Hello, Latino USA listener.

Hope you're well.

Here's a show from the archives.

But I think in the back of my mind, really, I was more focused on where I was going to live and where I was going to do once I turned 18 and aged out.

So I actually saw college more as a way of secure housing for myself than anything else.

From Futuro Media and PRX, it's Latino USA.

I'm Maria Inojosa today.

One Woman's Journey from Foster care to the judicial bench.

In the early 1980s, a civil war in El Salvador was ravaging the country.

Fearing for their lives, Seumara Torres and her family fled. In the United States, her family settled in East Los Angeles. But at the age of 13,

Siomara found herself in the foster care system. She never lived with her parents again.

Seumara put herself through college and law school. She specialized in family law, and in 2017,

she was officially appointed Circuit Court Judge of Portland, Oregon.

Seumara Torres reflects on growing up in foster care homes and her journey to becoming a judge.

My name is Silmar Torres.

I am a Multnomah County Circuit Court judge in Portland, Oregon.

My calling really was representing children in court, so it seemed to somehow made my way back to that original purpose.

In my childhood, I grew up in this town called Paraiso, and it was the very beginning of the Civil War in El Salvador

that ended in 92.

I didn't really understand what was going on,

but I knew that we were sent home a lot

because soldiers would show up to the school.

...