Published by Asian Journal
“[Ollie] Cantos, like the [blind] brothers [Leo, Nick, Steven Argel] had a hard time growing up. He says he didn’t have any friends, and people made fun of him. He taught the brothers how to use their canes better by taking them to the corner store.One day, the store clerk asked Cantos if Leo was his son. Before Cantos could answer, Leo put his arm around him and said, “Yeah, that’s my dad.” As Cantos remembers it, Leo said, “Well, you take us places, you protect us, you help us with our homework and make us happy. Sounds like a dad to me.” “Whenever I hear you call me ‘Dad,’ ” Cantos tells the three brothers, “it’s the highest compliment to me.You three used to be in the same situation that I was, and to see you come out of that and to be the way you guys are now, it’s impossible to describe how grateful I am that I get to be your dad.” Jasmyn Belcher, NPR Radio, 2014
I believe that mentoring is a soul to soul connection. It cannot ever be reduced to a money transaction, where one pays to have the services of a mentor. How can one even consider that the love and a care of a mentor, quite priceless like what Ollie Cantos has for Leo, Nick and Steven Argel can even be reduced to a coin? It just makes for such a cheapening of human relationships!
Let me share my priceless interview with this blind Filipino-American lawyer, who was recently recognized as one of the 50 inspiring Loyola Law School’s alumni out of 16,000, an odds of .0003125, which does not even come close to 1/10 of 1%. The odds become even smaller, as 16,000 alumni have to be vetted by a Board of Governors. The selection pared down to those who stood out for “the highest standards of personal integrity, professional ethics and concern for justice. They are accomplished lawyers, business men and women and public servants for the last half a century,” as described in the school’s website.
And to think that Olegario (Ollie) D. Cantos VII graduated in 1997, yet illustrious enough to join some of these prestigious folks, the likes of Gloria Allred, the lawyer of precedent – setting cases on women’s rights and discrimination for 30 years; John Anderson, for which an entire UCLA School of Management is named for him and his philanthropic gift of $50 million to Children’s Hospital; Hon. Ben Cayetano, the first Filipino-American governor of the State of Hawaii; Johnnie Cochran (deceased) the finest lawyer of social justice and civil rights who defended O.J. Simpson, Michael Jackson and Geronimo Pratt; and Hon. Otto Kaus (deceased) an associate justice of the California Supreme Court.
But before I get to the nuts and bolts of our interview, I know you are curious as to how this Filipino-American lawyer joined the ranks of these inspiring alumni group of 50.
“Alumnus Olegario D. Cantos VII ’97 has dedicated his life and career to civil rights, impacting more than 50 million Americans. He started his career as an attorney at the Disability Rights Legal Center right here at Loyola, later becoming General Counsel of a 60,000-member non-profit. Next working both in Republican and Democratic administrations, Cantos was Special Assistant and later Special Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice, Vice-Chairman of the President’s Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities, and Associate Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. He is presently Special Counsel to the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education. He has championed legal services to the poor as Vice President of the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles and Member of the State Bar’s Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services. In addition to having been a role model with Big Brothers/Big Sisters, he has mentored younger attorneys as part of the ABA. Blazing new trails, Cantos is the first blind person in the more than 70-year history of the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary ever to have served as Legal Officer and at the uniform rank equivalent of Lieutenant Commander. He is also President and CEO of Prosperity International, LLC, providing individuals and organizations tools and techniques to enhance branding, visibility, marketability, and influence.”
I first met Ollie on a trip from Washington, DC to New York, to see Miracle in Rwanda, a play conceived and directed in SoHo, starring Leslie Lewis, with my cousins Mila and Alfred Tecson and their then teenaged children, Justin and Hannah. We were in a van, all 7 of us. Though cramped in that van space, we were expansive in spirits: laughing, non-stop story-telling, snacking, that 19 hours together can be summarized in three F’s: fun, food and friendship.
We watched Leslie Lewis give life to 9 characters, in five languages, at the Ohio Theater in New York in 2007. Leslie dramatized the life of Immaculee Ilibigaza’s (an engineering student in Rwanda, who survived the genocide in 1994) by hiding inside a bathroom, with six other women, confined there for 91 days. Immaculee and 6 women survived the extremist Hutus’ genocidal attacks, with the pastor’s generosity and courage, their collective faith in God and by praying the rosary. Immaculee was inside this cramped square, along with 6 women, and Leslie used a masking tape, defining the square onstage, simulating the 3 by 4 foot space, inside the home of Immaculee’s pastor. The women were fleeing the barbarity of April 6, 1994, when almost a million Tutsi men, women and children, were murdered by the Hutus in 100 days.
Our discussion was of course subdued, given the play that we just saw, but our journey was made more endearing, with Ollie telling stories about his mother, stories of love, determination, faith and humanity.
Ollie became blind from oxygen depletion during premature birth. But, Evelyn and Orlando’s (Ollie’s parents) determination to treat him as without disabilities, pushed him to do things for himself. He carefully uses his cane to guide him as he walks the sidewalks, and navigates the terrain, using his other senses to hear changing sounds.
I was surprised that he would describe the landmarks, as we passed bridges, or that he would tell me to wait as it is still a red light, and to not hurry to cross as yet, making me respond: “Ollie, are you sure you are blind?” He laughed vigorously. More on next week’s column on Ollie’s mentoring principles and how to stay bipartisan in Washington, DC, to enable him to serve his country with loyalty, while working for two administrations now, younger G.W.Bush and now, our President Barack Obama.