Omar López can point to a few instances in his past that set him on the right track.

That moment when his mother pointed to a man in an orange jumpsuit sweeping the streets of Mexico City and told him that he would have to stay in school or he would end up in a similar position.

His father, a baker with a sixth-grade education, delivering a similar message as they rose at 3 a.m. to start preparing the dough and heating the ovens.

Having a few trusted mentors who encouraged him to keep attending classes and stay on the cross-country team rather than getting into trouble.

But it wasn’t until he took a few sociology classes in college that López realized how fortunate he had been.

“I started noticing, man, I’m pretty lucky,” he said. “A lot of my friends with very similar backgrounds and abilities were either deported, dead, or in jail.”

Throughout his remarkable career—as a social worker specializing in adoption services for Spanish-speaking families, as an international liaison handling complicated issues related to child welfare, and now as a clinical associate professor and assistant director of field education at the USC School of Social Work—López said he has felt blessed to have the opportunity to help others, particularly children and families in vulnerable populations.

“I’ve been very fortunate,” he said. “Being in a position to give back really drives me.”

A rough start

As a self-described knucklehead growing up in a poor area of Mexico City, López said he proved to be too much of a handful for his hardworking single mother. By the time he finished sixth grade, she had enough and shipped him off to live with his father in the United States.

He landed in Lake Elsinore, a city in western Riverside County, at 12 years old with no immigration documents and a rowdy disposition.

“I was in an area that wasn’t the greatest—gangs, prostitution, drugs,” he said. “Coming to this country as an immigrant, not speaking a word of English, was kind of rough, so I ended up hanging out with the wrong crowd.”

His father had good intentions but poor parenting skills, López said, letting him get away with misbehaving for several years. When his father remarried and tried to set some new boundaries, it didn’t sit well with López, who began sleeping in his car or spending the night with friends so he didn’t have to follow the rules at home.

Positive influences

But not everything was bleak. As a freshman, he had joined the cross-country team to spend more time with a girlfriend on the squad. They eventually split up, but his coach refused to let him quit running.

“I ended up sticking with it,” López said. “That in a way saved me. It minimized the number of hours I was on the street.”

He had managed to attend class often enough to maintain decent grades and even completed a few advanced courses. A school counselor encouraged him to apply to college and he was accepted to the University of California, San Diego.

By that time, he was a permanent resident; his father had been working diligently behind the scenes to ensure López was shepherded through the naturalization process.

After taking an elective course on the U.S. education system, López said he became aware of how many minority groups had fewer opportunities to succeed.

“The lightbulb started going off,” he said.

He enrolled in more sociology courses and, at the urging of one of his professors, quit his janitorial work-study job to take a position with the Chicano Federation, a nonprofit that provides social services and advocates for Latino issues.

A shift to social work

As he neared the end of his undergraduate studies in sociology and Spanish literature, López was introduced to Maria Zuniga, a board member of the Chicano Federation and a longtime professor of social work at San Diego State University. After a five-minute conversation, she had convinced him to look into a stipend program that provided nearly $40,000 toward graduate education and other expenses as long as participants agreed to work in public child welfare services after graduation.

“So you mean they will pay me to go to school to do what I want to do anyway and then they will give me a job afterward?” López said. “It sounded like a pretty good deal.”

He earned his master’s degree in social work and by 23 had been hired by San Diego County as a social worker specializing in adoptions. He worked closely with adoptive families that primarily spoke Spanish through a program called Nuestros Niños.

“I developed more expertise in working on international cases, essentially dependents that were placed in Guatemala, Mexico, or other countries,” he said.

That experience landed him a gig as international liaison for the county, placing him in charge of facilitating communication with other countries relating to child welfare issues such as repatriation of children, welfare checks, and adoptions.

Later recruited to oversee internships and training for child protective services, López helped students at his alma mater, San Diego State University, connect with field instructors and county agencies. When the county experienced budget cuts and eliminated his position in 2009, the university hired him to perform the same role. A year later, the USC School of Social Work offered him a similar job at its San Diego Academic Center.

Seeking a greater impact

Throughout his time with the county, López became involved with various boards and organizations, including taking on leadership roles with the county employee union.

“I was an idealistic 23-year-old,” he said. “I was going to change the world.”

His experience, first as union steward and then vice president and president, helped him understand how to present issues and build relationships in a productive manner. And although he enjoyed his clinical work as a social worker, López said he began to look for more impactful ways to improve the child welfare system.

“In the back of my mind, I always saw more benefit working at the macro level,” he said. “I didn’t know how and I didn’t really know what that meant, but I think it’s why I was attracted to being in the union, understanding systems, and working with policy to have more of an impact on families.”

He certainly brought that mindset to his role at the USC School of Social Work, spearheading a successful application for a $1.4 million training grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration. Part of the Obama administration’s efforts to address gun violence, the grant is designed to increase the size of the behavioral health services workforce.

Filling the gap

López said a common theme among recent mass shootings has been that the perpetrators are often young men between the ages of 16 and 25 who were unable to access mental health and behavioral health services.

“As a country, we’re not doing a good job of helping these individuals or providing them with services that are necessary to prevent these outcomes,” he said.

The grant will provide more than $1 million in stipends to students interested in issues of substance abuse, mental health, and violence. López and his colleagues are still developing the selection process, but he said students who know about the program are already expressing interest.

“It’s going to be very competitive,” he said. “This is allowing me to help out even more so at the macro level.”

But López is not one to sit back and congratulate himself. He is continuing to push forward with other initiatives, including completing a doctorate program in higher education administration at USC and teaching leadership and field practicum courses.

He is also serving as an advisor to the Mexican government on issues such as business, politics, immigration, and policy as part of a council of approximately 100 individuals from North America. He views it as another way to have an influence at a higher level and inspire others in social work to pursue a similar path.

“All of these experiences are great because I use them in my teaching,” he said. “I can give my students concrete examples of what a social workers can do in a bunch of different fields.”