My mother, Alicia Trejo-Mijares, has been one of the best and most influential people in my life. She's been a lifelong teacher and has gone above and beyond for many in her time here on Earth.

     She began her career at Assumption School in East L.A. in 1987 as an intern teacher for 6th grade until 1988 when she left to teach 3rd grade at St. Dominic for about 5-6 years. She then went on to marry my father, Raul Mijares Jr. at St. Dominic church in 1989. After teaching at St. Dominic, she went on to teach at Sacred Heart High School for about 13-15 years where she taught history, geography and even won an award for national history teacher of the year. While at Sacred Heart, she also served as assistant Dean and loved working with her students at this school. She always made sure her students were doing well, and would go out of her way to help guide them through whatever personal issues they were having at the time as well. Later, my mom would then go on to teach at Bishop Mora Salesian High School for about 5 years and served as Assistant Principal of Academics.

     My mom's final teaching position was at Immaculate Heart of Mary here in L.A. She worked as a TK teacher for about 5 years and loved every minute of it. She would always mention to me how she enjoyed teaching the children there and would often help the parents of her students in any way she could while working there. Unfortunately in 2020, my mom ended up losing her position at the school due to being laid off because of the covid-19 pandemic. This however, did not deter her from her calling, as she went on to become a private tutor for several children afterwards and helped them to accel in their academics to the best of her abilities.

     In total, my mother has been a teacher for approximately 34 years, and has been extremely passionate about it from the day she started. Her personal motto has been "I've never worked a day in my life", and I feel that is true after having put her entire career into perspective and remembering how she would speak about her work to me and my father when I was younger.

     I come to you today to tell you that on August 2nd, 2021, after dealing with bouts of severe back and abdominal pain for over a month, she was diagnosed with stage 4 liver and pancreatic cancer. The doctors have said that it is a very aggressive cancer, and that she may only have months left with us. Despite this news, my mother remains in good spirits and is keeping a positive attitude, however I am organizing this GoFundMe in hopes that we can raise whatever money we can to help cover any medical expenses, end of life treatment and eventual funeral expenses that we will incur along the way. My father is also medically disabled and currently I cannot work full time as I don't want to be away very long from both of my parents during this time period. I understand times have been very tough for a lot of people these past 2 years, so please, the only thing that I ask is that if you do choose to donate, only give what you can. I very much appreciate any and all donations, and from the bottom of my heart,

Thank you.