She came to Memphis to get lifesaving healthcare. Now she wants to make sure everyone in the state has the same opportunities

Back then, Salinas was just a seven-year-old girl from Bolivia seeking affordable healthcare.

She was sick and couldn’t walk. Her family knew she had an aggressive tumor, but they were having difficulties getting a diagnosis in Bolivia. 

No diagnosis meant they couldn’t determine which treatment to follow.

“We knew I had something really bad, because we're having a hard time getting [a] diagnosis, and once we kind of had an idea of what it may be, my family knew that I needed to leave Bolivia,” said Salinas.

It was Salinas’ father, Omar, who took her across the continent to the U.S. seeking treatment for his daughter. 

New York was their first stop, but the price for health care to treat her aggressive cancer, an Ewing Sarcoma, required a $250,000 down payment, which they couldn’t afford.

As Salinas recalls, it was a random stranger who took on her situation and published it.

“I think my story really demonstrates the power of journalism,” Salinas said. 

Next thing her family knew, Emmy-winning actress Marlo Thomas was forwarding her story over to St. Jude’s in Memphis, changing Salinas and her family’s life.

“I just remember [it] like it was yesterday, Marlo calling saying, ‘We're getting the family there, y'all work it out, we're getting the family there,’” Malone recalled.

Thomas currently serves as the national outreach director of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Her dad, Danny Thomas, founded St. Jude in 1962.

“The next thing I know, Gabby and her family were at the Memphis International Airport, and we were getting them to the hospital for Gabby to be assessed and treated,” Malone said. “We had a translator there to kind of work with the family to make sure that they had everything that they needed as a part of that process.”

Unlike the hospital in New York, Salinas was able to get health care in Memphis regardless of their ability to pay.

Per St. Jude’s policy, all patients at the hospital receive treatment, regardless of their financial situation. 

For Salinas and her family that meant aid not only with treatment, but also with housing and transportation, which St. Jude covers systematically for their patients when needed.

The cancer treatments were harsh, but those same treatments Salinas took went on to become standards of care. 

Since opening its doors in 1962, St. Jude has aided in increasing the survival rate of childhood cancer from 20 percent to 80 percent today.

Being in that environment also fed Salinas’ scientific curiosity.

She was constantly asking her medical team questions: "What are you doing?" "Why are you doing it?" "How does it work?" "Why do the medicines make me feel this way?" "Why do we need a change of medicines?"

“I remember once how a nurse was taking my blood, and I was like, ‘Well, why are there different tubes?’ My mom was like, ‘Gabby, stop questions,’” Salinas said.

Salinas went on to become a biochemist, having earned a degree in Biochemistry from Christian Brothers University and a Masters in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Kentucky.

Malone believes this scientific curiosity is an asset that will be well used in Nashville.

“She utilizes that scientific mind to really analyze things, and so she's going to take that to the State House of Representatives, and she's going to be a force to be reckoned with, because she's a consensus builder,” Malone said.

Even amidst treatment of her aggressive tumor, one of her most memorable experiences of growing up in a hospital was when Peter Doherty won the Nobel Prize.

In 1996 Doherty won the Nobel Prize alongside Rolf Zinkernagel for their discoveries on how the immune system recognizes virus infected cells. Their research shows that T-cells kill infected cells, but only if the body recognizes them as foreign bodies. 

The discovery helped produce vaccines and medicines, and provided a better understanding of how diseases like cancer work. Doherty works at St. Jude to this day.

Not a lot of seven-year-olds know what a Nobel Prize is, but at St. Jude, everybody wanted to know Peter Doherty.

“I don't think many 7-year-olds get to experience a Nobel Prize winning scientist walking down the hallways of St Jude, like he would walk down the hallways, or he would sit down for lunch I was like, I want to be like him, I want to do what he's doing,” Salinas said.

For Salinas, Doherty is a rock star. Years later, she went back to St. Jude, this time working for the Department of Chemical Biology and Therapeutics. She recalls once sharing an elevator ride with Doherty, and that moment took her back to being seven-years-old, excited to be near so much scientific discoveries and knowledge.

“There were hard times being a patient, but [these are] the things that stick with me and live in my heart,” Salinas said.

Salinas would get cancer treatments two more times. 

She was 15-years-old when a new cancer formed, Papillary Carcinoma. She was 19-years-old when it came back. Both times she was able to get treatment at St. Jude. All three times she was able to beat it.

But beating cancer was not all the challenges life was going to throw at her.

In 1997, just before Salinas completed her first cancer treatment and a little over a year after they arrived in Memphis, she and her family were in a car accident that killed her father, her 3-year-old sister Valentina and paralyzed her mother.

Coming back to Memphis from Washington D.C., after renewing their passports, the accident happened on I-40. The Salinas family were first taken to Haywood County Hospital to be stabilized, before being transported to Le Bonheur in Memphis.

In 2014, that same Haywood County hospital closed down, as part of a wave of hospitals closing down following a state rejection to expand Medicaid. 

Haywood County was one of many. In fact, Tennessee has more rural hospital closures per capita than any other state other than Texas, according to Tennessee's Health Campaign.

The loss of health care and emergency services are not the only consequences of hospital closures, says the Health Campaign, income and job losses also occur.

In 2022, the county hospital reopened, which Salinas attributes in part due to the developments of Blue Oval City. 

“I feel cautiously optimistic about what that's going to bring for West Tennessee, but we almost didn't have that because of the way and the decisions that have been made regarding healthcare,” Salinas said, referring to the non-Medicaid expansion.

This has been a recurring theme in Salinas’ campaign.

Yet despite healthcare being a higher up priority issue in her political career, Salinas rejects the notion that that makes her a single issue candidate.

“Everybody says ‘Gabby's a healthcare candidate, that's all she cares about, that's all she talks about,’ and I say, ‘Healthcare is much more than [just] healthcare,” Salinas said. “It's our entire lives.”

She asks, Where do people go if they are having a baby, but there are no working hospitals? How are new businesses supposed to come to the region if there are no places to send someone in case they get an injury? A heart attack?

“How can you go to work if you're not healthy? How can you go to school? That was one of those that was a big hurdle for me,” Salinas said, explaining that the challenging part of graduating with a degree in biochemistry was not the subject, but the fact that she was struggling with her medical care.

Among her priority issues, Salinas identified the need to invest more in education, saying that “funding equity” across school districts and providing high quality education will in part help tackle the underlying causes of crime and poverty. 

Specifically, she warns that cuts to the “Hall tax revenue” not only reduces funding to schools, but also increases property taxes.

Salinas supports raising the minimum wage and supporting unions, but also wants to focus on gun violence, saying she supports the Second Amendment, but that it is also a priority to pass a bill that requires comprehensive background checks and a three day waiting period when buying a gun.

Salinas has previously opposed the arming teachers bill, which was approved in the state’s legislature back in April.

Back in 2020, as democrats across the country mobilized to flip red seats, Salinas was hoping to flip District 97, following the retirement of longtime lawmaker Jim Coley. Yet the race was won by her opponent, current republican State Representative John Gillespie.

Salinas describes that election as her receiving “dog whistle attacks.” Salinas alongside Gloria Johnson were the first two people that received an endorsement from the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC) for that election cycle.

At the time, Gillespie used that endorsement to claim Salinas was disregarding the law because she was being backed by an organization that, he claimed, supported illegal immigration.

TIRRC is a coalition that advocates for immigrant and refugee rights with policy advocacy and as a resource provider, including giving English classes and helping immigrants and refugees become U.S. citizens.

TIRRC also endorsed Salinas in her current race, “she is a testament to what's possible when we invest in giving people opportunities—opportunities to migrate, seek care, learn, and thrive,”  stated the organization in their announcement. “She's the kind of champion we need on Capitol Hill.”

Her 2020 race was the second time she had run for office, and Salinas was getting a little closer to the finish line.

In that election, the number of provisional ballots far exceeded the number from the previous presidential elections, which led some to believe that Salinas (who was behind Gillespie by less than 500 votes) could get a lead, but ultimately Gillespie took the seat.

Salinas was also subject to negative ads the first time she ran for office, in 2018, in which she was campaigning for the Tennessee State Senate District 31, against incumbent Brian Kelsey (R). The ads labeled Salinas as a democratic “socialist.”

Kelsey went on to win re-election, but in 2022 he pleaded guilty to two charges of violating federal campaign finance laws as part of a scheme to benefit his 2016 race for U.S. Congress.

Kelsey was sentenced to one year and nine months in prison in 2023.

The two campaign defeats were not enough to deter Salinas from trying again.

The way Salinas describes it, in both of her previous elections, the attacks were not really because of what she supports, but rather, who she is: A Latina and a naturalized U.S. citizen.

In 1999 then Republican Senator Fred Thompson (TN) introduced a private bill which granted Salinas and her family permanent residency. The legislation was approved by President Bill Clinton, and Salinas and her family later were able to get citizenship.

“I always say, don't tell me that we can't work together on immigration, because I have lived it, and I have felt the impact of what immigration laws can do for people,” Salinas said.

“I had cancer three times, and there were times where I did not want to do it, and I didn't want to do the treatment, and I felt like maybe giving up, but I knew that deep down I had to dig deeper and keep going, because what was on the other side of that was great.”

It was 6:30 p.m. on election day and Salinas and her family were still calling voters to remind them that it was election day and that they still had time to vote.

With matching blue outfits, Salinas and her family spent the entire day pushing one last time, having knocked on over 10,000 doors.

Some of them were at the polls. Others were scattered around the district putting on yard signs, monitoring the numbers of how many people were going out to vote, calling in more voters, whatever they could do before the primary officially closed.

The entire day, Salinas felt like she was on the edge of her seat.

And then 7 p.m. arrived, the polls closed and she was losing.

Distraught by the numbers, Malone opted to go to bed.

“When I went to sleep that night, election night, I told my husband, ‘Gabby's lost, I'm going to bed,’” Malone said.

But Salinas didn’t lose. That Thursday night, Salinas won her primary to become Tennessee’s District 96 State Representative, by 132 votes.

Because there is no Republican candidate, Salinas will advance to take the seat at Nashville after the general election in which she will be running unopposed.

Despite running unopposed, upon arriving in Nashville, Salinas will face many of the issues other Democratic representatives from Memphis face.

Currently, Republicans have a supermajority in the Tennessee General Assembly House of Representatives, being formed by 75 Republicans and 24 Democrats, giving the Democratic Party a little less than 25% of the votes.

While this new election could lightly change the political makeup of the assembly, it is highly unlikely that it will do so in any way that will take power away from Republicans in a significant way.

To pass a bill into law, for example, at least 50 representatives need to vote in favor before also being approved by the senate and the governor.

Salinas knows this.

“Even though we don't have an opponent in our race, I think there's a lot of important races that are happening in Tennessee, and it does me no good to be the only person fighting for the issues that we ran on,” Salinas said. “We are looking [forward] to November.”

Even so, for State Representative Justin J. Pearson getting to be in the room where it happens is already an essential step.

“Now we have somebody in the room, on the floor to articulate concerns about public policy and healthcare accessibility, to social issues and social determinants of health, from dealing with healthcare [accessibility] to the issues specific to the Latino community,” Pearson said.

Pearson was one of the current representatives to endorse Salinas. He is currently running for re-election himself and they did fundraisers together. She calls him her friend.

“I believe that Gabby is a much needed voice in the Tennessee General Assembly and who she is and what she represents best of who we are, and also an aspiration of what we want more people to be in Memphis and Shelby County and across our state and nation,” Pearson said.

Pearson and Salinas met back when Pearson was first running for office for the first time and Salinas was head of the Democratic Party.

He first assumed office in 2023, in a special election. That same year, Pearson became known as one The Tennessee Three.

Pearson’s expulsion drew accusations of racism. In 2025 in Nashville, Pearson believes Salinas will be faced with those same challenges.

“I believe Gabby is up against the racism, the white supremacy, the patriarchy that are the pillars of the Republican Party and the Tennessee General Assembly,” Pearson said. “The General Assembly it's a necessary place to serve, but it's a very place to serve with good intentions and good character, because those things are lacking substantially right now.”

In the week of August 19, both Pearson and Salinas were present at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where Pearson was one of the delegates to officially nominate Vice President Kamala Harris as the democratic presidential candidate for the 2024 election.

For both Salinas and Pearson, the fact that a Black and Asian woman can be not only vice president, but potentially also president is a sign of change, of which Salinas is also a part.

Pearson says he is always hopeful about politics moving forward and that people like Salinas and Harris are examples of people speaking out in favor of more diversity. “Being in Chicago together, so historic and really holding on to the moment of folks who are oftentimes cast out, were pushed out, can pass the divisions of power and can represent the entire spectrum. That's the beauty of our constitutional democratic republic experiment.”

In terms of legislation, Salinas top priority is Medicaid expansion. 

There have been multiple attempts to expand Medicaid, all of which have failed.

Most recently, in 2024, Senator London Lamar of Memphis introduced a bill that would expand Medicaid eligibility, with the intention of “providing gun violence prevention services.” It failed in one of the committees. In March of 2023, another bill introduced by Lamar was also killed.

The year before another Medicaid expansion bill was killed.

Other forms of Medicaid expansion have also failed recently, such as expanding mental health prevention and treatments or permitting kids to remain in the state program while they are minors without being contingent to redetermination.

Tennessee currently has over 674,000 uninsured residents, representing 12.2% of the population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Medicaid expansion would reduce that number by 95,000 people, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Salinas knows it will be no easy task, but like she said, she is a workhorse.

“She's going to get up, get in there and roll up her sleeves and get the work done,” said Malone. “That's always been Gabby.”

The day following the election, Salinas woke up and went to work at National Construction like every Friday.

Throughout the day people were calling to congratulate her. 

“It was kind of funny, because people were calling my phone. I was like, ‘I can't talk right now, I’m at work, I'll call you back when I get off’ and that's how it was for the whole campaign field as well,” Salinas said.

Despite the hustle, Salinas believes that being a working class candidate whose family has struggled financially her whole life is an experience she can take to Nashville. 

She believes, if more politicians knew what it was like to struggle to pay rent, or having to navigate the healthcare system without health insurance like she did, then the policy would look different.

“No one has to explain to me what it's like to have to make choices, because I've had to make them, and I had to make them on election week as well,” Salinas said. “So it was a [lot of] mixed feelings, because I was so excited, but I knew I needed to get my work done. 

“But I think that describes my approach to a lot of things, regardless of [what's] going on, I'm gonna get the work done.”