From Quezon City to Sacramento: Jessica Caloza, the First Filipina in California's State Legislature
From Quezon City to Sacramento: Jessica Caloza, the First Filipina in California's State Legislature
She grew up watching TFC in a working-class household. Now she writes state law — and she's just getting started.
On a December morning in 2024, inside the California State Capitol in Sacramento, a woman born in Quezon City raised her right hand and became what no Filipina before her had been: a member of the California State Legislature. Jessica Caloza was four years old when she arrived in the United States with her working-class family. Her mother worked at gas stations and the 99 Cents store before attending vocational school and retiring as a nursing assistant. Her father worked his hands raw in the jobs that immigrants work. No one in her family had ever graduated from a four-year university in America.
Now she writes state law — and chairs the Select Committee on Asia/California Trade and Investment, positioning the diaspora not just as a cultural identity but as an economic force. For the 4.6 million Filipino Americans in this country, Caloza's oath was not just a political milestone. It was proof of concept. The daughter of a 99 Cents store cashier can walk the halls of power and not just belong there, but reshape them.
Jessica Caloza grew up in a household where The Filipino Channel (TFC) was a constant presence — the same network that would later feature her as a history-making elected official. From the living room to the news broadcast: a full-circle moment that mirrors the Fil-Am experience of watching our community's story unfold on screen, then stepping into it ourselves.
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Kagitingan
(kah-gi-TING-an) — Valor. Bravery. The courage to act when the odds are stacked against you.
In Filipino culture, kagitingan is not just physical bravery — it is the moral courage to stand up for your community, to break barriers, and to lead when no one who looks like you has led before. April is the month the Philippines commemorates the Fall of Bataan (Araw ng Kagitingan). Caloza's journey — from immigrant daughter to state lawmaker — is its own form of kagitingan.
The Immigrant Story Behind the Title
Caloza was born in Quezon City — the same city that produced Jose Rizal's printing presses, the same city that housed the seat of Philippine government before Manila reclaimed it. She immigrated to the United States at age four, growing up in Eagle Rock, a neighborhood in Northeast Los Angeles that sits within the district she now represents.
She is a first-generation college graduate. She earned her bachelor's degree in international relations and ethnic studies from the University of California, San Diego — a campus where, as an undergrad, she first discovered the power of collective advocacy through the UC Student Association. That experience left a mark. Sixteen years later, she stood on the Assembly floor and introduced ACA 18, a constitutional amendment to give UC students a stronger voice on the Board of Regents — full circle, again.
The Résumé That Built a Legislator
Caloza did not arrive in Sacramento by accident. Her career is a deliberate climb through every level of government that touches the lives of working families — federal, state, and local.
She began as a community organizer for Barack Obama's 2012 reelection campaign in Virginia, leading field offices and learning the machinery of voter engagement from the ground up. That led to a policy advisor role in the Obama Administration at the U.S. Department of Education, where she worked on higher education policy, immigration, student data privacy, and gender equity. For a Fil-Am who was the first in her family to graduate college, the work was personal.
She moved west to Los Angeles, joining Mayor Eric Garcetti's office first as Deputy Director of Scheduling, then Director of Scheduling, then moving to the Office of Immigrant Affairs — where she helped shape the city's immigration policy and civic engagement programs for immigrant communities. In 2019, Garcetti appointed her to the Board of Public Works — the only full-time commission in the City of Los Angeles, overseeing more than 5,500 employees. She was the first Filipina American to serve on that board.
Most recently, before her Assembly run, she served as Deputy Chief of Staff to California Attorney General Rob Bonta — himself the first Filipino American to serve in the California State Assembly, and now the state's top law enforcement officer. The mentorship was intentional. The succession was earned.
— Assemblymember Jessica Caloza, Capitol Weekly
Talang Gabay: The Gateway She Built Before She Ran
Before Caloza was writing state law, she was writing Los Angeles into its own Filipino history. As a Public Works Commissioner, she spearheaded the completion of the Historic Filipinotown Eastern Gateway — known as Talang Gabay (Guiding Star) — along Beverly Boulevard. The project was 20 years in the making. Caloza navigated the final procurement and construction phases, working with artist Eliseo Art Silva to ensure the gateway told a story: a visual storyboard of Filipino migration, labor, and community-building in Los Angeles.
The gateway includes a QR code system that directs visitors to local Filipino-owned small businesses — a small but meaningful bridge between cultural pride and economic activity. It is the kind of detail that reveals Caloza's instinct: representation is not the destination, it is the gateway. What you build with it matters more.
Los Angeles County is home to over half a million Filipino Americans — the largest concentration of Filipinos in the world outside of the Philippines. Historic Filipinotown, or HiFi, is the symbolic heart of that community. The Eastern Gateway is now its front door.
District 52: Where She Governs
California's 52nd Assembly District covers some of the most diverse and culturally layered neighborhoods in Los Angeles: East Los Angeles, South Glendale, and the Northeast LA communities of Eagle Rock, Silver Lake, Echo Park, Highland Park, Lincoln Heights, Atwater Village, Glassell Park, and Los Feliz. It is a district of immigrants, artists, renters, small business owners, and working families — the people Caloza grew up among and now legislates for.
She won the November 2024 general election with over 108,000 votes — 66.9 percent of the ballot — defeating fellow Democrat Franky Carrillo. Speaker Robert Rivas subsequently appointed her Assistant Majority Whip, placing her in the Assembly's leadership team in her first term. She also chairs the Select Committee on Asia/California Trade and Investment, a role that positions her to strengthen economic ties between California and the Philippines — moving the diaspora conversation beyond representation and into economic influence.
Committee Assignments
Caloza sits on six standing committees — Appropriations, Budget, Business and Professions, Communications and Conveyance, Health, and Housing and Community Development — and is a member of select committees on Climate Innovation, Housing Construction, Native American Affairs, Sea Level Rise, and Wildfire Prevention. That portfolio touches nearly every policy domain that matters to working families in LA.
The Bonta Lineage
The Caloza story cannot be told without the Bonta story. Rob Bonta was the first Filipino American elected to the California State Assembly, serving from 2012 to 2021 before Governor Newsom appointed him Attorney General. When Caloza joined the Department of Justice as his Deputy Chief of Staff, it was not just a job — it was a passing of institutional knowledge from one generation of Fil-Am political leadership to the next.
Bonta's endorsement of Caloza's Assembly campaign was among the first and most prominent. "She has the skills, proven abilities, and drive needed to be an effective leader in the State Assembly and a strong voice for communities in every corner of the 52nd District on Day 1," Bonta said. He was present at her victory celebration. The torch was not just passed — it was lit, carried, and used to open a door that now stays open for whoever walks through it next.
For PinoyBuilt readers who follow our Rob Bonta coverage, this is the continuum: Bonta broke the barrier in the Assembly, rose to AG, and mentored the woman who would become the first Filipina to hold a seat in the same chamber. The arc is deliberate. The lineage is real.
On This Day: April 12 and the Long Line of Kagitingan
Today — April 12 — carries weight in Philippine history that most Americans will never learn in school.
On April 12, 1895 — Good Friday — Andres Bonifacio and eight Katipuneros descended into Pamitinan Cave in the foothills of the Sierra Madre in Montalban, Rizal. In the darkness, by torchlight, they inscribed the words "Viva la Independencia Filipinas" on the cave walls — what many historians consider the earliest written expression of Filipino desire for independence, over a year before the Revolution erupted. The inscriptions are still visible today. The cave was declared a National Historical Site in 1996.
On April 12, 2016, Major Jesse Baltazar — the first native-born Filipino officer commissioned in the United States Air Force, a Bataan Death March survivor, a veteran of three wars — died at age 95 at Bethesda Naval Hospital. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. He spent his final decades advocating for Filipino World War II veterans denied full benefits by the Rescission Act of 1946. He never stopped fighting.
Bonifacio. Baltazar. Caloza. Different centuries, different battlefields, same kagitingan. The through-line is not coincidence — it is inheritance.
What Comes Next
Caloza is up for reelection in November 2026. Her first term has been focused on kitchen-table issues — affordable housing, cost of living, small business support, public education, and healthcare access. ACA 18, if it passes, would be a legacy piece of legislation: a UCSD alum who once stood on the Capitol steps as a student lobbyist, returning as a lawmaker to give students a constitutional right to a stronger voice.
Her first annual Block Party and Community Resource Fair is scheduled for May 31, 2026 — an open invitation to the communities of AD-52 to meet their assemblymember over food, music, and state resources. It is the kind of event that the diaspora understands instinctively: you build community by showing up, feeding people, and making the table bigger.
The Filipino American community in California has spent generations building the infrastructure of belonging — the FCSCI in Vallejo since 1946, the FPACC chambers across the state, HiFi in Los Angeles, Little Manila in Stockton, the Berger Park community in Chicago. Jessica Caloza is what that infrastructure produces when it works. Not just a seat at the table, but a vote — and a pen to sign the laws that shape the table itself.
— Assemblymember Jessica Caloza, December 2024
Wikipedia — Jessica Caloza · Capitol Weekly — Capitol Spotlight: Assemblymember Jessica Caloza · Inquirer — First Filipina Elected to California Assembly Sworn Into Office · Inquirer — California's First Filipina Assemblymember Takes on Top Leadership Role · AsAmNews — Jessica Caloza Sworn In as California's First Filipina Legislator · Rappler — Fil-Am California Assembly Hopeful Jessica Caloza Looks to Break Glass Ceiling · CalMatters — UC Students Lobby at the Capitol: ACA 18 and the Student Regent Amendment · LA Department of Public Works — About Commissioner Jessica M. Caloza · LA DPW — Commissioner Caloza Honored as PABA 2021 Community Champion · East West Bank — Historic Filipinotown Eastern Gateway · Asia Matters for America — Four Filipino Americans Win 2024 Primary Elections in California · NBC Asian America — Jesse Baltazar Obituary · Wikipedia — Pamitinan Cave · Inquirer Opinion — Good Friday Graffiti, 1895 · California State Assembly — Assembly Member Caloza, District 52
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J.F. (Jonjo) left the Philippines at age nine, spending a lifetime bridging the gap between his Marikina roots and his Chicago/Vallejo upbringing. A proud Hogan Spartan from East Vallejo and resident of LA/SF, he founded PinoyBuilt not just as a digital archive, but as a cultural compass for his three children to navigate their heritage, language, and identity with Pinoy Pride.
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