A decade ago, she had improved her life by organizing a union at the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, where she was a housekeeper and at times cleaned the penthouse where Trump stayed while in town. But she did it against the fierce resistance of the Trump Organization — which co-owned and managed the hotel — and at the exact moment when Donald Trump was running as the Republican nominee for president and presenting himself as a champion of workers. The union-organizing campaign launched in mid-2015, around the time Trump announced his candidacy for president. The company would go on to spend more than $500,000 on anti-union consultants and face allegations by the National Labor Relations Board of retaliating against union supporters. The company also unsuccessfully challenged the results after workers voted the union in and initially refused to bargain a contract.

“It wasn’t easy. There was a lot of fear,” recalled Olvera, who spent months alongside her colleagues in marches and protests in support of the union-organizing campaign. Today, she remains an employee at the Trump Hotel and credits the Culinary Workers Union — which has secured higher wages, health insurance and a pension — with transforming her life. She jumped at the chance to take a two-month leave of absence at the hotel to campaign for Kamala Harris, along with hundreds of fellow members of the powerful CWU, also known as UNITE HERE Local 226.