Session’s challenges fail to faze new assemblywoman

When Juan Bustamante told his young daughter, Irene, she had gifts that could help others, he was talking about her ability to pick grapes faster than other migrant workers.

He couldn’t possibly have known that 35 years later she would get a chance to make use of her natural strength and energy as a newly elected member of the Nevada Legislature.

Irene Bustamante Adams still remembers being interrupted by her father when she stopped to rest after finishing a mile-long row of grapes in California’s Central Valley.

"No, no, no," she recalls him saying. "You have gifts. You’re stronger, and you need to go back and help the people who are still not done."

In her childhood mind, the gift of energy only meant she had to do more work than the other people in the fields around Hanford and Kerman, Calif., close to where Kenny Guinn, who would become governor of Nevada, and his family worked as migrant laborers in the 1940s.

Now she realizes the extra work was an investment in her personal development, which she hopes will pay off when she goes to Carson City to represent Assembly District 42 in the state Legislature. She is replacing term-limited Assemblyman Harry Mortenson.

"It was those kind of things I appreciate now that I think really built my character," said Bustamante Adams, who started work in the fields when she was 7 years old. "It produced that kind of resiliency in me I think has served me well."

Although her parents hadn’t finished high school, they encouraged Bustamante Adams and her siblings to work hard in school and take advantage of academic programs available to the children of migrant workers.

Bustamante Adams earned a scholarship to Fresno State University. And when the money ran out after her freshman year, she turned to the university to find work to pay the bills.

It led her to another mentor, former Fresno State Bulldogs football coach Jim Sweeney.

Sweeney hired Bustamante Adams as a statistician and made her the first recipient of a scholarship named after his late wife, Lucille Sweeney.

The job not only paid for college, it took her behind the scenes of a college football program, an experience she says was thrilling and made her a lifelong fan.

She learned about the play-calling, strategy, motivational techniques and conditioning programs that are part of a major sports program.

"It was a dream come true," she said. "I couldn’t have been in a better place."

The experience in school and with the football team was all Bustamante Adams had in 1991 when she moved to Las Vegas with the intention of going to graduate school at University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

She lived in a small apartment in a bad neighborhood near the Strip and got a job as a keno writer and runner at Harrah’s.

Her parents thought she would last about three months.

"They were thinking they would come back and take me back home," she said.

Although she had never been to Las Vegas before and knew nothing about gambling, Bustamante Adams’ good work got her recruited by MGM Grand Inc., the predecessor of MGM Resorts International, as it prepared to open the MGM Grand hotel-casino in 1993.

The company hired Bustamante Adams to work in a department charged with finding employees with nontraditional backgrounds, such as housewives, veterans and the disabled.

"I got to learn the community, interact with some phenomenal people and train them to have a new outlook on life with some new skills," she said.

The experience led to an 18-year career with the company that culminated with an executive-level position overseeing efforts to include minority-owned firms on the CityCenter project.

Her career, with meeting and marrying Brad Adams, a sergeant in the U.S. Army Reserve who has served in Iraq and Afghanistan, distracted Bustamante Adams from finishing her graduate degree until 2007. She and Adams have two daughters

She has worked full time, supported her husband during his service overseas and left her job with MGM to start her own business, in addition to her successful run for the Legislature.

What sounds like a lot for most people to handle — especially considering the dire budget crisis facing the Legislature — Bustamante Adams thinks of as just another opportunity to exercise the gifts her father talked about when they worked the fields together.

"Yes we are in a crisis, but look at it from a different perspective. There also is opportunity," she said. "That’s why I’m excited, even though this is the most difficult time ever."

Contact reporter Benjamin Spillman at bspillman@ reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3861.