because there's many studies that also suggest that if a child knows there's $500, literally $500 to their name, believing in them to go to college, there's more than 30% chance that they will eventually end up in college.

I'll take those odds.

And when you see that there's such a strong correlation of support, why not make sure that we're investing in every child born in California so that they take advantage of the uh of having a college fund?

It's also a discipline of learning how to save and invest towards the future.

So it encapsulated several different ideas, and it also made 529 plans uh a lot more available to the public.

Up prior to putting this agenda forward, this program forward, only 4% of Californians were utilizing that program.

You know now we're getting into the, you know, uh the barely tweak passing the double digits.

It's like 11, 12%.

But we're now expanding and increasing.

And this is only in its infancy of the of the program still.

It's amazing.

And also, you know, there's nothing more important than getting outside, breathing fresh air and having a great time.

I know that you've put in a lot of investiture in upgrading parks here in council district too.

What are some of the fun things people can look forward to in their neighborhoods?

One of the things I wanted to do when I took office was to just create a very active and busy environment.

Um parks need to be busy, parks need to be full of life.

The whole idea of the Department of Recreation and Parks is to make sure that people are engaged in recreational activities.

And the denser you make parks, the busier you make parks, the more people are getting out and getting to meet their neighbors, and the safer the places become because there's more eyes in the parks on our children, on our kids.

So I believe in making sure that it's multi-generational and it's also a busy environment.

Uh so we're expanding soccer fields.

We're uh we've already opened two different parks in the area to make sure that there's a lot of activity going on uh inside the parks.

We're turning small patches into pocket parks so that it's a place for folks to be able to congregate uh and get engaged.

Uh, I want to make sure we have enough you know, chess tables so that some of our more aging, more or senior members uh can get together and congregate in parks and so that that way the park also becomes multi-generational.

You know, small things like this uh create a spin-off opportunity for more for things to grow.

And my goal is to make sure that we're making parks as utilized as possible and as available to as many people as possible.

I hear a lot of hope and promise in everything that you've been saying.

What do you love best about being a council member right now?

Being able to make an impact.

That's the goal of this.

You want to make an impact, you want to you want to make things obviously you want to make things better off than uh uh when you took the role.

Um, but I also want to make sure that this is a place that my kids are my children are able to succeed in the same way I was.

I came to Los Angeles with English being my fourth language.

Not knowing the culture, not knowing my surroundings.

I think every child, that's the bare standard.

If every child comes in with that circumstance to strive to make Los Angeles a place where everyone who is coming in for a second chance is able to find their success and able to be contributing members back to their society.

Well, your office is doing an immense amount of work.

I mean, just even going through when I was learning about you and what was happening out here in Council District 2.

There's a lot happening.

So if people want to keep up on it and people want to know what you're doing or ask you questions or just keep informed, what's the best way for them to follow up on our conversation in a more intimate way?

Multiple ways.

They can first of all call our office traditional way.

They can follow us on one of our handles.

Instagram handle is uh CD2 Los Angeles.

Uh, or they can go to our website at uh city.org and be able to follow us as well.

I also have to thank your office for being so gracious and so quiet.

Well, we've been chatting this morning.

They've all been very kind and very courteous.

We're really appreciated.