Mothers’ strength: Valley women build family, community bonds

Felicia Rangel-Samparano is co-founder and director of Sidewalk School in Matamoros and Reynosa. (Courtesy photo)

The words “rainbows” and “sunshine” have rarely been used to describe raising a child. Motherhood can be an emotional rollercoaster, with intense happiness but also constant worry and fear.

In Brownsville, Felicia Rangel-Sampanaro knows this anguish intensely.

For six years, she has provided maternal love and care to thousands of refugee youths and their families along the Mexican border as co-founder and director of Sidewalk School, a program offering free education, food and water to children living in encampments and shelters in Matamoros and Reynosa.

“My work day is from the time I wake up to the time I go to bed,” she said, about balancing her humanitarian work with partner Victor Cavazos, making a living and raising her now-teenage son.

Sidewalk School launched out of necessity when Migrant Protection Protocols, also known as Remain in Mexico, resulted in large numbers of asylum seekers living in the open areas along the Rio Grande. In those early days, families lived in primitive tents with no access to restroom facilities.

Rangel-Sampanaro, formerly a stay-at-home mom, struggled with the devastating scenes.

“If I look back, I could probably only see a handful (of faces) out of the thousands (of children), and that’s maybe the trauma,” she said.

“The first time I saw a little girl whispering and giggling in class, I do have that memory from six years ago. It took all of that (the encampment) away.”

Her labor of love is political, she said, but her focus is on the people it affects.

“I’m a human being caring for other human beings,” she said. “We definitely show up for our community. A lot of people are scared to come out, so when Victor and I step out to these, we know we’re representing a lot of people.”

Across the Rio Grande Valley, in McAllen, Kassandra Rodriguez and her mother Rebecca Grimes are tag-teaming life.

Grimes works as tax assessor collector for the city of McAllen, where she’s been in a leadership position for more than a decade. Rodriguez is system event planner for South Texas Health System, a role she’s held for nearly five years. She’s also raising four children with her husband.

Rodriguez, 36, said she learned resilience from her mom. When Grimes learned she was pregnant, she quit college to dedicate herself to single motherhood. She resumed online classes when her daughter was in high school.

“I think she saw that in me … that I did not give up,” Grimes said. “I would spend my evenings, my lunch hour, my weekends studying, and she did the same. I was a whole mother and father for her. I showed her what it was to be a strong, resilient mother.”

The duo received associate degrees together from South Texas College, an event that fell serendipitously on Mother’s Day weekend in 2011.

“There’s always going to be challenges,” Rodriguez said. “Seeing her as a single mom, and just going through different adversities … I’ve seen her overcome them. It’s the strongest trait she’s shown me, and benefitted me also in all facets of life.”

Together, mom and daughter are learning to help one another through everything.

“She’s a great mom,” said 56-year-old Grimes, who prefers being called gigi to grandmother. “I’m only a mother of one and I honestly don’t know how she does it with four.”

“I couldn’t do it without her,” Rodriguez said. “It’s very cliché, they say it takes a village but it really does. She figures it out. She has a very demanding job, too, and that takes a lot of stress on my shoulders — without hesitation, she’s there for them.”

As their relationship has grown, Grimes and Rodriguez said they’re building an adult relationship that supports one another more as family, and less as parent and child.

“We’ve actually bonded even more and it’s been really special to … have that connection,” Rodriguez said, dabbing at her eyes.

She’ll always be my little girl,” Grimes said, with a crack in her voice. “I’m going through a hard time at this moment, and it was hard to reach out to her. I kept a lot of it to myself.”

That’s when Rodriguez reassured her, reminding her she’s not little girl anymore.

“Now I know that she’s there to protect me,” Grimes said. “We’ve become stronger as a mother-daughter team.”

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