It’s just past 10 a.m. and the smell of Folgers coffee and freshly-baked pan dulce is in the air at La Mejor Bakery in San Francisco’s Mission District. Lisenia Rivera is busy brewing coffee, serving pan dulce, tamales, and tea, and joking with a constant flow of the faithful clients of the bakery.
A Community Hub
Rivera has worked at La Mejor for 17 years and, for the most part, the customers know her by name. She manages the whole store with the precision of a surgeon, laughing loudly as she walks back and forth from the kitchen transporting fresh conchas, cochinitos, bread pudding, and cookies.
The five or so tables in La Mejor are almost always occupied, as many Latino seniors catch up with friends or read the latest issue of El Tecolote or El Reportero. Before Rivera ever worked at La Mejor, she was a regular customer there. The bakery was her usual spot for pan dulce and coffee on her way to BART for her job at a taqueria near downtown.
A Personal Story
Rivera grew up in San Joaquin, a small village in the state of Jutiapa in southern Guatemala. She, her siblings, and cousins were raised by her grandparents, Juan Argueta and Erlinda Rivera, after her parents migrated to the United States when she was five years old. Rivera remembers a happy childhood, helping her grandmother get the masa for tortillas ready early each morning and playing with dolls that she and the other children made out of corn husks and clay.
Rivera says that she used to lie in the open field with her grandfather looking at the stars, hearing his stories about a giant snake that lived in the nearby Lake Guija that ate goats and cows. She arrived in Richmond, Calif. in October 2002 and worked at a winery, a carwash, and as a nanny, before deciding to move to San Francisco.
Rivera got married, and had her daughter in 2009. She moved to a studio apartment at 24th and Bartlett streets, just around the corner from La Mejor. Nearly 18 years later, on a recent Thursday, Rivera reflected on what the bakery has given her: friends, community, a good boss, a chance to meet the last three San Francisco mayors — and her second husband.
Original reporting: Mission Local — read the source article.
