Edward James Olmos Asks for Support for Legendary East L.A. Math Teacher Jaime Escalante

Jaime Escalante, the East L.A. high school math teacher who was immortalized in the 1988 film “Stand and Deliver” is battling cancer.  According to the film’s star and Escalante’s friend, Edward James Olmos, the legendary educator is struggling to pay for his treatment.  Olmos has announced a request for donations to help Escalante.

“The treatment he needs has depleted all the funds his family can raise,” Olmos said in the announcement on his website. The family “did not want to ask for help, but we took it upon ourselves to get the word out to all the country and around the world, to make his final days as comfortable as possible — and maybe even give him a chance to beat the cancer that has afflicted him.”

Jaime Escalante was born in La Paz, Bolivia and immigrated to the United States with his parents in the early 1960s.  He later took a job as a teacher at Garfield High School, where his passionate resolve led him to transform the troubled school’s calculus program into a national model for excellence in public education.

In 1999, Escalante returned to his native Bolivia to teach math.  ”I wanted to do something for my country, like I did something in East L.A. for the barrio,” he told the Los Angeles Times in a 1999 interview.  He currently resides in his wife’s hometown of Cochabamba.

LA Times