My name is Officer Steven Flores, I've been with sapd for four years and I'm assigned to the Traffic Unit dot. When I was, I say maybe a week or so, my parents decided to move to Monterrey Mexico and that's where I live until I was you know 18. At which point I decided to move to the United States and pursue a career. I wanted to be in some type of Public Service actually in fact I volunteered a fire department down in Mexico when I was about 15. Since I was little everything that I wanted to do in life was just to wear a uniform go out there and help people. As cheesy as it sounds, I mean it was the reality, I just really wanted to be a law enforcement officer. There was a lot of things that went in between that time one of those I was going to law school down there I did law school for about a year and a half but I decided at some point to go back to what I really wanted to do when I was little, and so I decided to make a change. I went down one night and told my parents I want to go to the US they lost their mind they were like what are you thinking you know there's no family over there there's no friends there's you know the culture it's a completely different change of settings, and all of a sudden I switched out and I said you know what I don't want to get old and you know say to my kids and grandkids that I didn't try out what I wanted to do and the goal was that the dreams that I had when I was little and that's how I started just working things out so that I could move over to Brownsville. I actually went and stayed with my on an uncle for a couple of months they helped me out big time. I started working different jobs like fast food restaurants and you name it and then finally I had the opportunity of joining the Marine Corps. I'm in the Infantry in the reserves 123 Carlos company is where I'm stationed at Corpus Christi. I didn't know any English at all I mean other than the basic that you learn in school you know they tell you that a door is a door and a window is a window but the Marines have a completely different language, so we went from having a door to now being called a hatch and we went from having a floor to now being called a deck. They completely threw my world upside down and the little basic English that I had I just couldn't understand what was going on I had no clue what was going on. I remember when I came back from basic training for the Marines and I started joining my reserve unit one of the recruiters from the valley just happened to meet up with the recruiter at the time, which is detective Torres now, she's the one that asked hey do you have any applicants that make these requirements and they thought about inviting me to apply I went through the process three months later I was already signing my paperwork being appointed as a Cadet. What's special about San Antonio in my opinion is just the diversity that we have. I always saw myself as you know a Spanish speaker primarily being that as a disadvantage but when I came to San Antonio I find that to be a huge tool that we can use every single day. For me, being able to put on this uniform everyday, is a great honor. Being able to go out and serve the public, in whatever they need is a feeling I cannot compare. For me, San Antonio has become my new home. So assigned to traffic we have a unit, it's a small unit, it's a commercial vehicle enforcement unit it's called, but we're commonly known as dot. If you think about all the big rigs all the 18 wheelers, heavy equipment, oversized, over height overweight, overload, all those things we regulate. They got to be strictly regulated, my unit enforces federal and state law when it comes to regulations for commercial vehicle combinations, and we pretty much make sure that all those vehicles that are heavy and everything that's going on the road they're a safe as possible when they're sharing the road with you. Well an advice that I can give to anybody that's thinking or can identify with me as having a disadvantage as opposed to somebody else and trying to accomplish some goals or dreams I can just tell you put in the work, putting the effort to do the best you can and at some point I can guarantee you that hard work and ethic is going to pay off and you're going to be able to accomplish anything you want.