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2009 Mom on a Mission: Shelby Rodriguez
This year, Healthy Child received 128 submissions from across the country in response to our 2009 Mom on a Mission search. We received many compelling stories about dynamic women working to make their communities healthier and safer for their children. But when we received this submission from John Rodriguez about his wife, Shelby, we knew we'd found our winner. Take a look at John's letter, and we think you'll see what we're talking about:
“Hello, I want to nominate my wife, Shelby Rodriguez, for the Healthy Child Healthy World Mom on a Mission Award. For the last year she has been fighting for clean air in our community and was successful in stopping a corporation from using a harmful, toxic, fume producing hot tar roof application on the 100 roofs still needing work in our neighborhood. After we moved into our new rental home she started to develop symptoms like a scratchy throat, sores in her nose, a cough, and asthma symptoms. After some investigation into the constant roofing tar fumes that seemed unsafe to her she found out that all 534 homes in this rental community had either been tarred or were set to be tarred during a three year project. Immediately, she became worried about the safety of our, then, three year old daughter and, despite all the obstacles in her way, became the community organizer to stop the tar roofing here at the Arbors in Antelope, California.
What she did was to contact grassroots organizations and get advice about how to organize the community. She also started filing complaints with the local Air Quality District. She created a flyer and walked our community's 150 acres to talk to our neighbors and inform them about the situation. She found out that there were other people who lived here who had the same symptoms or symptoms from her research, which made her realize that the health of the whole community, especially the children’s, were in jeopardy.
She found that she needed to get people to call in their complaints to Air Quality too, which was difficult because residents were afraid to speak up. Within a few weeks the owners decided to move their smoldering tar kettles away from the bedroom windows at night and stopped work at 3:00 pm. Finally, the corporation decided to stop the project and for the winter we had fresh air for the first time in months, but they were determined to start back up in the spring of 2009.
Meanwhile, she received a call back from the US EPA’s TASC manager who decided to approve a report and community presentation to the community for later in the year. As the TASC manager said, it would help bring validity to her claims that asphalt roofing tar is unsafe for the community. She found a place for the venue, worked with the TASC researchers and writers on the drafts for the report, made contacts with local government, the American Lung Association, the Sierra Club and created a petition receiving over 150 signatures.
Just a few weeks before the presentation funded by the US EPA, the manager of our complex found out who was behind the flyers and complaints she was receiving about the roofing by other residents and sent my wife a scathing letter which threatened her with criminal and civil charges for breaking the community rules and handing out flyers on private property. She told us to start looking for another place to live. That week, an article was published in the Sacramento News & Review as their head lead news story about my wife and her fight to protect the community and our family.
After that, and only one week before the presentation we received a “cease and desist” letter that was meant to keep my wife from advertising for the TASC presentation. Despite all of these baseless threats she kept her composure and organized enough volunteers to have a flyer placed on all 534 homes in our complex as well as many of the surrounding homes that were also affected by these toxic fumes. She was also successful in getting two out of three of the local news stations to cover the meeting and stood up to tell her story and ask those in charge of the roofing to change to a safer and “greener” alternative roofing method for flat roofs called TPO “cool” roofs.
Since that time, the owners have decided to exclude asphalt roofing tar from the possible choices when they finish the project. My wife now volunteers at the American Lung Association, spoke at the Healthy Air Walk and raised nearly $700 for clean air, all the while going to school to finish her Master’s degree and still being a great mom. She is now working to restrict the use of hot tar roofing in residential areas and on or near schools in California for good. Thanks for considering her for this award. She deserves it!!!”
Shelby's story was covered in the November 9th Issue of People Magazine.
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