A man seeking to reward low-income children talks about the solidarity of Latinos in Hispanic Heritage Month
Tito Rodríguez decided to become the Santa Claus of the neighborhood and bring low-income children the gifts he never had as a child.
“My parents were poor, Mexican immigrants, and when I was 6 years old, my father committed suicide … We were even poorer,” he told us.
In none of his Long Beach childhood years did Tito receive gifts. Not on Christmas, not on Thanksgiving, not even on his birthday.
“My mom sold shoes seven days a week in the swap meet [tianguis] but what little he was able to earn was barely enough to eat. We couldn’t think of gifts from or anything like that, ”recalled Tito, who years later would reach a level of fame as a music producer.
“I remember that on Christmas Eve I couldn’t sleep, but not because Santa was going to bring me gifts, but excited that at dawn he would run to my friend’s house to see what the child God had brought him. They did bring him gifts. Sometimes we played together with what they had brought him ”, Tito said.
He invested his experience in poverty to compose the music that he liked as a teenager and began to stand out in Long Beach and Los Angeles, where his songs began to be known on the radio in the late 1990s.
He recalled that he came to compose music that Snoop Dogg and the band ‘Tha Eastsidaz’ performed, it was a time of recognition.
Motivation after a bad experience
It was during that adolescence in the absence of his father and his always busy mother, that Tito was arrested and sent to juvenile prison for attempting to rob a convenience store.
“I started to think about all those children who, like me, in their childhood do not have any gifts because their families fight so much so that they barely have enough money to pay,” he said.
“Well, who won’t want gifts; everyone wants to get gifts, but it would be very difficult to give them all, “he reflected. So he decided to buy toys and walk the streets of Long Beach in search of little ones to give them as gifts.
“At first I had no idea what I was doing. I would go through the streets and if I found a child, even with their parents, I would give them a toy, and the parents would stare at me surprised and sometimes distrustful, although I said Merry Christmas to them. “
About 10 years ago he changed his method of rewarding children, established the Local Hearts Foundation.
It was very difficult to give gifts to everyone, so he established rules and reduced them to just two: that they be children from poor families, but also have excellent grades or grades and achievement in their schools.
“And there are many,” said the producer, who then decided to identify himself as El Santa Encapuchado (The Hood Santa) and begin to make his project more formal. He also bought a Santa Claus suit and a white beard.
Thus, he began to establish agreements with companies, businesses and shops that agreed to help poor minors and good students through his means.
He said the procedure usually begins with some contact from parents or other adults who care for the children.
“They send us their grade reports from the school and then we contact them,” he said.
A regular conversation with these adults consists of asking for the grade report and writing down what the children have wanted.
“For example, they tell me: ‘Well, the boy wants a skateboard’ and I ask them ‘what else?’ Sometimes they tell me that he only has two shirts to go to school… Well, we are going to bring him ten shirts and matching pants, ”said Tito.
Some girls need a computer, clothes. These are things that Tito rewards for the effort in school despite the difficulties that families have to face.
The most exciting moment for children is when the Hooded Santa, dressed as Santa Claus, knocks on their door and asks for the person awarded and begins to deliver one after another the gifts they most want and need the most..
“It is an indescribable happiness, it feels very good to see the joy of children,” Tito said. In recent years he has repeated his visits between 25 and 30 times each November and December.
What he wants, he said, is for the children to have the gifts he would have liked to have.
But now that the plan has gone the way Tito wanted, he faces the difficulty of a condition, according to his partner and co-founder of the Local Hearts Foundation, HJ Chong.
Tito acknowledged that he has type 1 diabetes and that sometimes if he immerses himself in his philanthropic work he forgets to inject himself until his blood sugar reading is in a high range.
Still, Tito thinks that in this Hispanic Heritage month nothing equals the happiness of giving children the gifts he never had.
“We are Hispanics, you know, we are Latinos, that’s why philanthropic work has our flavor, of solidarity,” he said proudly.
· Read more: How Hispanic Heritage Month was born in the United States
