Alma Nevarez

custodian, interviewed 2019

Alma Nevarez has worked at Elgin Community College since 2007 and is currently a Custodian Lead.

She describes her first job after high school at City Hall in her hometown in the Mexican state of Durango. Her family, though, was poor and Nevarez eventually decided to migrate to the United States in the early 1980s for higher wages.

Nevarez describes living in Franklin Park and working at a brush factory in the early 1980s. There were few Mexicans living in the area. Nevarez studied English and eventually earned enough to rent her own apartment. She also describes how she fell in love with her future husband at a dance in Mexico. In 1987, the couple married and settled in Elgin.

Nevarez describes the positives and negatives of doing custodial work at Elgin Community College. She explains that she has always taught her own children to treat everyone with respect regardless of their social status or job.