District 4 City Councilman reflects on past, work on council

KSAT 12 sits down with District 4 City Councilman Rey Saldana

SAN ANTONIO – District 4 City Councilman Rey Saldana believes he could have become another statistic.

Sometimes, he says, it feels like he's playing with "house money."

A student at South San High School, he did what many of his peers didn't: He received an academic scholarship to Stanford University.

"I grew up not speaking English on the first day of school with parents who never made it past the eighth grade," he said. "Coming from a community where I knew more people who went to jail than went to college, this was something that all rushed to me as soon as I got that letter that said my life was going to change."

KSAT 12 sat down with Saldana in the South San High School baseball dugouts that used to be his second home.

"I thought about this always growing up. Wearing this blue baseball that that had an "S" representing South San," he recalled.

He played catcher for the team, a position that taught him just as much about life as it did the game.

"You know that you can't do it without someone else who is working as hard as you or doing their job," Saldana said. "I got a lot of those lessons between two foul poles."

Saldana applied to Stanford hoping that the West Coast school would take him far away from San Antonio.

He remembers his mother's happiness and confusion when he explained that he would be headed far from home.

"So I told her it was in Palo Alto, California. And so her immediate reaction was, 'Why don't you just go to Palo Alto right here? We have Palo Alto right in our backyard.' We lived two blocks from Palo Alto Community College,'" he laughed. "So I said, 'Mom, I understand how you feel about me going away, but I think I'm going to take advantage of this opportunity.'"

Saldana's father was an undocumented immigrant, a man he calls his superhero.

"Growing up I thought I would be made fun of for that type of history," Saldana said. "But now its such a strong part of who I am and my history and the reason why I sacrifice the way I do because others, in this case, my father, sacrifice so much to get to a place where he knew there was opportunity not for him, but for his family."

Saldana's first time on an airplane was when he visited Stanford.

"I remember getting on the plane and thinking to myself San Antonio was in my rear view mirror and I was never looking back," he said.

But baseball wasn't all in the past. He set up a meeting with the Stanford head coach in hopes of landing a tryout.

After some nervous conversation, the coach agreed to the tryout and Saldana later walked on to the team.

"I was so frightened just to take that meeting, but I think it taught me something about just taking a risk," he said. "For a kid from San Antonio who had never been outside of Loop 410, I was all of the sudden traveling to USC or Washington to play Washington State, UCLA or Arizona State."

But all that traveling somehow made him think of home.

"I fell in love with San Antonio by leaving it," Saldana said. "I knew I was coming back, but it took leaving to realize that."

So after college, he rounded home and moved back in with his parents, where he was living when he won his first City Council race in 2011.

"I told folks it's just like anybody else coming from college," Saldana laughed. "I had roommates just like you did except I called them mom and dad."

Saldana is now married and living in a house of his own. He met his wife at the Shops at La Cantera while he was home on a break from college.

The two dated long distance for several years.

"I went to go visit her in Ohio and we talked about, you know, 'We've got to figure out how to get you back to San Antonio.' And her response was, 'I need a reason to come back,'" Saldana remembers. "Everybody knew this but me, and I said, 'Oh yeah, we need to find you a job down there.' Somebody snapped me and said, 'Are you an idiot? She's talking about a proposal! She's talking about marriage!'"

Saldana proposed at Christmas time at The Tower of The Americas.

Looking back on the opportunities he's seized, he doesn't take them for granted and hopes his work in the community allows other kids to step up to the plate.

"I think that's become part of my DNA is being part of a team and caring about the person who is coming up behind me," he said.

In addition to his work on the City Council, Saldana works with local KIPP charter schools. A geography buff, he could see himself teaching the subject one day.

How about higher office? A run for mayor is certainly not out of the question.

"If I wanted to do any elected office outside of the City Council, it will not be anything that takes me out of San Antonio," Saldana said. "The work that happens in Austin is important. The work that happens in D.C. is incredibly important. But it gets you further away from the people you serve every day."


About the Author:

Myra Arthur is passionate about San Antonio and sharing its stories. She graduated high school in the Alamo City and always wanted to anchor and report in her hometown. Myra anchors KSAT News at 6:00 p.m. and hosts and reports for the streaming show, KSAT Explains. She joined KSAT in 2012 after anchoring and reporting in Waco and Corpus Christi.