Interview with Danny Garcia

Content Warning: Contains words/images that are inherently offensive, insensitive and harmful. Danny Garcia was interviewed by Caitlinn Grimm on October 6, 2023 in St. George, Utah. He related his experiences of growing up in St. George and returning after college. Cameron Nielsen also participated.

CG:Hello, this is Caitlinn Grimm speaking; today is October 6th, 2023; we’re at Utah Tech University Library. I’m interviewing Danny Garcia and Cameron Nielsen is acting as the recorder today. Danny, can you please state and spell your full name for us?

DG:Sure, my name is Danny Garcia. D - A - N - N - Y G - A - R - C - I - A.

CG:And what languages do you speak?

DG:I speak English and Spanish.

CG:Where were you born?

DG:I was born in West Covina, California.

CG:’Kay. Now we’ll move on to the more open-ended questions. Can you tell me about your childhood and family?

DG:Let’s see, I was born in West Covina, California and we moved down here when I was about five years old, so around 1994-95 and we’ve lived here ever since. I have three older brothers and one younger sister. 00:01:00Let me think here, what types of things would you like to know about my family?

CG:What did you do for fun with your family?

DG:Oh, sure. Let’s see, my family’s very musical and so my dad had a band growing up that we all sort of played an instrument in. We also played in the church choir here at the Catholic church. And so, it wasn’t really fun, but we did a lot of stuff as a family together involving music. And so, our parents tried to keep us in line; my oldest brothers were — we moved from California to St. George to try to get away from gang violence in the ’90s and they were sort of in the gangs back there, and when we moved here, they kinda brought ’em here into town. So 00:02:00I saw, sort of, one of my oldest brothers as kinda trouble makers all the time, and kinda saw what that did to my parents and how they would stay awake at night kinda waiting for them to get home from sneaking out and things like that. Kinda just wanted to do the opposite of what they did, so instead I just stayed in school, did well in school, participated in extracurricular activities like soccer. I was involved in soccer my whole life here. Played in like the youth soccer teams here in town and club ball. Then when I went to school here I played on the soccer team at school and then played college ball as well. So I was very involved in things outside of what my brothers were. So I was like the golden child, I guess, in our family, the first one in our family to go to college. Both my parents went to sixth grade in Mexico and that was the extent of their education, 00:03:00and then they came here. Like I said, my brothers barely graduated high school and so I just kinda had to figure out a way for myself to get into higher education. I felt like that was a way for me to please my parents in a way and just stay in school and be a good kid. And then my little sister followed along in my footsteps, so it kinda shows that if you have like an example to follow with, follow through with, or kinda follow along. Let me think here, yeah.

CG:Can you talk more about school?

DG:Sure.

CG:What was your experience with school like?

DG:School was interesting. It was a little different, just because I didn’t really see race as a big issue until I got introduced to racism in school and so I didn’t 00:04:00really identify as colored or anything like that until I was sort of, I don’t know, singled out, I guess. ’Cause there’s not a whole of — when we moved here in 1994, there wasn’t a whole lot of Hispanics or any sort of people of color, so. And then to top that off, I wasn’t Mormon [a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints]. So, you kinda get alienated as a kid and you kinda learn to like navigate through school and kinda link with others that were in the same boat as you. I made tons of friends that were just like me and we’re actually still friends till this day. One of them is my best friend Jordan, him and I sort of moved here around the same, sort of the same backgrounds, but he just — I felt like he was a big reason why I 00:05:00stayed a good kid ’cause I had someone to confide to and tell my issues to and things like that. Yeah.

CG:What was college like?

DG:College was awesome. I went to Westminster College up North, it’s a little private school. My biggest class size was probably twelve kids in one class. Some classes had two professors and so it felt like you were very — they didn’t really leave anyone behind. They had to make sure you understood what was going on and made sure you passed your classes, and so very different from a lot of places; I’ve been in public schools. And so I played soccer up there at Westminster for about two years and then I decided to quit 00:06:00to focus on my school because it was really hard to balance the two out. Let’s see, I majored in biology. I graduated with my bachelor’s. I lived up there for about one year and then moved back down to be a little bit closer to home, and I’ve been here ever since. I met my wife down here in 2016, probably two years after I graduated, and we got married in 2020 right before COVID [coronavirus-19 pandemic] hit and we’re still together and — But yeah, I would say college was — especially at that school, I felt heard, I felt — I mean it’s a liberal arts college and I grew up in a very conservative town, which was St. George, and LGBTQ was not a big thing down here and Westminster really opened my eyes back in 2009 00:07:00with how I should be thinking about different kinds of people and respecting how they lived their life. And so it changed my views on a lot of things and I’m kinda grateful for that because I felt like if I would have stayed down here I’d still be very conservative in the way that I thought about life and things like that so, yeah.

CG:Can you describe some of your favorite religious or cultural traditions you grew up with?

DG:So I grew up Catholic, and here at the Catholic church we would celebrate Cinco De Mayo every year. My dad’s band would play. We’d also hold a booth there and just kinda help with expressing our culture, Mexican culture. And that was a day where, again, it didn’t really matter what color you were, white or Black, they’d all come ’n celebrate that day. 00:08:00And you didn’t really feel out of place. You know, growing up here it was pretty conservative part of town and I didn’t really understand why certain groups would single you out. And I just felt like my religion it didn’t matter whether you were white or Black or brown, it didn’t really – like religion was different than goin’ to school and experiencing racism there. I didn’t really see racism in church or anything like that. Granted we would attend like the Spanish mass and we didn’t really get to interact with too many, I guess, white Americans other than when we had special events like that, but I never really saw or felt like I was alienated or anything like that in church or anything. But, I would say my favorite would be Cinco De Mayo, 00:09:00and just playing in the church choir was pretty cool. I played piano and the bass guitar. And we did that from when I was twelve till I left for college. But when I went to college I, like I said, I majored in biology, got my bachelor’s in science and I really was all about science and I stopped goin’ to church. I didn’t really agree with a lot of the things that the church taught as well. And so now I’m, I guess, agnostic and, I mean, I respect everyone, they have their freedom to religion and things like that and I respect that and I don’t let it bother me. It doesn’t bother me. I’m pretty open minded about a lot of things now, so —

CG:That’s a good segue. How have your religious and cultural traditions changed since childhood then?

DG:I would say it changed in college. I don’t know when it clicked, but I was very 00:10:00like — I would take tons of classes to learn more about trying to make the Bible work with science and it just didn’t click. I would take a paleontology class and like, you know, genetics, and things like that; learn about evolution. One of my oldest brothers who was in a gang, he gave his life to Christ when he was eighteen and he has never turned back, he’s still super religious and so he was — we would always kinda have these arguments, conversations I guess, about intelligent design and evolution, and I was very heavily on science like, “No, this is — I don’t believe in evolution, but I accept it.” You have to accept the facts, you have to accept that things evolve and we see it here, we see it in cells, we see it, you know. He has his own way of thinking about life and 00:11:00that’s good for him. He has a better life, he’s out a gang life, he has a family and kids, his kids, actually one of his kids comes here [to Utah Tech University] now. Yeah, I don’t know when it changed, I guess sometime in college. I just felt like I didn’t really need to go to church anymore to be a good person. I wanna say my family stopped goin’ to church around the same time. We kinda grew out of it. My parents are — they’ll probably go to midnight mass or Christmas mass, but that’s about it. You know, they don’t really attend it every Sunday. I think they see the world a lot differently now, too. The way things are, and yeah.

CG:Have you changed anything to fit into the local culture?

DG:No. Just my views, really. Like, it’s 2023 now and there’s no need to be — I don’t know — there’s no way 00:12:00to be like hateful towards any particular group. Everybody’s kinda goin’ through it, so it’s a — yeah. There’s no need for negativity anymore. That’s kinda how I see things.

CG:You touched on this a little bit, but what brought you to the St. George area?

DG:Yeah, my parents moved us out here to kinda get away from the violence and gang life in California. And I didn’t really, I still don’t really know California much. I feel like I grew up here, I went to school from kindergarten to high school here in St. George, and so I kinda feel like I’m from here. And so I don’t know any other life other than St. George, but that’s probably the main reason we moved here was that my older brothers 00:13:00so —

CG:Will you tell me about your work?

DG:Sure. Right now, I own a pool service company. We just go around town and service pools, weekly service, and repairs. We don’t really do any remodeling or anything crazy like that, just service and repairs. I feel like everybody and their mom has a pool.

CG:[Chuckles].

DG:Yeah, it’s just every new house comin’ up has a pool and so there’s no short of work right now. But I did kinda stumble around after college trying to find a job. And I don’t think 2013 was a good year for any of us to find a job, and it’s probably even harder nowadays just because the market’s just so over-saturated with bachelor’s degrees and you almost need like a master’s or a PhD to really get to do what you wanna do. And so, yeah, after college I kinda jumped around different jobs. 00:14:00I worked at a water lab here in town, testing all the commercial pool waters and just kinda went along with what I studied, which was biology. Like I said, I’m a huge science person. So once I kinda did that for a little bit, I saw I could actually make a living just doing pools so I transitioned to just become my own boss and do things on my own terms and I kinda wish I would ‘a done it sooner, but we’re here today and it’s great.

CG:Do you have any questions yet? Okay. What has been your experience with the broader St. George community?

DG:Could you expand on broader —?

CG:Like maybe not necessarily work-related or 00:15:00the church-related, but just —

DG:General?

CG:— people in general.

DG:Overall, pretty good. Back in the day, it felt more small town for sure. You almost knew everybody in town. Nowadays, I can go to any store and I couldn’t tell you who they are or where they’re from, if they’re from here or not. But I’ve never really had too much negative interactions with random strangers. Everyone kinda just seems to be pretty nice. Very different than like California, Vegas, or things like that. Super clean. I can understand why people wanna move here now, but it was kinda a hidden secret for so long, I mean it was bound to blow up, and we’re kinda seeing that now, it’s just growing and growing.

CG:Okay. What are your thoughts on the Latino-Hispanic community in the area?

DG:Overall, 00:16:00positive. I wish there was more representation of our community, and now they’re doing certain festivals like there’s a radio station in town called JUAN and he hosts some type of events, probably, like twice a year and he invites bands. My other brother Oscar, he has his own band now, and they play in like quinceañeras and weddings, and he’s booked out every week so I feel like it’s out there, you just don’t really see it very prevalent and I wish it was more prevalent out in St. George. I wish we had like an actual building dedicated to having dances and like, you know, a night life in a way. And we kinda did that back in the day, in the year 2000, 00:17:00with my dad’s band and we would actually host it at Kuzy Hall at the Catholic church and like rent it out for the night, and they would play their set for four or five hours, charge the price at the door and they’d make a living that way for a while. But I think when you started to mix alcohol — And we would also play at a — it’s a church now, but it’s called Two Lazy Two Ranch and it was a restaurant and they would open all of the dance floor and my dad’s band would come in and they’d play a set. But they would serve alcohol and people would get very rowdy. In the Latino community, alcoholism is very prevalent. So when you start mixing alcohol and stuff like that and people start fighting and it was just hard to control. But, overall, positive in my eyes. 00:18:00Like, I see that they play in the Latino league for soccer here, they’ve been doin’ it since I can remember and I’ve played in it before and it’s always good vibes there. And yeah, I don’t really have anything bad to say about the Latino community too much. I just wish it was more represented here in town. That’s about it.

CG:Can you think of other ways you wish the community was represented? You mentioned having a building —

DG:Mm-hmm.

CG:— or a congregating space in the community, but —.

DG:Maybe more like representation in city council, or office, maybe even in the schools. You know, having someone of higher authority, like maybe a Latino principal or something like that, just more representation in the community. I know that stems more into 00:19:00actual Latinos putting in the effort to go to school and get a degree and so forth, but education too. Like I mentioned before, both my parents had a sixth grade education and it’s hard to, I guess, with that type of education, hard to teach your own kids to continue education themselves and like try to go to school and be someone. We don’t really have a whole lot of that and I wish more Latino parents would push their kids to go to school, but I understand the drawbacks, which if they’re already poor how can they afford to go school, you know. The only reason I was able to even attend Westminster College was I got a scholarship, basically a full ride, but it was merit based ’n lots of 00:20:00stuff had to really fall into place. You had to be a first generation college student, your parents … couldn’t make a certain amount of money, you know over sixty thousand combined, and things like that. Luckily, I got chosen and I got to pick whatever school I wanted — or whatever school I got accepted to, they’d pay it. So, I toured Westminster College and I wanted to play on their soccer team. I got in, and that same week I got notified that I got the scholarship so I was like, I’m goin’ to Westminster. I loved it, but I just feel like it’s kind of a — it’s tough to see more representation when we also don’t put in the work to do, but economically-wise it’s like how could you? It’s just there’s that gap there. And like I said, if I 00:21:00wouldn’t have gotten that scholarship, I probably would have stayed here at Dixie [Utah Tech] when it was Dixie. And I don’t know where my life would be then at that point, ’n how I would see my life today because I would stay in this sort of conservative town and probably have the same ideologies that I did back then. So I wanna say I got lucky in a way. I got to experience what rich white kids experience their education-wise, you know. I was probably a handful of Hispanics that went to Westminster that graduated there when I went. And so, I just remember one day I’m lookin’ in class and I was like, “Holy crap, I’m the only brown kid here.” And that was almost every class. But I was never made to feel like I was any different and that was the difference between going there and coming here. Or at least going to school here. Lots of bullying going on 00:22:00when I was a kid, and just sort of racism in general. Any interaction — I was talking to my therapist the other day and I told him that I’ve never had one good interaction with police officers here. Even though I’m a good kid, they just see me, and they just assume that I’m into something. And, you know, I’ve been pulled over with my white friends and they talk to ’em completely different than how they talk to me. And nobody wouldn’t ever know unless you live through it. So, I’ve dealt with lots of times where I just felt disrespected or felt like — I don’t know — left out or singled out, I guess, by the way they talk to you and then —. Even 00:23:00though I’ve probably had a handful of good conversations with cops, but growin’ up, especially in a smaller town, I’m like I can almost assume that they were going to treat me differently in a way, even though — I don’t know — I never really showed that I was any trouble. It was just like, “Where’re you coming from?” They don’t even ask, they don’t even tell you what you did wrong. It’s like, “I need your license and insurance.” And I – you go ’n ask, and they talk to you very aggressively. And I recall one time I got pulled over and he told me that my brake light was not working, so I believed him and he asked if he could search my car and told him no, and kinda got some push back from that. And I felt very like, “Oh shoot.” And I don’t know, I just didn’t feel like I was very respected. 00:24:00He let me off with a warning and I go home and tell my dad, “Hey I got pulled over ’cause my brake light doesn’t work. We should go get it fixed.” And so he goes out there to check, turns out it wasn’t even broken, he just pulled me over ’n check and see if I had any drugs on me or anything like that. I got pulled over again for having loud music, which really wasn’t that loud, I just had my windows down, but he told me that my brake light was out. And so, I was like, “Hmm, I don’t know. Can I check?” And he’d respond, “Oh, you don’t believe me? Come out here and check for yourself. Have your little buddy over there push the brake light and make sure it doesn’t work.” So, I’m like “Okay,” and I get out. Sure enough, it was broken that time. But just the way they talk to you, it’s just like, dude, you don’t need to talk to me like that, you know. And when I get pulled over with my other friends, my white friends, it’s way more respectful, they don’t question ya. It’s just different. But maybe that’s just how it is in a small town. 00:25:00But, just kinda navigating life around those types of obstacles was a little different.

CG:Thank you for sharing that.

DG:Yeah.

CG:It was a lot of good stuff. I don’t know where I wanna go next. The — you mentioned that you have white friends that you’ve been pulled over with before, but can you describe your relationship with white Americans?

DG:Sure. Overall, I don’t know, 60-40, pretty good.

CG:[Chuckles].

DG:[Chuckles]. One of my closest friends is white. I met him in first grade. His name is Cody, he’s still my friend. And he just is, you could just tell, different, you know, he doesn’t really see me any differently 00:26:00than he sees other white people. And I’ve definitely had white friends that will just say things that I’m like, “Woah, that’s pretty racist. But, I’m not gonna say anything or call you out on it, but I’m going to push you to the side a little bit because now I don’t trust you. Now, I see that you think this certain way.” I think it was more eye opening during 2016, during Trump’s presidency. St. George was like Trump flags everywhere, American flags everywhere, and St. George News on Facebook was just littered with racism and remarks and things like that. And it opened my eyes, like in my head and a lot of Hispanics’ heads, if say, Trump says something out of pocket or racist or I don’t know, and 00:27:00you agree with or you support someone who says things like that then, automatically, in my eyes you are no different than what he just said or what he represents. And so it really opened my eyes with a lot of my friends online that would spew lots of hateful stuff and I’m like, “Woah, I didn’t know you were like that,” you know. So, it made it easier to remove those friends and keep the ones that — I’m not sayin’ every Trump supporter is a racist, but every racist that I’ve met has been a Trump supporter. That make sense?

CG:[Chuckles].

DG:So, that’s just kind of how I see it. Even nowadays, if you support Trump, I don’t care, but now I just see, I kinda see a correlation between it, but I always give people the benefit of the doubt that even though they agree with what he says 00:28:00sometimes, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they agree with everything that he represents and things like that. But overall, yeah 60-40 here in St. George. Salt Lake [City] was a lot better. I felt like people were more open, more diverse up there than it is down here, which made it more accessible and yeah —. But overall, like I said, St. George people are really nice. There’s just a few bad apples out there that kinda make it worse for everybody else, especially the small town folk that have been here longer than everybody. They’re like, “This my town not yours” type of stuff. You hear that and we kinda just joke about it nowadays. Me and my friends, we just kinda make fun of those guys because they just look dumb to us now. Back then, they probably would have riled us up a little bit, 00:29:00but now it’s like it’s not worth it.

CG:You talked a bit about experiencing some racist or prejudiced behavior, particularly with cops. Would you like to talk more about that? Or what was it like to experience that?

DG:I kinda got to experience it second hand through my older brothers. I felt like they were very targeted back in the day and they would always try to look for something to get them in trouble, you know. I recall one time we went to California, the whole family, we were gone for like two weeks and the very first day back, there was already a cop at our house waiting for us, saying that they caught video or have video of one of our brothers doing graffiti or tagging an area here in town. And we’re like, “How can that be? We were gone for two whole 00:30:00weeks.” You know, it doesn’t make sense that you have him on video when he was with us. And so, stuff like that. But at the same time my oldest brothers, I feel they rebelled because they also went through a lot of racism in school and they would get targeted a lot. They went to Pine View High School, and I recall one of my oldest brothers was tellin’ me that — Back then we were pretty poor. We didn’t really have enough to like buy back to school clothes and things like that. So they would actually just buy whatever was cheap, which was, literally, a white-T, packs of white-Ts, and maybe two baggy pants and that’s about it. So every day, they would wear a white-T with baggy pants. But to us, to everybody else, they looked like cholos, and gangsters, or things like that. So the school would literally tell them they couldn’t wear that, and my brother’s like, “Don’t I have rights? 00:31:00Can’t I wear whatever I wanna wear?” And they said because it’s associated with gang activity, they don’t want them to wear that. But they’re like, “We don’t have money to buy new clothes,” and stuff like that. So they would get a lot of — My dad would fight to keep them in school and make sure their rights weren’t violated. And I remember my dad takin’ a little video or a little recorder and record all the conversations he’s had with the principal and the resource officer in school and the gang units, just — and then, I remember years down the road I found a little tape and I went over it and listened to it, and just the way they would talk to my dad was just super disrespectful because English is his second language, and so maybe they just thought he didn’t understand things, but my dad was very like prepared. But it kinda opened my eyes to the ways it was handled 00:32:00back then, so I always kinda felt like I kinda had to watch my back around either the cops or those types of people. And so, yeah, it was just always kinda like some sort of sneaky stuff goin’ on. I don’t recall anything crazy happening to me, specifically, other than what I told you about, but I did see a lot of second hand stuff through my brothers just kind of bein’ targeted.

CG:You mentioned it in relation to school a couple of times, do you remember anything specific happening at school? Or —?

DG:In terms of like, with cops?

CG:No, just people in general being —

DG:Like prejudice?

CG:Yeah.

DG:Yeah, 00:33:00lots of — probably from first grade and up. I think first grade I was introduced to the word “beaner” and “wetback” and what else — just references to my ethnicity and my culture, and I didn’t understand. At the time I didn’t really like, yeah, I didn’t understand why they would be mean to someone like me when I felt like I was nothin’ but a good kid, got good grades. In school, they really tried to put me in ESL, which is English as a second language course or class, because they thought that maybe I didn’t understand everything. But my mom fought to not put me in those classes ’cause she felt like I would miss a big chunk of my actual education, and so they kept in regular classes; I excelled. But 00:34:00there was always little things here and there that they kinda wanted to put me in a spot, almost like single me out. I don’t know if that was for the betterment of myself or my education, maybe it was in good intentions, like, “Oh, maybe he doesn’t understand the language right.” Which is true, English was my second language but I kinda learned through school and through media how to speak it and how to understand it. But yeah, as far as I can remember from first grade and up, it was just always somethin’ and I kinda had to sort of figure out ways to stand my ground in a way, especially around those kids, that would punch you or physically hurt you because you were brown. 00:35:00Which I felt was like, for a first grader, no first grader should go through that, you know. It’ll affect you and it affects a lot of us. And I feel like that’s why a lot of the Hispanic community stuffs, a lot of their problems through substance abuse and alcoholism and things like that, because just like those types of traumas affect us later in life. It’s up to us to really break those cycles, but without proper education, you’re never goin’ to fully understand how to do that, which is just this cycle, I guess. It’s just what helps the cycle perpetuate through generations and generations, you know. All three of my oldest brothers were fathers by the time they were eighteen and it’s like they didn’t even have a childhood, and 00:36:00they basically lived a second childhood in their thirties and because they felt they didn’t really have a chance to have a childhood. But then, their kids end up havin’ issues as well because maybe they didn’t have both parents at home and yeah, it’s just the cycle continues. I guess they see their dad drinkin’, so maybe when they get older they start drinkin’, too, and it’s just tough.

CG:Thank you. How has the area changed since you’ve been here?

DG:I feel like it’s becoming more accepting of other cultures and religions and backgrounds. When we first moved here, super conservative, and now I feel like it’s, you know, they’re hosting drag shows and they’re doing LGBTQ 00:37:00sort of festivals or Pride week. They do Pride week here now, which back then, it was like you wouldn’t see that. And so, I guess it’s growing for the better. But there are lots of other people coming into town from other places that are probably driving that, you know and so, which is a good thing. I think it’s gonna help a lot of the future generations get through some hardships, especially if they are LGBTQ or a different culture.

CG:What changes have you noticed within the Latino-Hispanic community?

DG:Hmm. That’s hard to say, because I haven’t really been involved too much anymore with the Latino community. 00:38:00Yeah, that’s a tough one. I don’t know. Let me think about that real fast. Hmm. That’s a good question.

CG:Earlier you mentioned the radio station and their festival that they put on. Have you seen more events like that or —?

DG:Yeah, you could say it’s starting to grow in the sense of like we start to see more Mexican-owned businesses or Latino-owned businesses. There’s more representation in terms of like we have our own radio station now that’s dedicated to St. George area or it’s Spanish, so Spanish speakers 00:39:00can tune in. Back then, we had to tune into Vegas channel on the radio and sometimes it’d be spotchy. Now, we have our own dedicated radio station where people can learn about certain events goin’ on in town. There’s also social media now that could be driving that as well, so yeah.

CG:Do you think there are more people now than there were before, or —?

DG:Yeah, I would say there are more Latinos in town, for sure, from what I remember. Different parts of Latin America too, not just Mexico. And we love to see that because it just, it makes it more comfortable for us to see more 00:40:00people like me that — it’s just when I moved here, literally, you could count on your hands how many Mexican families were here and so now it’s like, you don’t even know how many. I don’t know. I haven’t been to church, so I can’t tell you how big the congregation has grown, but I can only assume that it’s grown. And you go to any store here in town, you’ll find someone that you’ve never met before from a Latino community or a Latino background. So I feel like it’s definitely grown.

CG:Do you have any questions? If there is nothing else you would like to elaborate on or talk about that we haven’t asked you about, we just have one more question.

DG:Sure.

CG:So, what would you like people to know about yourself 00:41:00or your community?

DG:I’d like people to know that even though back in the day, St. George was different, more conservative, it’s becoming more accepting of other cultures and people. And I think that’s a good thing. I think that it’s just gonna build a better future for our future generations, really, because they’re gonna be fully represented, I betcha, in twenty years; and there’s gonna be far more scholarships and ways and avenues for them to get higher education. And so yeah, I just feel like if you’re interested in moving to St. George, it’s definitely like an awesome place to raise 00:42:00your family. It’s very clean, it’s not crime-ridden like other places. Cost of living is pretty high, but I guess that’s what happens when lots of people move in. But, overall, I can’t think of any other place I would rather live than St. George, despite goin’ through some hardships growing up. I feel like it’s become better through the years. But I would like to see more representation in Congress, and any sort of House-sitting seats, and even city council, things like that. That would be cool to kinda see someone and inspire other kids to, you know, continue and just inspire. Once they see a positive role model, they’ll 00:43:00want to do better for themselves.

CG:Okay, well, if there’s nothin’ else, we’ll stop the recording.

DG:Cool. [END OF RECORDING. END OF INTERVIEW.]