The Drug Dealer At The Corner Bakery

What my father's unlikely friendships teach us about solving impossible problems

Once a week my Southern Baptist, Democrat, boomer, five-foot-three, Mexican-American dad (yes, that profile exists) meets a group of mostly tall, white, conservative men for breakfast at a Corner Bakery in central Texas. These distinguished men—his co-workers and closest friends of three decades—swap stories about grandkids, work and, more commonly these days, their health or lack thereof.

One Friday morning, he noticed their regular server looked off, “No te sientes bien, eh?” After some back and forth, he learned she was sick and uninsured. “Espere aquí,” he motioned and hurried out towards his car, fumbling around in the trunk, before coming back into the restaurant and handing her a small, white box as the executives, preachers and deacons looked on with curiosity.

“Uhm…what did you just give her,” one asked. “Antibiotics," my papi responded.

“You just happen to have antibiotics in your trunk?”

“I brought back medications from Mexico—they’re cheaper there." The group shifted uncomfortably.

“So you keep Mexican medications in your car and offer them to people without a prescription?” asked Ross, whose wife is a clinical professor at Baylor Medical School.

My father met his gaze, eyes twinkling, “I mean, I guess that makes me a drug dealer, huh?”

The wary roar and sideways glances that followed, proved that even after 30 years of friendship, you can still surprise people.

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As an adult, I’ve struggled to understand my parents' choice of friends. From the outside, my politically incorrect father who met my adventurous mother while hitchhiking in Mexico, who jointly raised three girls in 7 cities and 2 countries over 18 years doesn’t quite align with the coiffed, gift-bearing dinner guest, born-and-raised-types that they seem to associate with.

I’m also, frankly, confused about why these guys want to hang out with my dad outside of work.

“Mija,” my father explained, when I asked, “I expose them to a way of life and people they wouldn’t otherwise know. In our work, that matters.”

Ah, yes, the work they do…

My father works for a religious organization that unites 5,000 churches and two million members across socioeconomic and geographic lines distributing resources to communities in need. And contrary to most headlines these days, there remain some (few?) church-going folks that do actually care about meeting human needs above political ideology.

Consider their work with formerly incarcerated individuals. Texas locks up more people per capita than any democratic nation¹. Families of those individuals, of all races, come to the church for help when their loved ones are released. My papi works alongside his colleagues to secure funding and create resources—housing, employment, mental health support—that churches can offer these families.

Their reach extends globally. From winterizing Syrian refugee camps, to building greenhouses in Oaxaca, to helping feed and clothe immigrants on the border between Guatemala and Mexico and yes, Texas, my father has spent an entire career alongside these men creating bridges to people and places.

While he and my mother don’t always align with their friends’ views, they share some core values. Namely that solving hard problems requires both conviction and a willingness to embrace differences. That's what my father does—tackles messy human challenges alongside people unlike himself.

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I’ve been thinking about my father and his work lately. And it’s not just for the obvious reasons splashed across our siloed media surfaces. It’s also because I've been struck by how little I understand those around me. Even after years of friendship or collaboration, people continue to reveal their complexities.

It’s in these moments, when frustration threatens to overwhelm me, that I think of my papi’s example—how he has thrived while being markedly different from his peers. I've come to admire this quality in his approach to life: the recognition that solutions emerge more readily when people with different perspectives gather at the table. Plus, as he reminds me with that characteristic twinkle, it's more fun.

I don’t know about you, but the prospect of finding joy while tackling seemingly insurmountable challenges? That's the kind of inspiration I need right now.

3 Things That Caught My Attention This Week

🎧 “The Opposite of Doom is Curiosity” — this episode of the Ezra Klein podcast was the provocation for today’s essay. In particular his assertion that it’s become harder to conceptualize that it is possible to do good things in today’s attentional economy.

📚 When You Care: The Unexpected Magic of Caring For Others — I’m only halfway through this book, but I already love it, “Our narratives about care have been so one-dimensional, so lacking in curiosity that we fail to see what is possible.”

▶️ LOL It me — as a new mom of two…

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With gratitude to

Emma Dorge

and

Claire Butler

for the edits this week — it’s hard coming back from a 5-month hiatus after birthing my second daughter, but these ladies helped make it happen.

1. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/profiles/TX.html#:~:text=With%20an%20incarceration%20rate%20of,independent%20democratic%20country%20on%20earth.