For the life of me, I can't find a picture of Jesse. He was a very special person. Born in Juarez, Mexico, across from El Paso, his mom sent him to live with cousins in Anaheim when he was 15 to get him away from his abusive father. (He was the youngest of 10. His mother was Japanese. Jesse was the only child who had any Japanese features, so of course his father, a proud Mexican, insisted that his mother must have had an affair.)

Jesse didn't last long with his cousins, and soon was living on the streets of Hollywood. He hustled, got an apartment, put himself through high school, went to nursing school, got an LVN, many years later an got RN, and finally a BS. While in high school, he got a social security card just by sending in the application. Back then they weren't as carefull about verifying which side of a river you were born on. He voted in every single election from the time he turned 18. When the Amnesty program came along in the mid 80s, he was very excited at the chance to officially become a US citizen. But of course, the Reagan Administration added a clause that made HIV positive people inelligible.

He was an Oncology nurse for Kaiser in Long Beach. His coworkers never knew that he was an illegal alien. He died of MAC, an AIDS related opportunistic infection, in April, 1991. He was buried with an American flag.