hello and welcome. i'm damien trujillo. we celebrate the life of my good friend a year after his passing. help in the foreclosure crisis. there's help in the city of san jose. my friend charlie trujillo is in our studios. this is your "comunidad valle." >> we're coming to you from our new home here in san jose. this is the new home of commune date del valle.

my first guest on the show is with latinas con cancer. a brand new campaign under way called healthy eating, healthy living, healthy environment. you're doing a lot of great things at latina con cancer. tell us about the show. tell us about the campaign you've started for 2011. >> thank you. we're doing this with our mother's day campaign, may 7th. through january, february, march, april, may, we're going to do a healthy environment campaign, healthy eating, healthy living. we just last thursday did our colorectal cancer screening campaign. we did a program about why people don't get screened. after that the healthy eating campaign. we have cooking classes where people can go to learn how to cook. we also get to taste. it's actually very, very good. we had so much fun last time. february 17, the second part of the campaign is going to be

nutrition. we're going to have a little chat about nutrition. after that we have the cooking demonstration class. we'll get to it and do all this stuff. the next time the zumba for exercise. then we also get the cooking class, eat it and taste it. then we have the healthy environment. we want to know what's affecting us, how we can have our homes safer. and after that, also mother's day, we're going to have the big clog cancer. we're going to show a healthy colon, what's a nonhealthy colon. we really want latinos to be aware that we need to detect cancer early. and unfortunately, 68% of the latinos do not go to screening on time, so we're dying. just from late detection. >> so there are some preventative measures that we can take to kind of either slow the progression of cancer or maybe even keep it from ever appearing. >> yeah, correct. and remember, men and women, we have to do our colonoscopy or cancer testing.

and when we're 50 years old, that's the first time that we start to do the colon testing. however, if it runs in the family, there's a history, then they could start earlier. we really want people, guys, forget the machismo, we have to do the colon. for women, we have to do it. we do have to do it and we don't want to die because we didn't get screened on time. that's why healthy eating, healthy environment, healthy nutrition comes in. we really want people to be up there. we want to be happy. latinos, we're happy, correct? we need to be good and live well. >> we've seen the progression of latinas contra cancer over the years and you've done a great job taking it to this level. how do you see that progression? because it started with her and her vision and her illness at the initial stages. but now it's a whole educational campaign. it's kind of come full circle

now? >> latinas contra cancer started in 2004. now we're getting older. and bigger. it's such a wonderful job, we're part of her staff. what we're doing since 2004, right now we do education, navigation, and patient navigation support for support services. we offer support groups. we're also part of ucsf, san francisco state, where we help with research. we have people enrolling in clinical trials. we do education for the community. we're also with the national latino cancer summit. it happened last year, it's going to be again in 2012. and we're just out there, we really want latinos to make sure to be conscious, that we really be being affected by cancer. and the majority is because of late detection. some people do not have insurance, don't have access. so we also want to tell people,

we need to be out there. and if we don't have enough access, at least we try on our part to eat healthy, to do exercise, to be aware of our environment. that's why our big campaign is at this point, and it's up on mother's day walk on may 7th. it's going to be on saturday. it's going to be on the big part of the marina. it's going to be great. we're going to have a farmers market, we're going to have colon cancer information. this is huge. so it's going to be wonderful. we really want people to register. they can go to our website. latinascontracancer.org. >> we have it there on the screen. also the 888 number you can call also for more information. again, we should not wait until we see the symptoms that are there of can. there is early detection that can take place. that's what latinascontracancer has been so good at promoting throughout the bay area. thank you so much for the work

you're doing and good luck with your efforts. >> thank you. make sure to screen yourself. >> that's right, early detection. up next on "comunidad," help during the foreclosure crisis. the housing department is here to help. shift your weight forward onto the left foot. take the right leg up, holding the inner arch of the foot... introducing instant action alerts, only from chase. left arm up... manage your account and help avoid overdrafts with a click of a button. just reply to the alert with how much you want to transfer. inhale, all the way up...

so you always stay in balance. ...to crescent pose. chase what matters. just four more times. ♪ there is hope out there during this terrible foreclosure crisis. brand iowa hoffman and james stayedy are with the city of san jose housing department. they're program managers. brandon's here to talk about a new home ownership program that the city is offering. james is talking about the home repair, another program they're offering, the city of san jose. welcome to the show. >> thank you. >> tell us first of all about this home ownership program. is it althoughing more people to become homeowners during this crisis? >> we have found that during the foreclosure crisis, home ownership -- more people have been able to become home buyers because prices have fallen. and that is really a benefit for the home buyers. because for the first time many

people are able to enter into this market that couldn't have been able to buy a house five or six years ago. >> what your program is offering is home ownership, as you mentioned. but that again, when that home is sitting vacant, nobody's paying property taxes, nobody's paying anything that will help this economy rebound. >> correct. >> this is a by to get it jump started. >> correct. for instance, in our neighborhood stabilization program, we do buy, repair, and resell homes. these homes were foreclosed or abandoned. and this is a way to get the homes reoccupied and help stabilize the neighborhood when a family can move in and live in the home, and you know, invest in the community, purchase goods for the home. and really bring that neighborhood together. >> revitalization is what it's all about. talk about the home repair program that the city offers. >> sure. you know, as you're mentioning,

the economic situation that a lot of us are in, a lot of us can't afford to fix our homes. a lot of folks in the bay area have lost their jobs. so fortunately, we do have programs that can help people with things like repairing their roofs or their plumbing or heating or things of that nature. so our programs, we have loan and grant programs that range anywhere from $5,000 all the way up to $150,000 loans. so that they can really, you know, make sure that they make the kind of repairs that are going to last. we also have staff that can help them through that process. to select contractors, to make sure that the work is done correctly. and, you know, we have a variety of different funding sources. at least until the end of this fiscal year, which is june 30 is, we know that we have funding to be able to help people out there. after that, we're just going to have to wait and see. >> and these are loans that you can't get out in the open market or the interest rates are too

high? >> that's a good point. these loans are specifically for lower-income households. so, for example, household earning $54,000, i think it is, for a family of four. >> sure. a household of four, around $80,000 or less. >> right. we use the same income guidelines. so it's an income-driven program. and typically, the interest rates that we have are 0% interest. you know, you can't get that at bank of america. >> right. >> right? in addition to that, a lot of our loans are deferred. a lot of times we don't require monthly payments on our loans. so really, the whole goal of our programs is to really, you know, assist, you know, existing homeowners to stay in their home and make sure they're living in safe and healthy homes. >> nowadays when you're making that kind of money you really can't qualify for a loan, let alone the low interest rates.

>> you can't. >> you need to put some up front -- >> you need 20% down or 25% down in some condos. and that's where the city's down payment assistance programs can really help. we have funds to help people buy in the downtown condos through our begin program. we have a general first-time home buyer program for lower income households where they can purchase a new or existing home anywhere in the city of san jose. that's a good thing, it's been popular. >> also how successful has this program been in getting homes revitalized, getting homes back on the market? what has the city done to improve the housing market, if you will? >> well, i think as brandy talked about, you know, the big goal is to really improve the neighborhoods and revitalize and make sure that we don't see the kind of decline, the foreclosure and declining housing stock can bring to a city.

i think we've been pretty successful with that. you know, we manage to help about 300 households a year with our housing repair programs. through our neighborhood stabilization program, which was the one we talked about where we actually buy and resell those homes. we're able to, you know -- we're looking at about 65 to 70 homes that we're going to take off of the vacancy roll and put families in those homes and make sure they really become part of that neighborhood. >> well, the information should be coming up on your screen. this is the home buyer and rehab program that the city of san jose housing department offers. you have until june. we don't know if there will be any money left after that so take advantage, kind out if you qualify, there's people to walk you through this entire process. final thoughts you might have? >> again, we just -- the city of san jose's programs really aren't available in the private market because of equity requirements, because of the incomes that you need. the city does offer very

low-interest loan programs to people that in general wouldn't otherwise qualify for any kind of assistance from a bank. >> all right. thank you so much. the revitalization efforts in our community. >> thank you for having us. >> up next on "comunidad," my good friend charlie trujillo, no relation. [ mom ] can a little bowl of cereal change your life?

i think it can. one of the challenges for kayla being gluten-free is actually finding choices the whole family will love. then we discovered chex cereals. five flavors of chex are gluten-free, including the honey nut flavor, and that's amazing to a mom like me. as a parent you don't want to have to tell your kids "no" all the time. it's nice for me to be able to say "yes" to something that they want to eat.

[ male announcer ] chex cereal. five flavors. gluten free. back on "comunidad del valle" with my good friend charlie trujillo. no relation but we had this conversation awhile back about how you're from the chulo side of the trujillo family. >> right, right. >> charlie, of course, as everybody knows, vietnam veteran. started his own publishing house. but we do have video of one of your documentaries. you talked to a bunch of people from vietnam about how you were trained to kill. turned the button on for you to

go to vietnam, when you got back there was no button to turn off. some veterans kept the button on. >> yes, yes. we had a very high mortality rate. high rates of suicide and drug abuse. even at our age. actually, it's pretty bad. for the younger veterans too. the ones coming back from iraq and afghanistan. >> everybody is so proud you started the venture, wrote the book, start my own publishing company, tell us how that's come for you. >> i've been in choose my house for 20 years. as you teach college -- i quit that. because no one would publish my first book. so i began my own publication house. and i started with my books. and then i started publishing other people. so right now i'm restructuring and reorganizing my company. so i decided this would be a good time to begin an effort for promoting literally in our

communities. so what i'm doing right now is i am going to donate books to nonprofit community organizations and to educational institutions. and if they contact me i will tell them the particulars of which books i will be giving away on my website. the books are on my website. some of them. not all of them will i be giving them away but many of them. i will tell them which ones they are and what ages they are appropriate for, what type of language that they have. >> that's important. >> yes. especially for the k-12. bu i have a lot of poetry. i have poetry by, for example -- the late alfred diaga from uc berkeley. jose san antonio brucialga, and in that back there's one side of the poetry in english, the other side in spanish. tony velasquez, a professor at cal poly. and one side of the poems are

spanish, the other side are english. there's no profanity in these books. in these particular books i'm mentioning. it's ideal for teaching. >> so if there's a teacher out there and she says, i have a class of 30 kids, i'd love to add this to my click lurriculum that do be? >> k-12 there are restrictions what they can use for curriculum. from what i understand they can use them in the classroom, but just for classroom usage. i'm not sure about that but i know there are some restrictions. but i have given them to high school teachers. and they keep them in the classrooms. and i have books by jose montoya. i have book by sanchez, a professor at fresno state. i have books by alejandro morales, uc irvine. >> what is it about the literacy rate, if you will, that you saw

out there in the comunidad that made you say, there's a problem with literacy in our community. i have the ways, the means to do something and i'm going to do it. what is it that made you say, this is the new direction that i should take? >> yes, yes. well, i've gotten a lot of support from our community. so i thought this would be a good way to give back to our community. especially locally. and to have people read about themselves and their own experiences, because a lot of the literature -- there's a lot of fine literature out there, of course. however, there are -- there is a scarcity of literature from the chican chicano-mexicanos, so from that perspective. we all live in the same society. i also have poetry from samantha lai, she's vietnamese, it's very good poetry. it's in english.

>> this is under way now? >> it's not really a venture, it's just a service that i'm providing. yes. when they look on choosemyhouse.com, get my e-mail, choosemyhouse@earthlink.get. i'll give them the particulars. they can pick them up. i have them in storage there. close to san jose state. or they can send $20, $30 for the shipping and i'll send them whatever books they want. >> what kind of a response have you gotten? >> this is the first time you're seeing it right here. >> you're breaking news here on "comunidad del valle"? >> yes. >> i'm proud of you, thank you, thank you. what does it take? is it courage to be able to do this, or is it the mentality to say, i'm going to make a difference out there? >> we all have, just like you do, which we have this program. we all have our niches. we all work together, you know, for positive, shall we say,

results in our communities and our societies. i think that we can make a difference in many ways. >> you know, in all honesty, charlie, i've known you for a lot of years. people come up to me a lot and say, guess who i met, i met charlie trujillo. you're an icon whether you like to admit it or not. you make a difference to a lot of people. the books that you've written and everything that you've represented has allowed them to open up and to accept the fact that they're vietnam veterans, they had a horrible past, they went through a horrible war. you allowed them to open up. so that's out there. >> yes, i go all over the country. i go nationwide. i've even -- talking to world war ii veterans, korean veterans approached me and told me they're going to counseling after all these years. they found out through some of my work that they do have certain, shall we say, residual

problems, psychological problems, from that era, from the war. >> he's from the chulo side of the trujillo family. logon to the website, send him an e-mail. he wants to give you books to teach your students, your kids out there, let them learn poetry and learn more about veterans and whatnot. he'll tell you what books will be offered. thanks so much for coming in and the work that you're doing. up next on "comunidad," memorializing rudy madrid.

here's what's happening in your commune dade. commune dad.

>> celebrating a special day, here our address. pick up a copy of our newspaper and support your bilingual weeklies. thanks for joining us. we leave you with a tribute to rudy madrid, rudy and the cruisers. ♪

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

♪ >> here's old brown eyes with a little bit of old blue eyes. rudy madrid and the cruisers. ♪

♪ ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ >> that's beautiful. you could be the chairman of every board.

shift your weight forward onto the left foot. take the right leg up, holding the inner arch of the foot... introducing instant action alerts, only from chase. left arm up... manage your account and help avoid overdrafts with a click of a button. just reply to the alert with how much you want to transfer. inhale, all the way up... so you always stay in balance. ...to crescent pose. chase what matters. just four more times. ♪