TheBakersfieldCalifornian.com

When Indira and Miguel Gomez became involved with a local Spanish-language conference for parents of special-needs children two years ago, they were in immigration limbo.

Originally from Mexico, the Bakersfield couple shared with The Californian their plight: The two youngest of their three daughters have Down syndrome and only one, who was born in this country, was a U.S. citizen.

The Gomezes had come here illegally more than a decade before, desperately seeking medical attention for their middle child, Karen, now 14, who Mexican doctors said would die if she didn’t receive better care than they could provide.

Mr. Gomez was then preparing to go before an immigration judge to plead for a “cancellation of removal” to avoid being deported.

The power of a story

A year and several visits to immigration authorities after our story ran, Gomez finally found himself standing in a Los Angeles courtroom for a key hearing.

“Our file was very thick,” he said in Spanish, indicating about an inch with his fingers, “but the article was what the judge focused on.

“You can’t imagine how much it helped us,” he said recently at the third Celebración de Familias Excepcionales (Celebration of Exceptional Families) conference at the Convention Center Marriott.

The Gomezes and their two elder daughters, Karen and 16-year-old Gloria, received legal resident status two months after that hearing.

“We’ve even been able to go to Mexico,” Mrs. Gomez said — last Christmas. “It had been 12 years since I’d been there,” her husband said. They took gifts for the children at the special-needs school and hospital in Jalisco where Karen was once helped.

A special conference

The Gomezes help out special-needs families in Bakersfield as well. And thanks to the efforts of dozens of volunteers like them, and to the sponsorship of Kern Regional Center, the Dolores Huerta Foundation and H.E.A.R.T.S. Connection,, the annual Celebración conference has thrived since its first year.

In 2007, Kern Regional Center director of client services Virginia Gantong thought they’d be lucky if they got 80 to 100 people to attend — but 300 showed up. This year, Celebración boasted 425 registered attendees.

The keynote speaker last week was Dr. Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa, a neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins University who’s been featured in English and Spanish magazines and television.

Like the Gomezes, the Mexican-born doctor was once an undocumented immigrant. He picked tomatoes and cotton in the San Joaquin Valley more than 20 years ago, he said. Helped by a change in immigration law in the late 1980s and by sheer determination, he was able to graduate with honors from Harvard Medical School. His message of hope that the American dream is possible for immigrant families — including those with special-needs kids — resonated with the audience.

The focus of this year’s conference, Gantong said, was the role and needs of the siblings of special-needs kids and included a workshop where “no parents were allowed — only siblings.”

Mrs. Gomez said the conference is a way to connect with other families of special-needs kids who understand her. She and her husband plan to travel to Mexico again with gifts not only of clothes and toys for disabled children, but also of conference literature and videos in Spanish for their parents.