by Chelsea Reimche
Last Saturday, Republic FC, in partnership with the Sacramento LGBT Community Center, celebrated its annual Pride Night at Heart Health Park. The night’s festivities included a special halftime recognition to honor this year’s Community Pride Scholarship recipient, Mayela Parra.
Mayela is a current senior at Mesa Verde High School and identifies as a first-generation, bisexual immigrant student. She looks forward to attending UC Santa Barbara in the fall, where she will be studying Molecellular Biology, and continuing to pursue her goal of serving in the medical field and advocating for change. “My goal is to become a cardiologist, but not someone who just stops at treating patients but rather makes them feel safe, seen, and respected,” she says.
Her drive to pursue a career in the medical field is rooted in her experiences both as a queer student and as the child of an immigrant mother. “Many times in school, I hid who I was to feel safe, and I don’t want any teens to feel like that ever again…I want to become a doctor who sees every patient fully, without bias or assumptions.” Growing up, Mayela often had to advocate for her mother during medical appointments as a young teenager, stepping into the role of translator, “I always felt pressured to get it right because there was no one else to advocate for us.”
“I want to open bilingual clinics, offer affordable heart screenings, and create Spanish-speaking health programs,” she says of her long-term goals. “I want to be the doctor my mom never had, someone who listens, advocates, and actually understands where her patients are coming from.”
