The moment was captured by Times photographer Gary Friedman in August, when Maria Reyes, an 86-year-old native of El Salvador, became a U.S. citizen.
"Look at this," Friedman said at the time, dropping a copy of his picture on my desk. He had been at the ceremony working on an unrelated assignment but was struck by this scene.
I could see why. The picture of Reyes holding her small U.S. flag has an Ellis Island quality to it, tinted with loss and hope. I've watched new citizens being sworn in, and it's impossible not to be moved by all the people who have escaped hunger and war, united by the desire for a second chance.
As election day approached, I wondered whether Reyes intended to exercise her new right to vote. Yes, her family told me by phone, she was studying the ballot and eager to go to the polls.
And so Friedman and I headed down to Gardena, where Reyes lives with her family in a tan stucco house with brown trim. A campaign poster, Dan Medina for City Council, was stuck into the front lawn, and the yard was adorned with pumpkins, ghouls and goblins.
Inside the home, there were enough candles, crucifixes and sculpted angels to ward off evil spirits in six counties. The walls were covered as well with photos of young promise -- generations of kids in mortarboards and gowns at graduation ceremonies across Southern California, and one photo of a grandson who died of kidney disease just before entering college.
"I'm dancing," Reyes says, greeting me in her living room, her arms and legs jerking uncontrollably.
It wasn't really a dance, I learned, but the loss of muscle control from 10 years of Parkinson's. Reyes was unable to hold up her hand during the citizenship oath. That's why in the photo her daughter, Elvia Ramirez, is holding it aloft for her.
"Oh, my God," Ramirez said of that moment when her mother became a citizen. "I couldn't believe it."
Ramirez fled El Salvador in 1978, just ahead of the bloody civil war and two years before her mother. Like tens of thousands of refugees, she came illegally, found work and later sent for the rest of the family. One of her brothers didn't make it out. He was killed in the Salvadoran war in 1982.
There's a Barack Obama sign on a living room desk, and that's who Ramirez and Reyes say will get their votes on Tuesday. The family believes Democrats better represent their interests, Ramirez told me.
