As a teenager, she claims to have returned home one day to find her mother stuck in the street, unable to maneuver her wheelchair over a ramp-less curb.
Eventually, she earned bachelor's and master's degrees simultaneously from the University of Denver, then left for Washington, D.C., to work in education advocacy.
Ahead of her swearing-in, CdeBaca clarified in an interview that she did not identify as a communist, would have preferred to run unaffiliated, and instead labeled herself an anarchist.
[2] She has faced pushback against a controversial tweet (February 28, 2020), in which she appeared to express support for the idea of spreading coronavirus at a Trump rally.
A spokesperson claimed it was a "sarcastic tweet, to call attention to the Trump administration's downplaying of the coronavirus pandemic as a 'hoax' no more dangerous than the common flu".