San Diego Magazine's Happy Half Hour

Mariana Cardenas went home that day, gathered her five kids, told them the news. Then she called all the government assistance programs and informed them the Cardenas family no longer needed their help. “My oldest son is autistic,” she explains. “Two weeks earlier he’d told me he wanted to go to art school and I had to tell him we couldn’t afford it. So I got to tell him he was going.” The this that happened is one of my favorite stories of good I’ve come across in the San Diego food and drink scene. Mariana shares her story on today’s podcast. How she’d taken a job as a janitor for the Navy in Chula Vista, and worked her way into the kitchen. How she spent 16 years in the Navy, eventually becoming executive chef of the region. When the pandemic hit, she left and took a job at beloved local burger joint, The Balboa. She’d been working there for four months when the owner called her to his office. “I thought I was gonna get fired,” she says. He asked her if she wanted The Balboa. “Of course I like working here