All the Poor, Honest Working People Who Could Have Benefitted from $1.9M

My aunt runs a small beauty parlor in Maite. The only time we get to see her on Christmas, Mother’s Day, any day of the week, is if we go to the shop to bring her food. She works every day, even the days the shop is closed. She has toiled for decades in the Philippines, then Saipan, then Guam. Tita Diding lives a very simple life in the studio that adjoins the beauty parlor. For as hard as she has worked, I doubt she has seen what $1.9 million looks like.

Another aunt now struggles in her old age with a walker and without the means to afford the slight reprieve of assisted living or an every-now-and-then caretaker. She has a great government job, a management position at that, and did everything right all her life. She saved up. She has her own place where she lives alone, and a car she can no longer drive. The $1.9 million Lieutenant Governor Joshua Tenorio’s family members are accused by a federal grand jury of conspiring to steal could have improved this aunt’s life 20 times over.

My friend Jessilyn lives in a makeshift shanty in the jungle area behind Harmon Loop Motel along Route 16. Every day for years she has begged for money and food in front of Shirley’s or at the intersection. I haven’t seen her lately. Her phone was stolen, so I can’t contact her. She recently was diagnosed with a brain tumor after she collapsed while begging and was rushed to the hospital. She doesn’t have Medicaid or any type of public assistance because she doesn’t have an identification card. That $1.9 million could save her life, and feed her and everyone who lives in that cardboard box they call a home for the rest of their lives.

Last Friday I interviewed a group of six people who are blind or otherwise have major vision impairment as they spent time together to support each other at the Barrigada Mayor’s Office. Mayor June Blas, the only public official to give this group the time of day and more so a place where they can come together and learn self sufficiency from each other, listed off all the beautiful things she and the vice mayor have been able to provide for this blind community, for the youth of their village, for sports teams, for people living with disabilities, for veterans, and for the manamko on the little bit of funding they have. And it is no where near $1.9 million. That is not to mention how much good $1.9 million could do for this community of blind people and the other blind and vision impaired throughout the island who just want to belong to this community.

Attorney General Douglas Moylan wants to provide a safe place for up to 20 homeless men, women, and children to sleep at night – off the streets, away from the violence and the drugs – on a rotating basis for one year. His Project Dignity would cost just a little more than half of the $1.9 million the lieutenant governor’s family is accused of corruptly siphoning from the federal government. Ironically, the administration campaigned hard to stop Mr. Moylan’s effort to help the poor and the homeless as it defends the criminally charged who allegedly ripped off the poor and the homeless.

We all make mistakes. Some of us screw people over more often than others do. But unlike the Tenorios, we don’t have access to the halls of power in order to allegedly orchestrate massive fraud against the poor. And unlike Josh Tenorio, none of us are holding onto that power and influence after evidence and accusation by the federal government emerged indicating this corruption.

Yet Mr. Tenorio is the acting governor, Adelup won’t directly answer reporters’ questions about the corruption scandal, top administration officials attempted to orchestrate a public manipulation campaign to benefit Josh Tenorio’s 2026 gubernatorial run through this present debacle, no one from the administration has apologized to the people and to the victims of the alleged fraud, and the poor and the most vulnerable of our community continue to suffer.

And not just the poor … every hard working person who struggles to earn an honest living in this island … Guamanians who never have and never will know the luxuries of the travel and the hand bags and the fine dining and the glamorous homes and property ownerships the Tenorios have managed to enjoy. All the while, the people of Guam are drowning in debt, suffering in silence, and just trying to get by, on an honest day’s work.

I remember inviting Mr. Tenorio to the Zero Down Subdivision in Yigo after Super Typhoon Mawar. This was after Dennis and Lena Rodriguez told us that no government agency or public official had checked on the tenants of that shanty town. When Kandit went into that place with the Rodriguez’s Todu Guam Foundation, what we found was a town that looked leveled by a bomb. Hardly any structure left untouched. People sitting on soaked mattresses under the sun tending to their wounds. Roadways blocked by felled trees, preventing access from emergency vehicles that never responded to the place in the aftermath of the storm just as the Department of Public Works never responded to clear the trees blocking the roads. The entire community of hundreds of children, people with disabilities, and the elderly was without any drinking water. No medicine or bandages to help with the wounds and the spread of disease. Luckily, Habibi Catering was providing hot meals once a day, and Todu Guam was coordinating medical care.

You know what the lieutenant governor of Guam told us through his chief of staff? That it was too dangerous for him to go there.

That has stayed with me the past two years. So, when Charissa Tenorio was raided on August 19 last year, and she told her brother Joshua Tenorio what had happened, and Joshua Tenorio failed to say anything to the people of Guam about the investigation and the raid and the impending indictments, I was not surprised one bit. He announced he was running for governor months before that raid on the premise, he said, of wanting to prioritize the fight against poverty. But what has he done for the poor, except to defend a conspiracy that allegedly stole from them, and to consider the poor too dangerous to visit when they needed him most.

The Tenorios must be displaced from the government of Guam and forbidden from ever coming close to the halls of power. Joshua Tenorio must resign and apologize to the people of Guam, and to the governor.