Anaheim Councilmember Natalie Rubalcava wanted to show me two things as we walked toward a picnic table at Little People’s Park. “How do you like the playground?” she asked about her latest municipal project. The one-acre green space, site of an infamous 1978 police beatdown of Chicano residents , shone like I had never seen before.
Kids played on swings, a seesaw and even a small climbing wall. Adults relaxed in the shade. A vibrant mural on a south wall was a welcome contrast to the historic, faded one on the side of a liquor store a stone’s throw away.
This is the Natalie I’ve known since she was a grade ahead of me at Sycamore Junior High and Anaheim High in the mid-1990s, where she organized the homecoming dance as senior class vice president. A go-getter committed to a city where her family has lived for five generations. Kind, self-effacing, with a big smile.
That’s not the Rubalcava popping up on my social media accounts, though. She showed me a video on her cellphone of protesters who crashed a meet-and-greet to chant that she was corrupt while holding a banner that read “Natalie Rubal-cabal.” Dressed in jeans, fashionable sandals and a white T-shirt emblazoned with Andy Anaheim, the city’s cheery mascot, Rubalcava offered me an aw shucks grin.
“OK, that banner was funny.” The first-time politician — whose working-class district is where my dad and a bunch of cousins live — faces a June 4 recall election just 18 months after winning her seat.
