Rocky Mountain Public Media, the home of Rocky Mountain PBS, KUVO Jazz, and The Drop 104.7 has developed a partnership with Colorado Ethnic Media Exchange to launch this monthly essay series, as part of our vision to co-create a Colorado where everyone feels seen and heard. These stories are sourced from community members across the state—told in their own words and selected from our 64-county community ambassador program. They are not editorial products of our journalism team, but are first-person reflections on life in Colorado – building bridges through empathy. To learn more about all of our brands and content, check us out at https://www.rmpbs.org/about.

The Community Aurora Taught Me

By Maureen Maycheco

I love Aurora. I say that without hesitation, without apology, and with a kind of deep pride that feels rooted in my bones. Aurora is home, not just because I live here, but because it has taught me what community truly means.

In Aurora, community is a lived experience. It is exchanged through a bag of tomatoes over the fence, through a knock on the door to check in on a neighbor, through the unspoken understanding that we are looking out for one another. My neighborhood is stitched together with people from all over the world, refugees, immigrants, and families, who carry with them stories, recipes, music, languages, and traditions that make Aurora one of the most diverse cities in the country.

This diversity is not something I observe from a distance; it’s what I participate in every day. I have a food-trade system with my neighbors: herbs for eggrolls, squash for eggs. We share abundance, and in doing so, we share pieces of ourselves. It is a quiet, powerful act of belonging.

Serving on Aurora’s Immigrant and Refugee Commission (AIRC) has given me another vantage point on this truth. I’ve seen how Aurora becomes both a sanctuary and a launchpad for families who have crossed oceans, borders, and hardships. I’ve listened to their concerns about housing, health care, schools, and safety, and I’ve seen how, despite obstacles, they continue to give back, to contribute, to weave themselves into the fabric of this city. Aurora doesn’t just welcome, it absorbs, transforms, and reflects back the richness of the world.

But loving Aurora also means understanding the challenges we face. Our diversity, our collective strength, and the way we care for each other are all things that challenge systems built on exclusion and control. Too often, Aurora is spoken about in headlines that reduce us to crime statistics or deficits, instead of celebrating us as a model of shared humanity. What they miss is that the very thing they point to, our difference, is our power. It’s a power we must protect and nurture, a responsibility we all share.

That power goes beyond city borders. Today, as I sat in an Indigenous tattoo shop in Denver, my partner getting his first tattoo as part of a fundraiser for the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition (CIRC), I felt it again: community is expansive. The people CIRC serves are my people. The families COLOR (the organization where I work) stands alongside immigrants, Latine, young, low-income, LGBTQ+, and are my people. When I show up there, I am showing up for Aurora, too, because community is not a zip code. It is a responsibility. It is love in action.

There are versions of “community” that are about individualism and ego, about curating the right neighborhood, the right coffee shop, the right school. But the kind of community Aurora teaches me every day is different. It is ancestral. It is energetic. It is about what is shared, not what is owned. It humbles me, and it calls me to keep giving.

When I stretch my arms wide and think of Aurora, I don’t just see my street. I see the vast web of neighbors who check on each other, the families building new lives with courage, the children running between backyards, the elders passing down knowledge, and the organizers fighting for dignity and rights. That web stretches outward into Denver, into Colorado, into every place where care outshines ego and solidarity outlasts division.

And right now, as I walk back from my garden, arms full of tomatoes and herbs to share, I feel it: this is community. Aurora taught me that when we give, we are never empty; we are woven tighter together. That is why I love it here, fiercely, endlessly, with all of me.

*Maureen Maycheco (she/they), is the Vice President of Strategic Partnership and Growth at COLOR, and an 80013 resident.

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We Want to Hear from You
We’re inviting community members across the state to share their own stories of living in Colorado —of identity, discovery, and what it means to belong.

Tell us about a moment or a place in Colorado that changed how you see yourself or your community. Share your reflections at ambassador64@rmpbs.org

This is part of Ambassador64, our statewide listening initiative to ensure public media reflects the voices of all 64 counties in Colorado—starting with yours