Wise Counsel: Never Give In, Never Give Up

Kiki Zuniga was working on a construction crew and digging a ditch in front of Cal State Fullerton when he got it in his head that he should go to college. Well, actually the idea didn’t really take hold until after the second pitcher of beer during his lunch break that day.

It was the late 1960s, and the Army veteran was digging a hole for the traffic light still located at the intersection of Nutwood and Titan. A passerby named Jose Lopez recognized Zuniga as the guy who used to cut his hair at the old Circle Barber Shop in La Habra.

Lopez still had barrio tattoos on his fingers but he also had a newly earned bachelor’s degree. Over a meal at the Velvet Hog across the street, he convinced Zuniga that he should go to college too. They polished off that second pitcher and Zuniga marched back to the job site to tell his stunned and skeptical boss that he was quitting.

Then he went home and broke the news to his wife, Lupe, who was expecting the second of their four daughters. Luckily, she encouraged him too.

“I was digging a ditch on Friday and on Monday I started my first day of classes--and I was scared,” Zuniga recalled this week.

The former farm worker not only got a college degree, he got four teaching and counseling credentials as well as a master’s in library science. And the former vato loco who pulled him from the ditch he was digging is now Jose Lopez, PhD, professor of Chicano studies at Cal State Long Beach.

On Thursday, the two men were reunited at Fullerton College, where Zuniga has worked as a student counselor for 25 years. Lopez was among scores of teachers, students and community leaders who attended an emotional retirement party for Zuniga, who turns 60 next month.

For the past quarter-century, the stout activist has served as a devoted advocate for students and an aggressive opponent of the administration, which he picketed, boycotted and forced into court over issues such as minority hiring and the availability of English classes for immigrants.

Zuniga, whose last day is Thursday, believes he was born to do this job, the only one he’s held or sought after college.

“I never thought about going anywhere else,” said Zuniga, sitting in his small office decorated like a shrine to the Chicano movement. “There’s just so much need here.”

Zuniga never forgot the motivating power contained in a casual boost from a passerby, like the advice over beers that spurred him to transform his life three decades ago. So wherever he’d go, Zuniga would encourage young people to get an education.

He’d hand his business card to waiters in restaurants. He’d give impromptu pep talks to youngsters at the mall. And he’d schedule counseling appointments for janitors he’d meet in the halls.

No kidding. That’s how Zuniga met custodian Otto Pena, a Salvadoran immigrant who worked at a Fullerton school where Zuniga taught night classes in English as a second language. One of those nights, Pena was pushing a mop when Zuniga stopped to chat. As usual, the outgoing counselor invited the worker to go see him at the college.

They had a lot in common. Pena had dreams, but he was fresh out of the Army with a wife and child to support. Still, he enrolled at Fullerton College and leaned on Zuniga for guidance.

“With him, I felt more comfortable,” remembered Pena. “He was always open and available, and he made it a lot easier to get where I wanted to go.”

In 1995, six years after meeting Zuniga, the former janitor got his juris doctor degree from Western State University, a year ahead of the normal schedule. Pena, who’s now practicing law in Los Angeles, has visited Zuniga now and then just to say thanks.

There must be hundreds, perhaps thousands of students who feel indebted to the man who continued to work the fields--en la pisca--during his own college years.

Enrique “Kiki” Zuniga was born at home in House 57 of Campo Colorado, the farm labor camp that formed the nucleus of a historic barrio in La Habra. He was one of 13 children, eight boys and five girls born to immigrants from Guanajuato. His father, Abraham, settled in La Habra in 1909, a year before the Mexican Revolution started.

On Saturdays and holidays, the whole family would go out to the orange groves to pick. During the summers, they would follow the crops north. All the kids were expected to contribute to the household budget, but they all had pocket change too. When school started, they had enough to buy new clothes and a new pair of shoes, expected to last all year.

Like most barrio children in Orange County at the time, Zuniga attended a segregated school reserved for Mexicans. Wilson School was built from old military barracks, like some of the housing at the camp. Society gladly gave its leftovers to the people who put fresh food on the table.

“We got such an inferior education that we don’t want our children to go through what we went through,” Zuniga told a reporter on the eve of a 1994 reunion organized by graduates of the school, closed in 1950. “Because of the poor schooling we got, we thought we were dumb.”

Life wasn’t all bad for the kid named Kiki. Every morning, the reliable altar boy assisted the good pastor of the barrio church at 8 o’clock Mass. Then, he’d run a mile along the railroad tracks to get to class, usually late.

Zuniga graduated from La Habra High in 1958, then was drafted in the Army, stationed in Germany and discharged in 1963. Back home, he kicked around in trade school and barber college, cutting hair at night at the shop owned by his brother, Alfredo, who later also earned master’s degrees in library science and bilingual education.

Early on, Zuniga got in the habit of performing community service. He started a Chicano Boy Scout troop, counseled members of a Santa Ana street gang, became president of the League of United Latin American Citizens--LULAC--chapter in his home town, and was elected in 1969 as the first chair of MeCha, a Chicano student group at Cal State Fullerton.

Kiki and Lupe, married now 32 years, residents of Yorba Linda for 22, continued the volunteer routine as a couple. They’ve prepared lunches for homeless women and visited the elderly one Sunday per month.

Their four daughters attended Fullerton College and all were active MeChistas. They sure didn’t help their dad earn any points with the administration, especially when one of the girls appeared in the local paper in a picture of picketers demonstrating outside the chancellor’s home.

Zuniga had always offered his daughters rebellious words to live by, echoing a saying his own father often repeated: Al burro mas manso, todos se le trepan. No se dejen! (Everybody mounts the donkey that’s most docile. Don’t back down!)

At home, though, the family had such a wholesome, clean-cut reputation that friends and dates used to call them the Brady Bunch.

All four Zuniga girls went on to earn college degrees; two have master’s. Elena, the third daughter, still participates in environmental protests, and has been arrested for chaining herself to a bulldozer, Zuniga said with more than a hint of pride.

“Well, you worry about them because they’re your kids, but I’m glad they’re doing something they believe in, and something that’s bettering society,” Zuniga said.

Rolando Sanabria, a Fullerton College graduate, will be filling Zuniga’s shoes at the college. Sanabria, 30, was one of Zuniga’s students and now works as a counselor there too.

Sanabria, a husky and energetic man from Guatemala, says he was just a C student at Anaheim High, but next semester he starts the doctoral program at USC.

His wife, Reina, a counselor at Santa Ana College, also attended Fullerton College. But they didn’t meet until they were attending Cal State and working as peer counselors back at their junior college. They got to talking one day about the people who had made a difference in their lives, and they both put Kiki Zuniga at the top of their lists.

“We want to do the same thing Kiki did for our lives,” said Rolando. “I stand on the shoulders of all his work.”

What exactly did Kiki do? I asked.

“I don’t know,” chuckled Sanabria, turning to his old counselor. “What is it that you do, Kiki?”

And Kiki shot back: “I don’t give up on you guys.”

Agustin Gurza’s column appears Tuesday and Saturday. Readers can reach Gurza at (714) 966-7712 or agustin.gurza@latimes.com.