Mario Mendoza Zamora will never forget the day he first saw cowboys ride through Jack Farrell Park in East Palo Alto. At 7 years old, he regularly played basketball and soccer at the park and had grown accustomed to seeing less pastoral things on the streets of East Palo Alto.
So when a group of riders locally known as “the Black Cowboys” showed up, they stood out.
“ I just remember about 12 horses, quarterhorses, coming into the park. And it was just like, you know those moments when they say everything freezes?” recalled Mendoza Zamora, now 41. “It was kind of like a Wild West moment.”
It would be a few more years before he and his cousins started hanging out at Ravenswood Ranch, where they fixed fences and cleaned stables just to be near the animals. But when he saw the Black Cowboys ride through it sparked a lifelong infatuation.
Decades later, he created Camp Doza, a summer camp that combined his love of animals and sports for East Palo Alto kids.
Mendoza Zamora credits these two passions and the mentorships they cultivated for keeping him on track during his vulnerable teenage years. Mendoza Zamora played basketball on an organized team for the first time under coach Darrell Barbour, who had high expectations for his players. And, in exchange for helping take care of the animals, he learned how to ride horses and rope cattle from Clifton Evans, a Black cowboy who ran Ravenswood Ranch.
Now a married father of two, Mendoza Zamora has stepped into the roles that helped him as a teen. During the school year, he’s the athletic director at Ravenswood Middle School in East Palo Alto, which he had attended years ago. With his free time, he manages Ravenswood Ranch with his brother, and spends his summers running Camp Doza. He also serves on the East Palo Alto Sanitary District Advisory Committee and regularly helps organize community events, all while involved in his own kids’ lives and sports communities.
He’s proud of making it to a position where he is able to provide opportunities for East Palo Alto kids. But recently, Mendoza Zamora has been reckoning with what years of saying “yes” has cost him in family time. For the first time in nine years, he decided to put the summer camp on pause this summer.
A man of many hats
Zamora’s childhood encounter with the Black cowboys continues to inspire him every time he rides his Friesian stallion, El Galán, through the streets.
“People pull over in their cars, their kids come out and give us high fives. We get off the horse and sit the kids on the saddle… that’s what the Black Cowboys did for us back in the day,” he said. “It’s like I’m giving it back, you know?”
Those closest to him say that is just Mendoza Zamora’s way.
“He’s driven to be the best father he can be. He’s driven to just be a good person. He’s driven to help people. And I think that’s why he loves his community,” Barbour said. “He’s a doer. He’s a giver. And those are traits that a lot of people don’t have.”
Mendoza Zamora considers Barbour a lifelong mentor; the two grab breakfast every few months. It’s not uncommon for Mendoza Zamora to call Barbour up on speaker phone with some of his student athletes, asking Barbour to elaborate on the advice he had instilled in his players at Woodside High School back in the day.
“ He’s actually taken those [life lessons], he’s ran with it, and he’s giving it back,” Barbour said.
Mendoza Zamora’s days start early and include a seamless swirl of the commitments to the ranch, community sports and family. On a typical day, he’s up by 4:30 a.m. and on his way to the gym before getting the kids ready and dropping them off at school. Afterward, feeds the animals at Ravenswood Ranch – often the last moment of tranquility in his day – before heading onto Ravenswood Middle School. In the parking lot, he clips on two walkie-talkies: one for his work as the athletic director and one that’s just for communicating with his kids when they’re away. The school-issued one starts crackling with questions and announcements by the time he’s walking through the front gate.
School days can go in many directions. On a Tuesday in May, it was a frenzy of phone calls with parents, wrangling students during a substitute’s PE class and fighting his way through his email inbox under the fluorescent lighting of his office, a former classroom where his workspace takes up just as much space as a pile of neatly folded donated clothes and shoes that he keeps on hand for students.
He knows most of the kids by name, including who is going to the rugby nationals this weekend. He knows how to get a group of sixth graders wrapped up in a basketball game during recess and how to make them laugh with his fake passes. He knows how to say “go to class!” in Tongan. The students laugh and roll their eyes dramatically when he nags them. But they go to class.
“The kids just gravitate to him,” said Ravenswood Superintendent Gina Sudaria. She sees all the signs of a great community mentor, referring to him as a “warm demander” who is “not afraid of holding students and adults accountable .”
After a pick-up basketball game with students during their lunch recess Mendoza Zamora headed back to his office for his own lunch break.
If Camp Doza was happening, he’d be frantically wrapping up preparations by this time: coordinating with staff and families, sorting out materials and logistics and organizing a preparation day lunch for everyone who helps out at the camp. But instead, he puts down his phone and eats quietly for a few minutes. Right now, he’s just focused on making it to the end of the school year.
Being there
As a kid, he remembers bouncing around to babysitters. Later, there were long days at Jack Farrell Park – the same park that introduced him to basketball and the Black cowboys. While he played, his parents, both hard-working immigrants from Mexico, worked 16-hour shifts and bounced between multiple jobs.
He appreciated and respected everything they were doing for the family, and is proud to have inherited their strong work ethics. But as a kid, he felt angry and unloved at times. “ They were there, but they weren’t there,” he recalls. It was part of the reason he turned so heavily to basketball, Ravenswood Ranch and the mentors he found in those spaces.
“The day I become a dad, I’m going to be there for my kids. I’m going to cook for my kids. I want to be at every single soccer game,” he recalled deciding. “Because when kids feel that they are not loved, especially at an age where they’re smart enough to understand things, that’s when kids start going downhill.”
Now, working in an underprivileged community, he is constantly reminded of the promise he made himself.
The feelings of burnout peaked a few years ago. He was only a few years into his role as athletic director and was still working long hours to get the school’s sports program off the ground, but he was feeling the weight of the challenges he’d been helping his students and their families navigate.
He was still going through all the motions of “showing up” for his family. He coached his daughter’s T-ball team and his son’s soccer team. He ran Camp Doza, which his kids loved, during the summer. But he had very little time to spend directly with his kids, and was struggling to be present when he did.
He had no intention of abandoning his immediate commitments just yet, but he craved a more balanced work and family life. He started looking for the little windows of time on a busy day when, regardless of his to-do list, he could slow down and prioritize just being with his kids.
He started savoring the little moments with them – making breakfast for them in the morning, chatting with them on their way to school. He has noticed how their smiles have changed and how his son is starting to joke around. And he just can’t get enough of those little moments. He can’t wait to slow down more.
The city of East Palo Alto reached out when staff noticed Mendoza Zamora hadn’t submitted a summer camp proposal in January. He explained that he was going to take a year off, for his mental health and to be with his own family. At first, he said, city staff couldn’t believe it. Neither could his wife and kids. But he stuck by it.
Slowing down
In the months leading up to summer, Mendoza Zamora tried not to think too much about the fact that Camp Doza wasn’t happening. He loves seeing the same kids come back year after year, how they’ve grown and how excited they are on the first day. His own kids were sad the camp was shelved. They loved showing off the ranch to their friends and being able to play dodgeball all day if they wanted on “freestyle Fridays.”
Others in the family understood. Despite the initial shock, wife Julie Mendoza understood exactly where he’s coming from because she feels it too. Their lives are nonstop, and neither of them can get a grasp on how quickly their kids are growing up.
Mendoza Zamora’s father, Pablo Mendoza, who never took vacations or sick days during Mario’s childhood, always encouraged Mario to work hard to help his community. But he, too, understands Mario’s desire to slow down for a summer. As it turns out, he’s making time to show up for his grandkids too. “These moments, they don’t come back,” he said with a bittersweet smile while watching his grandson’s soccer game.
As of mid-May, Mendoza Zamora hadn’t yet publicly announced that Camp Doza was taking a year off. After he got through the school year, he said, maybe he’d be able to come up with a few replacement activities for the families that attended. He wanted to give them a chance to meet the ranch’s new baby miniature horse, maybe through a petting zoo day. But he’d figure that out later.
There are the small windows of time he savors with his kids – waking them up in the morning, cooking them breakfast even though they have the option of getting it at school. His favorite moment of any weekday is when he drops them off at school and they both turn around, smile, and say “Love you, Dad. Have a good day at work!”
On a morning near the end of the school year, Mendoza Zamora arrived at the ranch right on schedule, at exactly 8:30 a.m. He fed the animals and spent a few minutes cuddling Shelby, the three-month-old baby miniature horse. “She’s perfect,” he said, smiling in awe as she clumsily trapsed back to her mom’s side.
These days, the ranch is his place of inner peace. He wasn’t sure yet where his few weeks off in the summer would take him – a family trip to Europe or a road trip through the western U.S. were solid contenders. But so was a few weeks staying here, working on the ranch.
On his way into work, he stopped to get coffee from a relative’s new business. He rolled down his window and joked with a crew of sanitation maintenance workers he knew. He honked in response to students waving at him as they walked to school. He paused in the middle school’s parking lot, like he did every morning, and clipped his two walkie-talkies onto his belt. Just a few weeks more, and he wouldn’t have to wear either.
