Editing Gabriel Cardova (section)

==History==
Gabriel is the second generation of his family born in the United States.  His grandparents emigrated from El Salvador in the hopes that their children might have an opportunity for a better life.  Gabe's father worked in construction while his mother took countless domestic jobs on top of being a housewife.  His family was relatively small and though they were very strict, there was no lack of love in his household.  Sadly, Gabe's parents passed away by the time he entered college and he has been on his own ever since.

With no family to go home to, Gabe threw himself into his studies.  He attended university on a scholarship and almost effortlessly received top marks each successive year.  He loved learning, but he mostly kept himself busy so that he would not have time to think about how lonely he was.  He made few real friends -- Caesar being the only one he still speaks to -- and dated infrequently, even then only doing so after being pressured into it.  Needless to say, he formed no lasting relationships.

Before he knew it, Gabe had earned a PhD in Applied Science and had MIT representatives practically banging on his door.  He recognized, however, that he had simply been pressing forward without any real idea of what he wanted to do with his life.  Without his family, there had been no heart in what he'd done for years.  Seeking to find his own passion, Gabe retreated from the academic limelight.

Gabe spent a significant amount of time soul-searching in Central America, going back to his roots in an attempt to discover where he had come from.  What he found there was poverty and violence.  Though he had managed to locate the family that his grandparents had left behind decades ago, he was as different from them as night and day.  He knew nothing of the hardships they endured daily and they could not understand why he would ever want to come back to such a place.  Without truly comprehending why, Gabe stayed in El Salvador for two years -- living only on what meager wages he earned and trying his best to survive in a war-torn country.

The Peace Accords in 1992 put an end to the twelve-year war, but Gabe had already returned to the United States by the time they had been committed to paper.  Armed with a better understanding of the human condition and a newfound appreciation for his country, Gabriel Cordova decided to make sure that the world was better equipped to resolve the many woes of society.  He would do this by helping those who were destined to bring change -- the next generations.

Though there were a great deal of people disappointed by his decision to become a lowly high school teacher, Gabe's resolve was strong and he ferociously applied himself to his new career.  Though he gained some popularity as the "happy doctor," Gabe was still unimpressed by how little he'd managed to influence his students' lives.  He become involved in all sorts of curricular and extra-curricular activities, expanding his awareness of student culture -- yet still only a few ever managed to do something worthwhile with their lives.

As time passed and each year saw the bare-minimum graduation of a new host of apathetic students, Gabe began to seriously wonder if there was perhaps more that he should be looking at.  Much like his soul-searching years before, maybe he had to look at the situation from a different angle.  This time, he decided to investigate the environmental influences on his students' lives.

As before, what Gabe found was shocking and often profoundly disturbing.  Poverty and violence once again reared their ugly heads, joined now by up-close and personal greetings by crime, drugs, and sex abuse.  All these things and worse threatened the growth of his students on a level he hadn't ever considered likely.  The world was certainly much darker than he'd expected, and it seemed Las Vegas was a unique monster in and of itself.

But once again, Gabe refused to back down.  He increased his range of efforts; working with law enforcement, aiding social workers, keeping regular contact with parents and going out of his way to find financial aid for those students whose families were in need.  Slowly, the improvements came but they were still rather minuscule in the grand scheme of things.  So, he worked even harder -- teaching more classes to increase the number of students he interacted with in a given week, holding private counseling sessions with students he noticed were troubled, investigating rumors of problems in the home and tapping his various connections for information and aid when he could not fix something himself.

In the fifteen years that Gabe has been a teacher, he has become a local celebrity among parents for his unparalleled dedication to his students' well being.  Good people know that their children are in good hands with Mr. Cordova -- bad people find out this same thing in a different way.  Over the last five years, Gabe has also proven to be a huge thorn in the side of many corrupt individuals within the education system.  He has relentlessly hounded administration officials in his efforts to stamp out the underhanded dealings which directly affect schools and their students.  Were it not for his popularity with local parents and his surprising influence with some city officials, it is likely he would have been laid off years ago.