VivirLatino

Edited on 5/18:

If anyone wants to donate to a memorial fund in Tam and Cinthya’s names please visit here

Yesterday afternoon, amiga Prerna sent me the above photograph from the LGBT CIR Summit. In the photo Prerna poses with the women she invited to invite themselves and we share vino. On the left you see Cinthya Felix and Tam Tran. Along with the photo, Prerna sent me a tweet saying they were in a better place.

I had no idea what that meant. Had they been deported? Arrested? I didn’t want to think the worst. I thought about the few hours I had spent with these two young women. They were activistas and warriors but also young mujeres like so many. That night, we all hung out on Prena’s hotel bed and talked about trips and mami’hood and then I left to go home.

As I got off the 7 train in my hood I saw Prena’s message that indeed the worst had happened. Cinthya, 26 and Tam, 27 passed away after a fatal car crash in Maine.

Our under-served communities will miss a physician in Cinthya, who was not only a founding member of the undocumented youth group at UCLA (IDEAS), but also the first undocumented student admitted to Columbia University’s School of Public Health in 2007. It was a hard fought battle, especially due to lack of financial resources, yet Cinthya was determined and never backed down. But school wasn’t her passion: it was basketball and serving communities in need.

Tam is probably best known as the DREAM Act student who testified in Congress and had to go into hiding shortly after when ICE retaliated by detaining her parents. She was born to Vietnamese parents in Germany, but neither country would accept her, making her stateless in the United States when she arrived here at the young age of six. Ironically, she was pursuing a PhD in American Studies at Brown with the hope that someday soon this country would recognize her as an American de jure. Yet her real passion was in film-making.

I stood on the elevated platform of my local subway station and cried for these estrellas whom I knew for only a few hours. As if on cue, a lone green balloon must have slipped from the hands of a child and flew up into the blue spring sky before me. It made me smile thinking about the blessing those few hours were.

La lucha sigue with your names in our hearts.

There is a memorial service scheduled today to honor and commemorate their legacy at the UCLA Kerckhoff Grand Salon from 3-5 p.m.