When my mom took me and my sister into the kitchen of our San Miguel home, I thought we were just getting a lesson in cooking. I was about 9 or 10 years old and these cooking sessions started taking place nightly. Once we learned all her recipes, she turned to us and said, “OK, you’re cooking for the family now.” We were both surprised — we assumed this was just a simple cooking lesson. From then on, I did the cooking and my sister did the baking. Little did I know that decades later, that experience would help me cook for the president of the United States.

I was born in Oakland but we moved to San Miguel when I was in first grade and I completed my schooling in Paso Robles. After I graduated, I began working in electronics and did that for 15 years. But when I moved to Atlanta, I couldn’t find any work in that field. I needed a job to support my youngest son, so I changed directions back to something I already knew how to do well: cooking. I got a job at Morehouse College as a chef.

Morehouse is a historically Black college for male students and I had a lot of mouths to feed — breakfast and lunch for 3,000 boys each day. The menu changed daily, but Fridays were always soul food: chicken, corn bread, black-eyed peas. I had two children at home but here, it felt as though I had 3,000 more kids. They all called me “mom.”

One day after I’d been working at the university for a few years, the head chef came to me and invited me to cook for a fundraiser hosted by the actor and producer Tyler Perry. He wanted three chefs — one from each of the universities — to cook for the event and I was honored because there were other chefs who had been there way longer than me. As we were driven in a limo over to Tyler Perry’s mansion, I remember looking out the windows of the vehicle thinking, “I know this street, I know that mall — don’t tell me I live next to Tyler Perry!” And I did, just two blocks away and I never knew it. 

He had the place set up like a town with a donut shop, a post office, a fire station … We each picked a location where we’d serve the food. I saw Barack Obama — a presidential candidate at the time — over in the courtroom area. He came by and shook our hands and then spoke on stage. It meant a lot to me that I got to serve our future president and be part of such a special event.

Later that year at graduation, I got to meet musician Stevie Wonder. His son was a graduating student at Morehouse. We served brunch and I didn’t even recognize Stevie until he came up and got an omelet from me. The head chef later came over and said, “Stevie wants to meet you; he said he hasn’t tasted an omelet like that since his mom made it as a child.” They had to drag me over because I was so nervous. Stevie said he wanted to take a picture with me. He put his arm around me and I about melted, screaming in my head: “Stevie Wonder is touching me!” He told me it was a wonderful omelet that I made and I almost fainted on the spot. 

I was at the peak of my career when my oldest son asked me to come back to California to help raise my grandson. He was a single dad and needed some support. I decided to come back and figured I’d only be there a short while. But one year turned to two, turned to three. I never went back. I did return to cooking, first at the Chumash Casino and later I cooked at a senior living facility in Lompoc. I love to cook and love the joy and happiness I see on people’s faces when I feed them — it always makes me think of my mom.

These days, I live in Bakersfield but come back to Paso Robles to visit family and host pop-ups. The last one I did, I saw a lot of old classmates. I recently cooked for a family reunion at the park in Paso Robles and I’ve done a couple other events, like a pop-up at an apartment complex welcome event. I’m cooking food from around the world — tacos, dumplings, you name it. I put my own twist on things — I don’t do recipes, I don’t measure. How do I know? I do it by taste, by look, by feel. 

It feels good to come back and serve friends and family. They tell me, “Thank you” and I say, “You’re thanking my mom!”