The job was easy. That was the appeal.
She found it on Facebook Marketplace — data entry, no experience needed, just put the numbers where the numbers go. She applied. They wanted a Social Security number, a date of birth, the usual set of things that don’t feel like anything until they do. She sent it.
A few days later a notification arrived from the state of California. Someone was filing for unemployment in her name, in a state she hadn’t lived in for years.
She called the police. There was an investigation. The claim got shut down.
And then something happened that most people don’t do with a theft, which is that she got interested.
“That’s when I started falling in love more with cyber,” she says. “Because I’m like — whoa, this is pretty cool. How are hackers able to do that? How do they work? What’s their mind?”
Most people file a report and buy a credit monitoring subscription. She went back to school.
Before That
She came to Houston in 2020, at the tail end of COVID, because her parents were coming and asked if she wanted to.
She’d grown up in Half Moon Bay, California, a town small enough to have one middle school and one high school and no version of herself she hadn’t already performed in front of everyone. “I knew everybody, everybody knew me.” That’s the part people romanticize. It’s also the part that closes in. She’d fallen into a depression. She needed somewhere that didn’t already have an opinion about her.
Her first impression of Houston was not generous. “Very flat, hot, not used to the humidity.” She had come from cold weather into what felt like standing inside somebody’s breath.
What kept her was the second thing she noticed. “Everyone speaks different languages, different skin colors, different people.” A city big enough to be new in.
She arrived as a teacher — preschool, mostly, which is what she’d been in school for. Her first friend here was a woman from Ghana she met at work. They went out, met people. And still something was off.
“I just wasn’t really truly passionate about teaching anymore.”
What followed is the part that usually gets edited out of a story like this. She didn’t pivot cleanly into her next chapter. She drifted. “I kind of just started partying. Instead of actually focusing on what I actually wanted to do and setting goals for myself, I just started drinking, smoking, doing a bunch of bad stuff.”
The way out wasn’t a revelation. It was arithmetic. “I’m tired of getting paid nothing. I want to do something with my life, but I don’t know what it was.”
So she started asking. Specifically, she started asking the men she dated what they did for work. Cybersecurity kept coming up. She asked what it paid. Six figures, work from home.
“Boom. That’s what I’m going to do.”
It’s an unglamorous origin and she doesn’t dress it up. Then the fake job posting arrived and turned a salary target into a genuine obsession.
The Rule
She had one condition going in: she was not taking on debt for this.
She’s on DACA — the program that lets people brought into this country as children work here legally. She knew California, where she’d graduated, had scholarship money she’d be eligible for. So she researched until she found a school with a cybersecurity program that would take her, applied for a scholarship, and got a full ride.
She graduated. She’s finishing a bachelor’s online at WGU by the end of October.
Cybersecurity is her day job now. She’ll tell you flatly that it isn’t the destination.
“They say use your nine-to-five to fund your actual business.”
The Actual Business
Her father is a general contractor. She’s building the company around him.
The plan is a remodeling and construction outfit — interior and exterior, residential and commercial — plus fix-and-flips of her own. Her first contribution was telling her dad how he was leaving money on the table.
He didn’t write quotes. He’d just say the price out loud.
“I told my dad, we’re in modern day. Some people actually want the breakdown of why this is going to cost how much — what’s the scope, what’s the quantity, the step-by-step process. If you want to formalize an actual company, this is something we need to do.”
She talks about the financing like someone who has read the documents, because she has. Hard money is short-term by design, nine to thirteen percent, and every extra month you hold a house eats the margin. First-time flippers put ten percent down — often twenty to forty thousand dollars — and frequently front project costs on top of that, because lenders want to see skin in the game before releasing a dollar.
Which is why she hasn’t flipped anything yet. Full-time job, full-time school, saving. “Once all of that is done and over, then I’ll have more time to actually go full force in real estate.”
Who It’s For
Her parents came from nothing, and she means that literally.
Her mother didn’t finish kindergarten — she had to work to help feed the family. Some days the meal was tortillas and chile. That was the meal. Her father’s family couldn’t cover the uniform and materials school required, so he started working young too. He made it to high school, but not through it.
Then they left everything behind and made the journey to this country.
When the family got here, they lived in a room — all of them. She’s the oldest of four. Separate beds, squeezed together. The first place they could afford on their own in California was a one-bedroom apartment.
Today her parents own their real estate outright, fully paid off. Her father has his own company.
Asked whether they found the American Dream in Houston, she doesn’t pause. “Yes.”
So the goal underneath the cyber job and the degree and the flips isn’t a lifestyle. She’s watched friends whose parents got sick and couldn’t cover in-home care or medication.
“My main goal is to help my parents retire. I want to make sure they get the best treatment. That I’m there. And if I can’t be there, someone can be there to take care of them.”
Her One Piece of Advice
Ask what a newcomer should do and she gives you exactly one thing.
“Go to networking events. Go to them. Try all different types — healthcare, law, cyber, IT, whatever.”
The reasoning isn’t inspirational, it’s mechanical. Those are the people who know where to get materials cheaper than Home Depot. Those are the people doing the hiring. It’s not a theory to her — it’s how she got the cyber job. She knew somebody who could get her in.
“Knowing someone is going to put you in a much better position versus if you just didn’t know anyone.”
The same instinct shows up when she describes how she’d pitch an investor someday. Don’t talk. Show.
“You can talk about becoming a millionaire all you want, but if you’re not one, they’re not going to listen to you. You have to actually be there, and then show how you did it, and people will listen.”
Her Houston
Buffalo Bayou. She’s a nature person, and it’s the most beautiful thing in the city to her.
Lake Livingston. Two hours out. Worth the drive.
Cooking Girl. Her spot. Not up for discussion.
For anyone visiting: “It’s going to be hot as hell. You’re going to sweat a lot.”
For anyone moving: research the neighborhood before you sign, because everything here is far from everything else and hating where you live is expensive to undo. Get used to the humidity. And keep some cold-weather clothes, because it does snow here, occasionally, absurdly.
Five Years Out
Houston isn’t her final stop, and she isn’t sure anywhere is yet. “Wherever God takes me.” She’d like citizenship. She’d like to travel. She knows she’ll raise her kids in American schools — she just doesn’t know which part of America.
Asked to leave a note for her future self, she takes a second to work out how old she’ll be.
“To my future self — I hope you are established in your career and financially able to help your parents out more. And most importantly, healthy. And not taking up shit from anyone.”
She’s working a job she took for the money, going to school at night, saving for a down payment on a house she’ll gut and sell.
Give it five years.
Houston Got People is a digital magazine spotlighting Houston’s people — from everyday heroes to business owners, athletes, and creators.