I had never sent a body to Mexico before.

In the Gospel of Mark, four friends carry a paralyzed man across town to the house where Jesus is teaching. When they arrive, the place is so packed there is no getting through the door. So they climb onto the roof and start digging a hole in it.

I assume those four were not roofers. I'm sure nobody in that group knew the right way to open a roof. They knew their friend needed to be inside that room, so they figured it out.

I find myself in those situations often at Unidos.

Recently, a couple of our neighbors walked over to Casa Unidos. One of their cousins had been killed by a driver who did not stop as he rode his bike. He was unmarried with no immediate family here, so as his next of kin, she was tasked with getting him to his mother in Mexico to be buried at home. She does not speak English and did not know where to even begin.

She knocked on our door trusting that we would be able to help. I had never sent a body to Mexico before. No one at Unidos knew how this worked.

So the three of us got to work.

I started calling funeral homes and learned as I went. I learned that nothing moves until the hit-and-run report says what it needs to say, that the California Victim Compensation Board can help with funeral and burial costs, that the Mexican Consulate walks families through repatriation, that a funeral home here can talk to a funeral home in Mexico once somebody makes the call.

She was grateful for every phone call. I kept thinking she had the harder job. She was getting her cousin home.

This is one of many cases at Unidos: An office that closes before they can get off work, a form in a language they don't understand, or a process no one explains. Our neighbors are outside the house (and we are too).

So we go up. Some weeks the roof is a passport application. Some weeks it is a Saddleback enrollment process. This month it was a death certificate and a consulate appointment. We are not experts on any of it when we start.

Different roof. Same goal: getting people inside where they need to be.

Ester Ocampo

Volunteer & Communication Director