Rick Sanchez: What Patricia Velasquez found out about herself

Patricia Velasquez is filming another motion picture called “Guys Reading Poems,” but what’s most important for her is that she has finally found her north.  It’s not just about a geographical direction, which has led her from her indigenous roots to fame and fortune as a Hollywood starlet ― it’s about something she says is even more important.  It’s about finding herself.

We all seem to spend much of our lives searching for ourselves.  Whether we’re politicians, journalists or supermodels, we are all directed by a force that, if we’re lucky, will guide us to that place where we belong.

— Patricia Velasquez

“My truth is that I’m gay.  Sometimes we think we help others by not revealing our truth, when in fact we can only help others by being totally honest about who we are, no matter who we are,” said Velasquez.

When I asked Velasquez if she feared this revelation about herself would conflict with her sexy Hollywood starlet image, she immediately prioritizes.  “I can’t control that, but I will tell you this,” said Velasquez.  “Today, I’m much more in touch with my own femininity that I was before.”

It’s fitting that Velazquez would write a book entitled “Straight Walk, A Supermodel’s Journey to Finding her Truth.” For years she’s lived the glamorous life filled with apparent fortune, fame and all the trappings that come with it.  And after all that, she seemed to feel both unfulfilled and dishonest.  It led her, for her own sake and for the sake of others, to change.  

“I didn’t just come out as gay for me, I came out as gay for others like me,” says Velasquez.  “Forty percent of the homeless are gay and 26 percent of them are Latino,” says Velasquez.  “I don’t want for them to pass through the same confusion that I went through.”

Velasquez, whose supermodel status reached its zenith with her image on covers from Cosmo to Covergirl, says “finding her truth” is not only about her sexual identity, but also about reconnecting with who she really is.  

“I come from a Guajira village where our foundation has set up a school called Tepechi Talashi, where we started with 30 kids and now it’s up to 600,” said Velasquez.  “I’m 100 percent from there.  It is the reason for my success.  It’s my responsibility to go back and help the people who are there where I came from.”

We all seem to spend much of our lives searching for ourselves.  Whether we’re politicians, journalists or supermodels, we are all directed by a force that, if we’re lucky, will guide us to that place where we belong.  

For Patricia Velasquez, that place is a village where people get around in dugout canoes to a school with a name she utters with a hometown pride, “Tapechi Talashi,” which stands for happy children.  Velasquez has found it.