This accounting is consistent with the best available reporting on the incident, and it is also consistent with Trejo’s broader understanding of how good things happen. The 12-step community he has been part of for fifty-plus years operates on the principle that recovery is a collaborative effort: the individual’s commitment is necessary but not sufficient, and the community support of other people in recovery is part of what makes sustained sobriety possible. The Sylmar rescue was a specific physical instance of the same principle: the outcome required multiple people, each doing what they were positioned to do.
The refusal to claim sole credit for the rescue is not a rhetorical strategy. It is the accurate account, and it is consistent with the broader philosophical framework that has organized Trejo’s public and private life since 1969.
## The Restaurant Businesses and Their Community Function
The Trejo’s Tacos business that began in 2015 — eventually expanding to multiple locations and extending into Trejo’s Coffee & Donuts and Trejo’s Cantina — is, in its public presentation, a celebrity restaurant venture. In its community function, it is something somewhat more specific.
Los Angeles’s restaurant industry has historically been a significant employment pathway for the immigrant and working-class communities that have dominated its workforce. The specific demographic profile of restaurant work — high percentage of Latino workers, significant proportion of people with limited formal employment options, relatively accessible entry without professional credentials — makes it a sector that has functioned as a community employer in the neighborhoods that Trejo comes from and has continued to serve.