EPCHS Alum In The Spotlight: Ruben Gallego, Class Of 1998

EVERGREEN PARK, IL — One of the 12 United States Senators to be sworn into office for the first time earlier this month is proud to call Evergreen Park Community High School his alma mater.

Ruben Gallego was elected to serve as one of two U.S. Senators representing the state of Arizona in the 2024 election cycle. Gallego, a Democrat who previously served for 10 years as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Arizona, replaced independent Kyrsten Sinema in the U.S. Senate.

“If it weren’t for EPCHS, I never would have made it to Harvard and, eventually, the U.S. Senate,” said Gallego, who was enshrined as an EPCHS Hall of Famer in 2015.

Upon graduating from EPCHS in 1998, Gallego chose the famed Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to continue his education.

“I knew that to achieve my dreams I needed the best education I could get, and to me that meant Harvard,” Gallego said. “As a first-generation college student, I didn’t know much about colleges, but I knew that Harvard was synonymous with a first-class American education. Once I set my mind on attending, there was no going back.”

Gallego’s resume heading into Harvard was already an impressive one. As one of EPCHS’ finest students from the Class of 1998, his role as a representative for others had actually already begun.

His role as EPCHS student body president “taught me a lot about leadership and was my first look at what it takes to run for office,” he said.

“Evergreen Park Community High School was just that: a community. And it’s the values of community that I learned growing up on the South Side, and later in the Marines, that inspired me to get into politics. I wanted to serve the communities that had supported me and helped me achieve the American dream.”

The best part of EPCHS, Gallego remembers more than a quarter-century after his graduation, is “the people.”

“The teachers who pushed me to work hard and achieve my dreams, and my friends and classmates who supported me along the way,” he said, specifically naming his AP U.S. History teacher, the now retired Mr. Jim Gustafson, as someone who “ignited in me a love of history and government that I still have today.”

Gallego is “forever grateful” for the teachers and support staff who helped him along the way.

“People like the librarian, Linda Konley, who helped me access the resources I needed to study for my college entrance exams,” he said.

And just this month, Konley was in attendance in the U.S. Capitol to see her former student’s Senate inauguration.

“It was an honor to welcome Linda to the Capitol for my Senate swearing-in - the least I could do to thank her for all she did for me.”

Along with three sisters, Gallego was raised by a single mother in a small Evergreen Park apartment in which he slept on the living room floor so his sisters could share the bedroom. It wasn’t until he began college at Harvard when he finally had his own bed.

“I’m not gonna lie, being at Harvard was tough at first,” Gallego said. “While most students came from wealthier families and were simply looking forward to being away from home for the first time, I was working jobs as a janitor just to cover my costs and was mostly excited to have a bed of my own.”

Eventually, Gallego settled in at Harvard. He joined a fraternity to help him make friends and began taking classes on subjects he was interested in like international relations and economics.

“Harvard, and the people I met there, helped me get where I am today, and for that I’m grateful.”

Following his time at Harvard, Gallego enlisted in the military, serving as a member of the U.S. Marines from 2002-2006.

“I enlisted because I wanted to give back to the country that had given me so much opportunity,” Gallego said. “Only in America can the child of immigrants, raised by a single mom living paycheck to paycheck, go on to study at a place like Harvard.”

He said his time in the Marines “taught me so much about service and sacrifice, and it is what ultimately motivated me to run for office.”

“I realized we need leaders who know what it’s like to see combat and then come home and struggle to access the services you earned from the VA. Those experiences inform my leadership in Congress and my fight to make life better for our veterans.”

Gallego was first elected to public office in 2010, then representing the 16th District in the Arizona House of Representatives. From there, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and is now a week-and-a-half into his first term in the U.S. Senate.

“I decided to run for the Senate because I saw too many Arizona families being left behind - struggling to make ends meet, worrying that they wouldn’t be able to make a better life for their kids,” Gallego said. “I’ve had the opportunity to live the American dream, and I want to ensure every Arizonan can too.”

In his first term, Gallego would like to focus on “delivering the promises I made on the campaign trail” such as “lowering costs for hardworking families, fixing our broken immigration system, securing our border and protecting fundamental freedoms.”