Profile Of Hilda Solis Highlights Her Labor Roots

The Washington Post profiled Labor Secretary Hilda Solis this week. In the interview Solis shared some memories about her childhood near LA which seem to point to the fact that, ever since she was a child, she was being prepared for the work she is currently going. Here’s an excerpt:

When Hilda Solis was 10 years old, her mother worked in a factory that made Barbie dolls, and she would bring them home. “I love dolls,” Solis said. “When I was a kid I had, like, every Barbie doll.”

But her mother’s job had a down side, too: It meant Hilda had to help care for her infant twin sisters. “We had to cook, clean. You wouldn’t believe, back then we had to wash diapers. Rows and rows of diapers,” she said of the work that she and her older sister did. “I had to grow up fast.”

Solis hasn’t stopped working. She got her first paying job at age 14, in a youth center, and worked through high school, becoming the first member of her family to go to college.

The rest of the interview also notes that, as the third of seven children, Solis had to learn to fend for herself. That her father worked in a battery recycling plant, where he was a labor leader, helping his co-workers receive better pay. And that a high school teacher encouraging her to go to college made all the difference for her. For more read the interview here.