A family can be the grouping of anything that has related common characteristics. A family does not need to be the grouping of blood relatives. For example, a football team can be looked upon as a family. The coach is the father figure, and he must guide his boys to victory.

Each teammate has a goal, a path, and a decision to make; and each player must work together, as a family, to reach their success. Angelina Venegas has experienced that thrive of workmanship with a family. But, with Angelina, she has two families: her blood relatives and her community. With those two strong factors, she has become a successful lawyer with her own practice, Law Offices of Angelina Venegas, located in Redlands, California.

When Angelina was about eight years old her father left, and did not speak or see him again until she was twenty-one years old. Her father gave no reason why he would leave his wife and three young children (Angelina had a seven year old brother and a five year old sister at the time). She’s also not sure a “reason,” would have made a difference at the time.

After her father’s departure, the financial struggle on the rest of the Venegas family became almost unbearable. She recalls coming home from elementary school and bike riding around town, collecting aluminum cans each afternoon and selling them that same day, in order to have enough money to buy milk at the Circle K, for the next morning’s cereal. The only alternative was to work together as a team. She also recalls teaming up with her siblings and trying to sell easter bunnies to people at the San Bernardino Orange Show swapmeet. Even so, they couldn’t raise enough money as Angelina’s mother slowly got behind on the house payments, and their house in Fontana, California was foreclosed upon.

The family next moved in with her grandmother in Colton. Grandma’s house was a two bedroom, one bath home, with less than 1,500 square feet, and Grandma already lived with her sister. How do three adults and three children live in a two bedroom, one bath home? It was a challenge…. Angelina shared the living room, with her mother and two siblings. She recalls years of shaking out the sleeping bags and blankets to lay down for the night, on the hardwood floor, and folding the blankets in the morning. When the home with no air conditioning got too hot during blistering summer nights, they would soak beach towels with cold water in the bathtub and use the soaked towels as blankets. This was her living arrangement up until the time she was seventeen and moved out to the dormitories at UCLA.

Angelina has always been bright when it came to her studies. She always worked hard to keep grades up to beyond a 4.0 level, and she never let them drop. From Terrace Hills Junior High School to Colton High School, she made it her mission to succeed in academics. Angelina remembers years back when she and her sister talked about solving their family’s heartache. They made a plan: Angelina would be a lawyer, and her sister would be a doctor. They viewed on TV that doctors and lawyers were wealthy and successful. Angelina explains, “We had this tunnel vision and we did not know any better.” Their only knowledge of professional and financial stability was what they saw on television.

Meanwhile, had Angelina listened to her Colton High School counselor, she should have been a bricklayer. Although she has fond memories of Colton High School, she recalls the career counseling and college resources were not the best. The school did not even carry college applications to the University of California. She had to drive to UC Riverside Admissions office to pick up a stack for her and her college bound friends. Meanwhile, she applied for grants and scholarships, and fulfilled her destiny. She has the first one in her family to enter college and graduate. After graduating UCLA with a B.A. in History, she attended law school at UC Davis, King Hall School of Law.

Academics were always a way for her to get out of her community, but when Angelina received her law degree she wanted to give back to her community. “I love helping the people I was raised with,” Angelina exclaimed with the satisfaction of her own hospitality. She was not the only one to succeed with high hopes. Her little sister became the doctor that she set out and planned to become. Angelina’s sister is now a Pediatrician in San Diego, undergoing a specialty/fellowship program in gastroenterology. Angelina’s brother is now a sheriff in Montana, and is a community leader who is currently running for City Council.

That is the true strength of a family: working together. The Venegas family may have lost their coach at the beginning of the game, but the assistant coach (Mother) stayed strong with the team. Angelina feels that being raised by “very strong, humble, and hard working women” gave a positive stance for success to the whole family. Angelina never stopped trying; she always gave 110 percent to school, to work, and to life. That type of persistent attitude gave her the opportunity to open her own law practice, which she recently moved to Redlands, California, The Venegas family demonstrated that they had strength, courage, and knowledge to take their winning team into victory, and are now relishing in glory that was borne from those efforts.

Article written by Richard Castillo