Creating space for healing: Sabrina Valadez-Rios

December 5, 2024

Portrait of Sabrina Valadez-RíosSabrina Valadez-Rios is a community educator, violence prevention advocate, lifelong learner—and now an undergraduate student at UC Berkeley Social Welfare. Read about her path to Berkeley Social Welfare.

A family focus on education

My first connection to Berkeley was my dad. My parents had me when they were young, so my dad couldn’t attend UC Berkeley full-time. But he was always a scholar. He later enrolled at Berkeley City College. When I was in 4th or 5th grade, he’d sit me down to do college-level algebra with him.

Eventually, my dad turned to selling drugs. When he was trying to leave the fast life, he was killed. Two months after he passed, my mom—who had remarried—gave birth to my sibling. My mom almost died in childbirth. She was soon diagnosed with Bell’s Palsy.

I had to step up. I started working when I was 13—two to three jobs, seven days a week. When I was 19, I was working two optometry jobs. A patient recruited me for a full-time job at LifeLong Medical Care, a community health clinic. 

Suddenly I had free time, and I wanted to go back to school. I didn’t have anyone in my immediate family who went to college. I drove to Laney College to ask questions, but I just sat in my car, afraid to get out. 

Then I remembered that if my dad could do it, I could. I knew my life was bigger than the little jobs I had. My hard work led to me meeting people…and I found the community work that fuels me.

Connecting with community 

At LifeLong, Sabrina “fell in love with community work.” She became a Heart-to-Heart Program Coordinator, providing free blood pressure screenings and resource navigation. In 2019, while Sabrina was managing blood pressure screenings at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market, she met Dr. Bernadette Lim. Dr. Lim described her vision for Freedom Community Clinic, which would serve Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities with a “whole person” approach to healing. The clinic would combine the strengths of both western medicine and ancestral modalities. Sabrina began volunteering at the clinic, deepening her community engagement.

Sabrina Valadez-Rios and a community memberAt Freedom Community Clinic, I founded Heal the Hood, a series of events that combined medical attention, health education, resource navigation, plus free clothing, a library, and a multitude of healing modalities.

I recently completed my first year as full-time staff member, as Director of School-based Healing. Following a school shooting, I organized a two-day clinic as an intervention. But I quickly realized that two days wasn’t enough; we needed more time to equip kids to live with the violence in Oakland and not choose routes that lead to more violence. I obtained a grant from the Oakland Violence Prevention Department to teach a class at the school. Now, we’re there year-round with bilingual staff. 

If I had access to this course when I lost my dad to gun violence, I would have made so many different choices. It always goes back to what I needed as a kid. That’s what keeps me going.

Joining Berkeley Social Welfare

The Freedom Community Clinic provided me with another connection to UC Berkeley. Daniela Medina invited us to partner with Underground Scholars [a program that creates a pathway for incarcerated, formerly incarcerated and system-impacted individuals into higher education]. Daniela earned her MSW at Berkeley, and she encouraged me to cross-enroll in courses at Berkeley, so I took Sociology, Ethnic Studies, and Chicano Media Studies here. In Spanish, there’s a phrase: "Me puse las pilas" (“I put the batteries in”); I focused in and zoned in. 

I’m learning that I want to be here. I want to do my Master’s here. I’m not on campus much—I attend class and leave for work—but I already have a community here, and I’m grateful for it. For a lot of students with my background, imposter syndrome can take over. But I feel grateful that I obtained a career first. 

Dr. Berrick’s class, Social Work as a Profession, reminds me every day that I can do this. Being in school reminds me of my younger self, that little overachiever who was always getting straight A’s. 

I’m bringing in resources and connections to Berkeley students who may not have had the chance to access them before. A lot of the Underground Scholars have never done breathwork, never had a massage. I’m thinking about how to expand Freedom Clinic’s resources to respond to their needs.

What’s ahead

Looking back at my community work prior to coming to Berkeley, I realized I’d been doing social work already. Social work is not only helping out an individual, but a community. Social work can look like so many different things, but it always comes back to the community. Even in micro-level social work, like one-on-one therapy, there’s so much to consider beyond the individual—who does your client live with? Are those support systems strong? 

I’ve learned so much from different populations: Domestic violence survivors, unhoused folks, youth. The systems that affect our communities are all intertwined; I want to work on the systems that affect youth to maximize my impact. I’d love to become a LCSW and look at schools, specifically Oakland schools, from that macro level. I believe that Social Emotional Learning should be just as important as math and English. 

When we think about violence and healing, we need to think beyond the school setting: What goes on in the streets, at home? We need to be intentional about those connections when we talk about trauma and helping kids build a toolbox to navigate their lives.