[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 6134-6135]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  HONORING THE LIFE OF GUILLERMO OCHOA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hardy). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 2015, the gentleman from California (Mr. Denham) 
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. DENHAM. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to acknowledge and honor the 
life of a beloved leader in the Ceres community, former Ceres City 
Councilmember Guillermo Ochoa. The beloved father, son, son-in-law, 
brother, and uncle died at the age of 54 on Monday, March 2.
  Guillermo was born on August 29, 1960. He immigrated to Ceres, 
California, from Mexico when he was 9 and became an American citizen. 
He attended school in Ceres at Caswell Elementary School, Mae Hensley 
Junior High School, and Ceres High School.
  After graduating from Ceres High in 1979, Guillermo attended Modesto 
Junior College and transferred to St. Mary's College of California. He 
earned a B.S. in business administration and economics from St. Mary's 
in 1984.
  Over the course of 17 years, Guillermo was employed in an 
administrative capacity for several employers, including Campbell's 
Soup, Diamond of California, Yellow Roadway, and ConAgra Foods.
  Guillermo became a dedicated public servant in 2005, when he was 
appointed to the Ceres City Council. He ran for a seat on the city 
council 2 years later and won, making him the first Latino immigrant to 
become an elected city councilmember in Ceres.
  ``Working and succeeding together'' was a slogan Guillermo lived by. 
He demonstrated his dedication to community service through the many 
committees, boards, and organizations he was a member of.
  The list includes the Ceres Chamber of Commerce, the Society for 
Human Resources Management, the StanCOG Policy Board, the Tuolumne 
River Regional Park committee, the Mello-Roos joint powers authority 
board, the City-School Committees, the Ceres Partnership for Healthy 
Children Committee, the Howard Stevenson Memorial Committee, the Daniel 
Whitmore House Preservation Committee, and the Latino Community 
Roundtable. He also served as president and vice president of the 
Hispanic Leadership Council during various periods of his life.
  He was a true servant to the public and a strong community leader. He 
motivated Ceres students to actively learn, working diligently with a 
Modesto group of students in an HLC organization called Hispanic Youth 
Leadership Council. The council has had a lasting impact on the 
educational success of students in both communities.
  Although he was not reelected again in 2011, a few years later, he 
achieved his true dream of opening his own business, Garcia's Market, a 
new grocery store in Empire, California. To this day, Garcia's Market 
remains a vibrant testament to the economic vitality of the American 
free enterprise system.
  One has to admire men like Guillermo Ochoa, who display consistent 
dedication to public service. He remained active in the community even 
after he was unseated from the city council.
  Guillermo was once asked what sets him apart. His response was: ``My 
business and professional experience, as well as being a product of two 
diverse cultures, which helps me understand the issues that face our 
community as a whole.''
  Guillermo has set a loving standard of humanity for us all to 
remember him by. Guillermo leaves behind his wife, Martha Ochoa; a 
daughter, Kimberly Ochoa; and a son, Christian Ochoa--each of them from 
Ceres, California.
  Also from Ceres, he leaves behind his father, Guillermo Ochoa, Sr.; 
mother, Maria Ochoa; sister, Luz Ochoa; nephew, Alexis Ochoa; sister, 
Irma Ochoa; brother-in-law, Rosendo Ruiz; nieces, Kassandra Ruiz and 
Clarissa Ruiz; and nephew, Angel Ruiz.
  Mr. Speaker, please join me in honoring and recognizing my very, very 
good friend for his unwavering leadership and many accomplishments and 
contributions to our community.
  He had a genuine love for the people and community he worked so hard 
to help. We will have a long memory of him.
  I now yield to the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Mooney).


                           Syrian Atrocities

  Mr. MOONEY of West Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to lend a 
voice to the people of Syria, many of whom have been silenced by a 
cruel and oppressive dictator.
  This very moment, 5,500 miles from this Chamber, in the country of 
Syria, innocent people are suffering under a regime bent on crushing 
freedom.

[[Page 6135]]

  I met recently with a group of Syrian Americans in Charleston, West 
Virginia, my congressional district. Many of them have family members 
and loved ones in Syria. The stories I heard are alarming.
  Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad is waging an all-out war against his 
own people, with one goal in mind, to muzzle any voice that speaks out 
in opposition to his regime.
  People are suffering. Four out of five Syrians live in poverty. More 
than 200,000 people have been killed; 1 million have been wounded, and 
more than 3 million Syrians have fled the country.
  Assad has shown that he will use any means necessary to maintain his 
dictatorship. He has rained down chemical weapons from the sky onto 
neighborhoods. He has dropped cluster bombs and barrel bombs into 
residential buildings occupied by women and children.
  He has placed entire communities under siege, starving peaceful 
residents into submission. He has even bombed hospitals full of people 
recovering from his attacks.
  I would now like to share a few stories that I have heard from my 
constituents, with whom I met just this previous Monday.
  First, Dana Ashbani has family that lives in Syria. Several of her 
cousins were brutally killed by the Assad regime.
  One summer night, in 2013, gunfire rang out in the streets of the 
neighborhood in which Dana's cousin lived. Fearing for her life, she 
grabbed her husband and her three young children and rushed toward a 
nearby basement for safety; but they were met by Assad's thugs and 
mercilessly gunned down, their bodies mutilated beyond recognition.
  Dr. Rhagda Sahloul is an endocrinologist in Charleston. Her sister 
Dalia lives in Syria with her husband and their two children, Shahed 
and Omar, aged 7 and 11. Their town fell under siege by the Assad 
military in 2013.
  The residents are running low on food and are surviving on a diet of 
dry noodles and, if they are lucky, vegetables that they grow on their 
rooftops and balconies. Without electricity, they have stripped their 
streets bare of trees to keep themselves warm on cold nights. No one 
even wants to think about next winter.
  Recently, a foreign humanitarian organization dropped relief 
materials for the town, and Dalia's husband set up a marketplace in his 
home to facilitate the bartering of goods, but it didn't last long. The 
Assad regime bombed their home, destroying their little market and 
killing three people.
  Dr. Khaled was an orthopedic surgeon in Aleppo before the conflict in 
Syria began, but he was forced to flee to Idlib, as he was targeted by 
the government. In Idlib, he worked in several field hospitals and 
witnessed numerous aerial attacks.
  One of these attacks occurred on a new orthopedic center on the day 
of its opening in March 2013. The missile struck the hospital, killing 
one patient, injuring several people, and forcing the facility to shut 
down.
  In June 2012, government forces entered Douma, a suburb of Damascus, 
and ordered everyone out of their apartments. Citizens were lined up 
and told to face the wall.
  Mattessem, an 11-month-old baby at the time, was held by his mother, 
with his father and 10-year-old sister Fatima by her side. Fatima asked 
the soldiers to spare the life of her baby brother, offering $2, all 
the money she had in her pocket. The soldiers shot anyway.
  As Fatima's father was shot, he fell onto Fatima, protecting her from 
the bullets. One bullet went through Mattessem and killed their mother. 
In a family of 25, only four survived.
  These are just a few of the stories that I have heard, but they 
should be a call to action.
  The Commander in Chief of our powerful military, President Obama, 
appropriately recognized the severity of the situation in Syria, 
drawing a red line at chemical weapons; but Assad has crossed that red 
line repeatedly, with impunity, and the President has failed to rise to 
the challenge. According to press reports, Assad's regime launched 
another chemical weapon on the Syrian people just this past week.
  We need leadership from the President in the face of grave human 
rights violations in Syria, not faux red lines and empty threats. 
President Obama is not providing that leadership, and people in Syria 
are suffering because of it.
  Mr. DENHAM. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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