‘What do you do with the opportunity to right a wrong?’

John Quiñones, ABC News veteran and creator and host of TV show “What Would You Do?”, was the opening speaker of the 2021-2022 Distinguished Speaker Series Tuesday night. 

Director of Student Activities Cindy Mata-Vasquez started the event by introducing Quiñones to attendees and speaking about his character and accomplishments. 

Mata-Vasquez played a video from Quiñones’s famous show, “What Would You Do?” which is known for testing the morals of unsuspecting strangers.  

“What a pleasure it is to be back home, really,” Quiñones said. “Because even though I live in New York, I’m a Tejano. I was born and raised in San Antonio.” 

He said that, due to the pandemic, he has not been able to travel much and that “What Would You Do?” was on hold until people could remove their masks. 

“ABC wants it next year,” Quiñones said. “So, in a few months, in January, we’ll start filming new scenarios.” 

He said he loved coming to the Rio Grande Valley because there are many “What Would You Do?” fans in South Texas and he was glad to be here for the beginning of Hispanic Heritage Month. 

“You know, Hispanics are now the country’s largest minority, more than 60 million strong,” Quiñones said. “And we continue to contribute so much to this country.” 

He said Hispanics contribute everything, from music, culture and food to language and labor, and that he is proud to be able to tell their stories. 

“I love my job because I get to do stories on all sorts of things like that,” Quiñones said. “Because, as a journalist, I have been blessed with the opportunity to shine a light on issues that a lot of the times too many people don’t want to see or don’t want to talk about.” 

He said it was nice to be able to conduct interviews in Spanish on ABC. 

“That tells you how far we’ve come as a people,” Quiñones said. “I started many years ago–we never did something like that. We always had a translator, or we couldn’t do interviews if they weren’t in English.” 

He also spoke about discrimination, especially against people for their race, ethnicity, religion or sexuality. 

“We face these moral and ethical dilemmas every day in both our personal and professional lives, no matter what we do for a living,” Quiñones said. “It doesn’t matter whether you’re a student, like many of you are here tonight, or whether you work in education, the legal profession, politics, health care or even in my profession, media and journalism. The question is, what do you do with that opportunity to right a wrong?” 

He spoke about his heroes growing up, such as his high school English teacher, Teresa Gutierrez, who supported his dream to be a journalist, and his parents. 

“Along came the first hero in my life,” Quiñones said. “You know, a hero besides my mother and father, because they were my heroes to begin with. They worked so hard for the family. My dad made $50 a week, and then, on weekends, we would cut lawns, and we would get paid $25 for the whole yard in the rich part of town. I would drag the branches and pick up the grass.” 

He also spoke about the positive impacts the Upward Bound Program had on him. 

“I wouldn’t be here today had it not been for this anti-poverty program that the federal government created,” Quiñones said. “And today, it’s still around. Some people call it welfare. You know, to me, it was like a lifeline. Today, I still go to all the conventions when they’re talking about cutting the funding, I’m like their poster child.” 

The program provided him with extra learning opportunities, such as weekend classes. 

Quiñones spoke about the letters of rejection he received when applying to TV stations across Texas, and how he was ready to give up. 

“I was depressed, and I was about ready to give up,” he said. “But then I met a woman who had gone to Columbia University, this great university in New York. I knew nothing about it, because the only time I’ve been out of Texas was to pick cherries and tomatoes.” 

Quiñones said she encouraged him to apply to Columbia University’s journalism program. 

“So, I went up there, I took a cheap flight to New York and I knocked on every financial aid door,” he said. “And they gave me a fellowship. So, that is a lesson there. You know, just ask, you got to ask, and keep pushing.” 

Quiñones said that after receiving his degree, he landed his first job as a reporter in Chicago where he went undercover various times to cover hot button topics, such as immigration and the issues Hispanic immigrants face in their everyday lives. 

“I knew then that those are the kinds of stories that I could tell better than anyone because of where I’m from—because I’m Mexicano,” he said. “I call journalism the candle in the darkness. Imagine this auditorium was pitch black, you know, there’s been a storm and we can’t see our hands in front of our faces. … Well, the journalist, he or she is the person with the candle or the little flashlight. They can shine it in the darkest corners of the room to illuminate injustice. 

“When journalism is done right, those are the kinds of stories that we should be telling.”  

Quiñones said he was 28 when he was hired by ABC because of his ability to speak Spanish. 

He also shared stories from his time hosting “What Would You Do?” and the kindness of strangers witnessed on the show, such as Linda Hamilton, a homeless woman who stayed to help someone she thought was hurt. 

Quiñones ended by speaking about the importance of doing the right thing and his goal to give a voice to those who do not have one. 

“The next time you witness an injustice–you see something wrong, someone’s criticizing or being racist or stealing or bullying–you see that, and the little voice in the back of your head says ‘do something,’ remember the words and the actions of Linda Hamilton,” he said. “This woman was homeless and she suffered a stroke, and yet she stopped to help a man who was down, not because she was going to get $8,000 in the bank and a house to live in, a new cell phone and medicine for her heart. She didn’t know that. She did it because, as my dear mother Maria would say, her corazón. Her heart told her it was the right thing to do.” 

The next Distinguished Speakers Series guest will be Lana Candor, an actress best known from the Netflix movie trilogy “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.” The event will be held Nov. 3 virtually. 

For more information, visit https://www.utrgv.edu/studentactivities/distinguished-speaker-series/index.htm.