The Herrera Pérez Family
by Yolanda Pérez
Mela, Maria, and Socorro Herrera, from left to right, 1925 (Courtesy Yolanda Pérez)
My mother, Mela Herrera, was born at St. Francis Hospital in Santa Barbara in 1923. Her parents, José and Francisca Herrera, came to Santa Barbara in 1920 from Mexico with their eldest daughter, Socorro. A third daughter, Maria, was born in 1924.
The family came to Santa Barbara in 1920 to join relatives who had emigrated at the turn of the century. José, Francisca and daughter Socorro traveled over 1,600 miles by train from Santiago Papasquiaro, in Durango, Mexico to Santa Barbara. They had moved to join relatives and work in the local mines and lemon orchards and resided on Santa Barbara’s east side within the Mexican community. In 1928, when José became ill, the family returned to Mexico, where José later died. My mother returned to Santa Barbara in 1944 to visit an aunt and remained after marrying my father in 1946. She found employment at the Johnson Fruit Company packing lemons and formed lifelong friendships with other young Hispanic women.
My father, Salvador Pérez, was born in 1919 in Bisbee, Arizona. His parents crossed the Arizona border during the Mexican Revolution shortly before his birth and then relocated to Oxnard where he lived until age eleven. At that time, he returned to Mexico, where he was abandoned by his parents. He later returned to the U.S., arriving in Santa Barbara in 1932, where he found his family working and living at the Crocker Sperry Lemon Ranch in Montecito. After a brief period there, he left and worked at odd jobs through the difficult years of the Great Depression. His resilience and sense of responsibility would later guide him through pivotal chapters of his life.
In 1938 he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps and was assigned to the Big Basin Redwoods State Park in Santa Cruz County. The following year he joined the Army and remained in the Army until the end of WWII. During the war he was a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne serving in Europe.
After the war, he returned to Santa Barbara and began working at Cottage Hospital. He lived in a rooming house on East Haley Street and had his meals at the Rose Café. The café’s owner, Maria Alvarez, was the aunt my mother had come to visit, and in 1945 my parents met at the café and married the following year. Their first house was on the 400 block of East Haley Street, opposite the Rose Café. They lived there until they purchased a vacant lot on Alameda Padre Serra, at that time mostly an unpaved road, and that became the family home to this day.
In 1950, during the Korean War, my father re-enlisted in the Army and remained in service until 1968, when he retired and returned to Santa Barbara. The home crafted with my father’s own hands became a gathering place for extended family, neighbors, and friends. As the years unfolded, we celebrated milestones—the arrival of children, graduations, and weddings—within the sturdy walls of the home. The Pérez family’s house on Alameda Padre Serra became more than a physical shelter; it grew into a symbol of perseverance and belonging, woven into the fabric of Santa Barbara’s Eastside community.
Salvador and Mela Pérez’s wedding, 1946 (Courtesy Yolanda Pérez)