Dear Editor,
During my young adulthood, I earned minimum wages washing dishes, washing cars, scrubbing toilets, and mopping floors – and sadly, even less when unscrupulous entrepreneurs found ways to exploit their workers and pay them below the required minimum wage.
As for myself, the daydreams I held throughout those years of struggle and drudgery differed from those of a typical young man. Rather than fantasizing about driving a Corvette or dating a Marilyn Monroe, I dreamed only of earning decent wages so I would no longer have to toil at two jobs during the week, plus another one on the weekend.
So yes, fate smiled upon me and extended a helping hand. And now all that is in the past. Nevertheless, we’ll always have the poor with us. But it makes me happy that starting July 1, the poor will be less poor in L.A. County.
-David Quintero
Monrovia
