Month after month, Natalia Pedroza showed up at the doctor’s office with uncontrolled diabetes and high blood pressure. Her medications never seemed to work, and she kept returning to the emergency room in crisis.
Walfred Lopez, a Los Angeles County community health worker, was determined to figure out why.
Lopez spoke to her in her native Spanish and, little by little, gained her trust. Pedroza, a street vendor living in downtown Los Angeles, shared with him that she was depressed. She didn’t have immigration papers, she told him, and her children still lived in Mexico.