History teacher Reuben D’Silva poses at Rancho High School Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2022. D’Silva is the newly-elected assemblyman for Assembly District 28.
Sunday, Nov. 27, 2022 | 2 a.m.
Reuben D’Silva remembers the deportation letter arriving years ago at his family’s northeast Las Vegas home explaining that his mother would have to return to their native India.
Most of the family living in that cramped one-bedroom apartment, including D’Silva, were undocumented.
He remembers watching his father work countless hours delivering pizzas, driving a bus, clerking at a bank or whatever odd job he could find to provide for his household. That included sending his children to private school at St. Christopher Catholic Church.
D’Silva would never complain about his childhood or the struggles of an immigrant family — because Mom and Dad wouldn’t hear of it.
Instead, they insisted that D’Silva and his three siblings become contributing members of the community and make their new home a better place.
That mantra has stuck with D’Silva, who has spent nearly a decade teaching U.S. history at Rancho High School, his alma mater, and who this month was elected to represent his community in the Nevada Assembly.
He is believed to be the first Indian-American to serve in the Nevada Legislature, where he intends to advocate for educational and health care enhancements for his constituents in the district which many immigrant families call home.
It’s been home to his family for three decades. They migrated from India to Queens, N.Y., where they lived for about two years before settling in a home near Civic Center Drive and Lake Mead Boulevard in Las Vegas.
“America is the greatest country on the planet,” the Democrat D’Silva said. “This democracy gives folks opportunity they wouldn’t have in another country. Serving is the ultimate way of giving back. Any of us, no matter who you are, can take on a public office. A lot of countries don’t allow immigrants to have these positions, so it’s a great honor.”
This isn’t the first time D’Silva has been inspired to serve.
He joined the U.S. Marine Corps after high school in 2004 at the height of the Iraq War, where he was awarded the Purple Heart and Naval Achievement Medal after being shot through the forearm when his convoy in Fallujah came under attack June 6, 2007, he said. Despite being shot, he was able to return fire and hold off the enemy to allow other Marines to escape unharmed.
“June 6. That was my D-Day,” D’Silva said, drawing a parallel between the day he was shot and the June 6, 1944, invasion of Normandy, France, by Allied troops during World War II.
D’Silva said he was fortunate to only be left with a hole in his arm. He spent months in the hospital and underwent seven surgeries to reconstruct his arm, which included taking bone grafts from his thigh.
As a result, he can’t hold anything heavier than 5 pounds— his arm and hand lack strength — but he’ll never complain “because many of the others were killed or are amputees living with horrible injuries.”
While the highly dangerous experience and long rehab brought much emotional stress, the incident led to one of D’Silva’s proudest moments: Becoming a U.S. citizen.
D’Silva said a caseworker with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services took interest in the citizenship application of a wounded veteran, paving the way for his undocumented status to finally end.
“Even with those crazy (deportation) letters from the government, I never lost faith in the country,” he said. “That comes from my Mom and Dad. They said you need to serve and give back.”
Isaac Barron, his former soccer coach and teacher at Rancho, visited D’Silva at the military hospital in San Diego not knowing what to expect. Barron was greeted by the same old D’Silva, who is known by friends for always being enthusiastic.
Barron, who serves on the North Las Vegas City Council and still teaches at Rancho, has long been D’Silva’s mentor. In high school, he said D’Silva was one of the most popular students on campus, where he was part of the Black Student Union and Hispanic Student Union — despite not being Black nor Hispanic, although many have mistaken him as a Latino because of his last name, D’Silva said.
“You never know when he is down because he is always in good spirits, always chipper,” Barron said. “He was a big man on campus — homecoming kid, student body leadership, you name it. He was one of those guys everyone knew, who was very congenial and really good at moving between groups of kids.”
D’Silva after his military service shifted his focus to education. He graduated from UNLV with an undergraduate history degree, and obtained a master’s degree in global studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He earned a second master’s degree from Yale University in comparative religion and politics.
The job offers started to flow in after that from all over, but D’Silva didn’t want them. Rather, it was time to continue giving back to northeast Las Vegas. He took a job teaching at Rancho.
He’s done a little bit of everything at Rancho, from coaching basketball to advising clubs and promoting civic responsibility. Being an educator isn’t the best-paying job, but for D’Silva you can’t put a price tag on giving back to a future generation. He says he sees a little of himself in his students.
“A lot of people think I am crazy, but coming back to Rancho has been one of the best decisions of my life,” he said.
Spend one school period in D’Silva’s classroom, and his ability to connect with students is obvious, Barron said.
“The students care for him and love him,” Barron said. “Not too many teachers have an influence to bring nations and cultures together, but he’s doing just that in the classroom. He’ll continue doing that (in the Assembly).”
D’Silva will take a leave of absence from the Clark County School District for the remainder of the academic year to serve in the biennial Nevada Legislature, which meets for 120 days starting Feb. 6. But his heart will still be at Rancho, and other public schools who could use a boost from enhanced education funding — something that is his unquestioned top priority.
He was endorsed in his campaign against Republican Clint Brown — whom he won 66% of the vote against — by the Clark County Education Association and Felicia Ortiz, president of the Nevada State Board of Education.
He’s already talked with the union about ways to advocate in Carson City for educators and students, and says “it will take many legislative sessions” with like-minded lawmakers to fully address funding shortfalls.
He said there needed to be more legislation similar to Assembly Bill 495, which passed in the 2021 session and placed a 1% levy on gold and silver mines in Nevada to generate an estimated $85 million in public school funding each year.
“We need to find the way to get K-12 education funded properly,” he stresses.
D’Silva also plans to push for legislation that helps better the economy in northeast Las Vegas, saying access to jobs — especially good-paying jobs — is vital to residents of his district where the median family income is $35,472.
There’s much more he hopes to achieve, including having a “serious discussion about having a full-blown hospital in the northeast “because anyone who has a heart attack or gets in a car accident is miles away from proper care.”
And while it’s not a state issue, D’Silva has promised constituents that he would strongly urge Nevada’s federal delegation to pass immigration reform with a path to citizenship. He grew up in a household where deportation fears affected his family’s ability to live without stress, and he doesn’t want that circumstance to be a hurdle for others to contribute to the community.
“Let’s bring people out of the shadows and into the economy,” he said. “Let’s give everyone access to education and getting good-paying jobs.”
