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Founder/Head Chef of Sunny Street Outreach, Mama, Wife, & activist
Sunny is a 35 Year old American Indian from Oceanside, CA; which is the land of her people the Luiseno Band of California Mission Indians. Growing up in an underserved neighborhood to a single mother, Sunny understood at a young age that opportunities don't always come knocking, some folks have to make their own opprtunities. At the age of 17 Sunny caught her first felony and later at 24 caught one more, she quickly realized that the way she was moving isn't going to end up with a happy story. Falling back on her love for cooking she was able to get hired in a restaurant kitchen, the last place for misfits in this world. Keeping a steady job that kept her passion alive helped her stay out of trouble and create stability in her life. In 2016 her family lost the house her grandfather built in the neighborhood she grew up in and her mother, uncle, and cousin found themselves homeless after 50 plus years in that neighborhoood. Everything changed at that moment, and while Sunny was living in the city at the time, she decided to start feeding the houseless community. It became a way to cope and give a helping hand using the skills she had gathered, while unable to control a situation that the family was in. In 2020, the day the covid shut down happened, she moved back to her hometown of Oceanside, and while sitting in the empty living room of her new place, she was let go from her restaurant job. She decided to focus on her nutual aid efforts and started serving meals to the houseless in her city, after 4 years, shes served over 35,000 free meals, and is now building out a mobile kitchen to feed people everyday. This concept is a 14 ft trailer that will be a revenue generating project for her non profit Sunny Street Outreach. a one-for-one business model that will allow the community to help fund the essential meal services instead of being funded by grants or government funds that are never gaurenteed. For the community, by the community because, if we ain't got us, who got us? This concept will also have a job training program so that we can train of our guests to work in the kitchen an essential full circle moment since again the kitchen is one place where the misfits are welcome and can restart their life.
