Mayor returns home to try to lift town plagued by poverty

Beyond the boarded-up buildings and patchwork fences that others view as eyesores, Huron Mayor Rey Leon sees potential in this tiny central California farm town that has been mired in poverty for decades.Leon, 45, was a reluctant and unlikely leader for one of the state’s poorest cities. Huron is home to a large Latino population where mostly seasonal work leaves 2 in 5 residents in poverty and only about a quarter of adults have high school degrees.He graduated from the local high school, earned a degree at the University of California, Berkeley, and spent the bulk of his career as a clean air advocate and champion of environmental justice in nearby Fresno before returning a couple of years ago.“I came back home not because we have the good coffee shop, not because we have the nice plaza to hang out at or the trails to walk around, but because my community deserves that, and I want to make it exist,” Leon said.He returned home and discovered later he was a “Chicano nerd” with a curiosity for learning rather than following in the path of his older brothers. Several of them ended up behind bars.