Classmate Profile

  Hailing from Stockton, California, Kate Le learned to take pride in where she was from, not only because of the town’s location, but because of the lessons and values that were instilled in her growing up in the San Joaquin Valley area.

    Her identity was forged through a practical, close-knit family that looked out for each other and ended up living the American dream; moving from a poorer neighborhood during grade school to a gated community by the time Kate was in middle school. 

“I love my community and I’m very prideful of where I’m from. A lot of times when I say I’m from Stockton, people react like ‘you’re from Stockton? One of the most dangerous cities in America?’ Every city has their good and bad, I grew up on both sides of that, so I know what that’s actually like,” said Kate as she reminisced on her roots.

A blue-collar town like Stockton often comes with some unsavory characters, but Kate’s mother and family helped protect her from falling in with the wrong crowd.

“The way I grew up, I was around a lot. My mom really tried to shield me from some aspects of where I was from. I’d be around gangbangers and stuff like that, but my mom always made it clear to me that I was not apart of this world, that maybe these people have my back, but I was different from them,” she said.

This helped Kate develop a strong sense of personal character, and gain the admiration of her cousins, including one I got to interview, Cece Nguyen. 

“Our family can be pretty harsh. Although they are immigrants, they don’t really understand the struggles that we go through as teenagers or as young adults,” she told me. “But Kate was always the one who would speak out against anything that really bothered her… let’s just say she has supported me through a lot of [crappy] boyfriends,” added Nguyen.

Kate faced new challenges in the many transitions that she had to go through in her life as well. “Going from different sides of the community, I had to know how to act around different people. I got really good at just reading a room and then changing my behavior to match that.”

During our interview, we talked about “code-switching” and the art of matching behavior to one’s environment.

But no matter what, those that know Kate will always be able to see her for who she is.

Cece told me about their bond together, saying “Kate has such a character and I have been so honored to watch her grow up. But if she asks what I said, tell her I hated her.”