In honor of Cesar Chavez Day, the Henry Madden Library at California State University, Fresno has partnered with StoryCorps to record and preserve the stories of Latino families in the San Joaquin Valley.
We'll be airing excerpts of some of those conversations over the next several weeks on The California Report Magazine. This week, we hear from Armando Rivera, a deaf man and his longtime friend, Paul Barnett.
It was 35 years ago when Paul Barnett saw Armando Rivera struggling to communicate with a grocery store clerk in Fresno. Rivera is deaf.
"I knew the alphabet," Barnett said of his rudimentary American Sign Language (ASL). "Being a social work student, I thought I was going to save the world, so I jumped in to try and interpret the little that I knew."
The two exchanged numbers, and they started spending time and signing together. A year later, they were roommates, and 35 years later, they are still friends.