By Steffan Chirazi, Metallica, December 3, 2019
From the moment Cat Cvengros bounds out to meet us in the lobby of the Second Harvest Food Bank in San Jose, there is an enthusiasm about her which is both unique and enormous. She has a dazzling smile, excitable voice, and is instantly both engaging and impossible to dislike. Cat Cvengros is someone whose passion for giant boxes of oranges or huge palettes of potatoes is bordering on incredible. Either she is one of the greatest marketing people an Ivy League college has produced, or there is a deep and feral reason as to why she finds so much joy in what she does. I am intrigued and ask her to dig deep into her childhood for a “moment” or “observed situation” that perhaps left her wanting to do more for those in need.
“We don’t always look like our trauma,” she smiles quietly. “When I was little we went without food. I remember my stepmother took my father’s coin collection to the store and spent it like money, so that a quarter that [to us] was probably worth, you know, 15 dollars, [in the store amounted to just] a quarter…”
Journalists, eh?! There, Steffan, is your observed situation, the “moment” you asked about. Except it proves to be a little more than that, as I will learn in the proceeding minutes. It is another reminder that books most certainly should not be judged by covers, let alone pre-conceptions. Among the many eye-opening things I will learn about her, Cat will tell me (with a smile – there is nearly always a smile regardless of the tale’s gravity) that she listened to The Black Album incessantly at a time when the streets and struggle were major factors in her life, and as we discuss the hunger and temporary homelessness she endured as a child, Cat decides to share the moment when she would no longer allow herself to feel downtrodden.
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