- You can have a car.
When you have a low rider,
its a whole different story.
Because, it's your individuality.
You're saying I'm here.
I don't need to be like you.
I don't want to be like you.
I'm gonna be me, and this is me.
This is who I am.
This is what I represent.
(energetic music)
I own a 1964 Chevy Impala.
It's black on the bottom.
It's got fade-in, fade-out patterns on the side,
with a purple pearl in it.
The skirts have murals on them.
The tops got a candy purple flake to it.
The engine of the car,
its a 350 with a 700R transmission.
The majority of the engine has been chromed out,
with certain parts of it being engraved.
Door handles, bumper guards,
the antenna.
Soft touches of engraving,
just to give it that mix.
I have hydraulics.
I'm running a spare dumps.
And again its chromed out with engraving.
I'm running Straight Laced Tru Rays.
These are the same type of rims that I had
back in my cars in 1979, 1980's.
The interior of the car is
pretty much original, except for the seats.
We had them redone with black and then we had
purple stitching put into it
to go along with the car.
I wanted a soft pattern and I wanted it to be
that when you're looking at it
you think the car is all black.
Then when the sun hits it,
depending on where you're standing on the vehicle
you say, "Oh, look at that".
It changed colors.
Look at how much purple is actually in the car.
What you never see when you're looking
from a certain perspective of it.
When I got it, it was drivable.
But basically everything has been changed on the car.
So its not a ground up restoration,
but we've changed everything
than what we started out with.
I was born in Santa Barbara
and raised in Carpinteria.
I come from a large family.
Nine siblings.
Of the nine,
I'm number seven of nine.
My mom, her job was keep everybody in order.
Go to school, educate yourself,
graduate, stay on top of it.
My dad, he was a gardener.
He was raised in Mexico.
He wasn't able to speak English, so what did he do?
He went and worked the lemon fields.
Then from there he switched over
to being a gardener.
He became the lead gardener.
From there,
for the whole Santa Barbara school district,
he became
the gardener.
He wasn't even educated in the United States.
He didn't let language be a barrier.
So he did what he had to do
to provide for his family.
My grandmother's name was Maria Zaragoza.
She came with her three kids
during the Mexican Revolution.
She came here and she worked the fields.
My grandmother is a pillar
of education for our family.
But she was a very smart woman.
She had a little house in Carpinteria.
When they built the freeway,
they had to relocate her.
She says, "I'm not selling my house,
and I'm not moving."
So they had to pay her for her property,
and they moved her house.
With that money she bought two acres of property.
That's why we were able,
we were fortunate to have
my grandmother, my aunt,
my other aunt and us,
all living in this one cul -de- sac.
One of the last things
that my grandmother said,
six months before she died on Christmas Eve.
She told everybody...
"This is my last year
I'm gonna spend with all of you.
And I want to you to know,
that I'm proud of everybody.
But I need a lawyer.
I need a nurse.
I need teachers.
I need all of you
to go to school
and get your education."
You talk about role model?
That's a role model,
because that one person
was able to create
50 professionals.
Psychiatrists, Nurses,
Doctors, Lawyer
That's my grandmother and the power of my grandmother.
How I got to where I am, is a long story.
Well, the school I went to
is the same school my mother went to,
which was a segregated school.
But right away in school
you're classified.
They didn't want you to be more successful.
The counselor came up to me and says
"Tomas, you know, what are you going to do?
You're a senior, you're going to graduate.
Where do you want to apply?"
I said I want to go to UCLA.
She's like "UCLA?"
I'm like yeah.
She's like "No.
We should shoot for
something a little more realistic."
When she told me no we couldn't do it,
then I just said well forget it then.
I don't need to go to school.
I can figure it out, I'll make it on my own.
I didn't go to college cause they told
me I couldn't go to UCLA.
So I went to work.
It wasn't until my cousin,
who's a psychiatrist,
graduated from UCLA
and I went to the Chicano graduation
One person got up on that stand
and he touched me with his story.
He said, "It's beautiful
that we have all these raza
here today celebrating.
I wish my parents could be here,
but they're not,
because they're working in the fields.
And they have to work in the fields,
so that I could graduate from UCLA.
When I go back
they're not going to have to work anymore."
When he finished talking,
I turned to my mom and I said,
I'm gonna go to UCLA.
My political activism at UCLA
was with every school I've been involved with,
always gets me into trouble.
The Dean of Students was very familiar with me.
The Dean of Students is the one
who decides if you get into trouble, you get kicked out.
During my conversation with the Dean of Students
we got into an argument and
I was talking about the precedent
that he was saying and relying
on hearsay statements.
And he's like, "You need to become a lawyer.
When you graduate come to me.
We're going to get you into law school."
I am a criminal defense attorney.
I worked for the Public Defender's Office
in LA County for 13 years.
I left and I've been in private practice,
my own practice for eight years now.
The thing that keeps me inspired
and keeps me motivated to
keep doing what I'm doing
is helping people.
Everyone of my cases is personal to me.
Because, I tell them,
everybody deserves a second chance.
People always ask me,
well how did you make a decision to become a lawyer?
How do you defend and speak up for yourself.
Where did I learn that is the real question.
That came back in 1972.
Cesar Chavez was marching through our town.
From Carpinteria, all the way
through Santa Barbara, up to Goleta.
But the most significant thing
that happened during that march was,
as we were walking on the Frontage Road,
next to the freeway.
We were coming to this one portion
with this big hill.
I'm like we got to walk up this big hill.
Rather than go up the big hill, we diverted.
We go on the freeway
and the freeway is literally stopped,
for our march.
That was the first time I realized
the power of our community,
what we can do.
You have to organize.
You can't let people take advantage of you.
We're at a time now
where we all know the power
that we possess.
It's the ability to exert that power
that we all need to do.
How does one person
affect and change the community?
You have to start with yourself.
You have to know who you are.
You have to know where you come from.
You have to know where you wanna go
and then you need to set those goals.
You're gonna be told no, no, no, no, no.
But if you really want it,
you're going to turn those no's into yes'.
The Low Rider community is like every other community,
in that it's a Brotherhood.
Or a Sisterhood.
You get a group of friends,
who if something goes wrong
you can count on them.
That's what the Low Riding community is about.
We help each other.
Not because we want something back.
It's just because that's the Brotherhood.
That's the nature of our game.
What do I love most about my car?
Is being lifted.
I've never forgot the feeling
of being locked up and the jitteriness
as you're locked up all the way.
Then you see another car coming
and boom you hit a switch.
And boom you hit another switch.
Now it's on. Game on.
There may be a lot of things that you like about it,
but for me the best thing is
the ability to hit switches whenever I want.
I have a beautiful Mercedes.
And when I'm in that Mercedes,
man I wish I was in my '64 locked up.
I've never in my '64 saying
I wish I was in my Mercedes.
That's the difference of the
love and the passion that you have for a car.
The one thing that I tell to everyone that I speak to,
Se puede. Si se puede.
You have to believe in yourself.
It sounds corny to say that.
Do you believe in yourself?
But you have to.
Because you're gonna be told no.
You're gonna have failures.
That's part of life.
But you learn from it.
You grow from it.
You move on.
You progress.
You believe and you will achieve.
My name is Tomas Requejo.
I'm a trial attorney
and I'm a Low Rider role model.