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After participating in her father\u2019s sales schemes throughout California, including Solano County, Sarah Lopez spent 17 years building a life in Vallejo while keeping her family\u2019s unusual past a secret. (Courtesy)<\/p>\nSarah Lopez thought she was living a normal childhood.<\/p>\n
By age 11, she had moved nearly 30 times, lived in a 34-foot motorhome, and traveled throughout California, including Solano County, selling newspaper subscriptions and See\u2019s candy outside grocery stores and working at flea markets.<\/p>\n
To Lopez, her family was simply hardworking.<\/p>\n
Never once did she suspect that she, and seven other children, had been helping to generate more than $250,000 in approximately 18 months through candy sales.<\/p>\n
Now nearly three decades later, Lopez is telling her story and looking back at her childhood with renewed perspective in her debut memoir, \u201cI Chose to Be Here: Loyalty, Lies, and Leaving the Con,\u201d exploring her upbringing as the daughter of a con artist, her involvement in schemes she didn\u2019t fully understand, and the decades she spent reinventing herself while keeping her past largely private.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were moments in my childhood that were traumatizing. I had to write those scenes, and then sometimes I\u2019d have to give myself a long break. I\u2019d have to take weeks off just to recover from having to relive trauma,\u201d said Lopez.<\/p>\n
Lopez recalled that her father taught her and her siblings how to read people, anticipate objections, and persuade customers using carefully rehearsed sales pitches outside grocery stores.<\/p>\n
Although Lopez began speaking publicly about her childhood 20 years ago, she first put her experiences into writing for a senior project in high school.<\/p>\n
It was the first time she truly took ownership of her story.<\/p>\n
After participating in her father\u2019s sales schemes throughout California, including Solano County, Sarah Lopez spent 17 years building a life in Vallejo while keeping her family\u2019s unusual past a secret. (Courtesy)<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a lot of backlash because I was living in a small town in St. Helena. It was very surprising to the community, but I learned that telling my story actually helped people because I started to talk with high school students about not using the past as a crutch, but as a reason to succeed,\u201d said Lopez.<\/p>\n
After a childhood marked by constant moves and uncertainty, Lopez found stability in Vallejo, where she settled in 2009 and spent the next 17 years.<\/p>\n
She also worked as a show announcer at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom for 11 years.<\/p>\n
Until two years ago, Lopez served as director of communications and community engagement for Dublin Unified School District, advising education leaders through emergencies, public health crises, threats, labor negotiations, and devastating community losses.<\/p>\n
Her work earned her 10 California School Public Relations Association awards and national recognition.<\/p>\n
As budget cuts across the state threatened school district communications positions, including public information officer roles, Lopez decided to step down from her role.<\/p>\n
She saw the transition as the perfect opportunity to sit down and write her memoir.<\/p>\n
When she initially began writing her manuscript, she was surprised at how much of the book she would need to cut.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I first wrote the manuscript, it came out to about 128,000 words. It took seven months to write. I worked with a developmental editor, who helped me blow apart the manuscript and put it together in a format that readers could engage with,\u201d said Lopez.<\/p>\n
Over the next year and a half, she cut 57,000 words.<\/p>\n
\u201cThroughout the process of working alongside an editor, once a story is written, the story is no longer yours. If you want the story to be yours, you just write in a journal,\u201d said Lopez. \u201cI wanted this story to be for readers, so I had to let go of things that were not carrying the manuscript forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
The process wasn\u2019t always easy, however.<\/p>\n
Writing her memoir meant revisiting traumatic experiences from her childhood and confronting its lasting effects into adulthood.<\/p>\n
The book opens with Lopez experiencing a mental health crisis in spring 2023.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was difficult writing those scenes because you have to live in the moment again. You really have to fully experience it with all of your senses. What did touch feel like? What did I smell? You have to engage with all of those senses in order to write the scene,\u201d said Lopez. \u201cHowever, I knew that I wasn\u2019t alone.\u201d<\/p>\n
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“I Chose to Be Here: Loyalty, Lies, and Leaving the Con” released on Oct. 21, 2026 and is available to order through Amazon and Barnes & Noble. (Courtesy)<\/p>\n
It was the first time Lopez said three words that she had avoided her entire life: \u201cI need help.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be somebody who\u2019s not famous \u2014 you know, I\u2019m just a local girl from Vallejo \u2014 and for (One Anthem Press) to believe in it enough is really gratifying,\u201d said Lopez.<\/p>\n
Despite the hardships she endured throughout her childhood and into adulthood, Lopez has learned to use her past as a stepping stone toward success rather than allowing it to define her.<\/p>\n
She attended St. Helena High School in Napa County before becoming a first-generation college graduate of San Jose State University.<\/p>\n
Lopez competed in the Miss America Organization for eight years, earned $21,000 in scholarships, and built an award-winning career in public relations and crisis communications.<\/p>\n
Above all, she hopes readers take away four words: \u201cYou are not alone.\u201d<\/p>\n
She will appear at the Napa Valley Book Festival on Saturday, Nov. 14, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Blue Oak School, 1455 Polk St., Napa.<\/p>\n
To learn more about Sarah Lopez and her debut memoir \u201cI Chose to Be Here: Loyalty, Lies, and Leaving the Con,\u201d visit \/authorsarahlopez.com\/<\/a> and follow her Instagram: \/www.instagram.com\/authorsarahlopez<\/a><\/p>\n \t\t\t