This is the fourth story in a special holiday series celebrating altruists in our midst. Know a neighborhood helper who deserves a shout out? Email us at editorial@arlingtonmagazine.com
When you go to apply for a job, get a new home or open a bank or credit account, there is one common item you need—your ID. It’s something that most of us carry around in our wallets and likely don’t think much about. But without an ID, all those aspects of life become nearly impossible.
That’s what Chris DeRosa discovered in her work with the advocacy group Spread the Vote. She is now the leader of the Arlington/Falls Church chapter, helping individuals obtain identification cards, driver’s licenses, Social Security cards and birth certificates.
Though her initial focus was on empowering people to vote, she quickly found that those documents mean so much more. Often the people she was helping were completely down and out.
“When they got their IDs they were so ecstatic,” DeRosa says, “because [without them] they couldn’t rebuild their lives, get a job or get an apartment. They needed the ID or they needed the birth certificate before they could sign a lease.”
DeRosa says many of the people she and other Spread the Vote volunteers help have lost documents because they have been homeless, incarcerated or hospitalized.
“It didn’t start where I planned to lead a massive group,” she says, “but as we talked to people and helped them get their IDs or register to vote, we realized how meaningful it was…and how it really impacted their lives.”
DeRosa, a retired special education teacher who worked for Fairfax County Public Schools for more than 25 years, is a 3rd-generation Japanese American, born and raised in Oahu, Hawaii. She has lived in Arlington since 1975.
“You know, I was from a middle class background, so I always could find my birth certificate or get an ID. That was not a problem for me. And I thought that was true for everyone. But I came to realize that, for a lot of people, that’s not reality. It’s not something that they can do easily,” says DeRosa. “To get an ID you need your birth certificate, but in a lot of cases, to get the birth certificate, you need your ID. And so they’re in a catch-22 where you can’t get anything. It’s very tricky.”
The local Spread the Vote chapter is a nonprofit organization that partners with homeless shelters, residential treatment programs, the county jail and the Central United Methodist Church. Volunteers receive referrals from those agencies and also hold sessions inside shelters and detention centers where people can come up and ask for help. DeRosa says they sit down with people, walk them through planning where and how to vote, and offer them rides to the polls.
Meaningful, long-term friendships often develop with those she is helping.
Christopher Uglialoro is one of those friends. When he met DeRosa, he was working to rebuild his life after a rough patch. He had lost all of his identification papers and needed a new state ID, birth certificate and social security card.
“Chris DeRosa is part of a team of people who saved my life,” Uglialoro says.
“Chris and I started taking rides to go back and forth to the DMV,” he adds. “She has become like an auntie to me now. We met about two years ago. We literally now go out at least once a month and grab lunch or coffee. Our relationship has blossomed into a real friendship. That is what God did for us.”
With his identification papers restored, Uglialoro was able to get an apartment and land a restaurant job. After several years, he has worked his way up to manager at a Pentagon City eatery.
Most of the people DeRosa works with are men. Many are minorities. In some cases, it takes a lot of work, time and know-how to restore their documents.
“Chris is an angel with wings,” says Bryant Jackson, whom DeRosa helped when he found himself down on his luck and without a driver’s license or security card.
Once those documents were replaced, he was able to get a job. Now he’s trying to start up a mentorship program called First Place Kids.
“She made me feel like a person again,” he says with extreme emotion in his voice. “She made me feel like I could accomplish and put back into my community…and she allowed me, through her kindness and her love, to realize that God was not done with me yet.”
DeRosa is also active with the League of Women Voters, successfully leading its redistricting committee in support of a constitutional amendment to change how the maps are drawn for congressional and legislative districts.
“Basically, the General Assembly members got to draw the maps themselves and they didn’t need to get input from anyone,” she explains. “They could just do it behind closed doors. The amendment that we passed was not perfect, but it established a bipartisan commission to try and draw the maps with some criteria.”
When the commission was unable to come to agreement, the case went to the Supreme Court of Virginia, which appointed special masters to redraw the maps. DeRosa says the way the districts are drawn makes more sense now.
As a board member with UpVoteVirginia, DeRosa also advocates for the use of ranked-choice voting in county board elections, a voting method in which voters rank candidates in order of preference (indicating their first, second and third choices). Also known as “instant runoff” voting, the model allows a vote to count towards another candidate if your first-choice candidate receives the fewest number of votes.
Arlington County voted in December to permanently implement ranked choice voting in primary elections, the first municipality in Virginia to do so. Arlington ran a pilot program for ranked-choice voting in the June 20, 2023 Democratic Primary Election for the office of County Board.
DeRosa says without it, “a lot of times, the winner will be the person who gets the most votes, but that might be 25% of the votes, which means that 75% voted for another candidate.”
She contends that ranked-choice voting helps to improve democracy because it ensures that elected officials represent the majority of voters’ choices. She says it also allows more candidates to run, because they don’t have to worry about splitting the vote.
DeRosa is married with two grown daughters who live nearby. She retired in 2006 when she started her new life as a volunteer giving back to the community.