An Immigrant DJ's Morning in America

He made his way to Santa Ana, attended Saddleback High School, where he was suspended several times for cutting up in class. He settled down, played varsity soccer, took theater classes, got a part-time job at a photo lab where his father worked, and graduated.

But there were few jobs available for a high school graduate with no green card. Sotelo picked up aluminum cans for recycling and washed cars. He listened to radio day and night, wondered what it would be like to become a DJ, and started practicing his radio persona by taping his voice on a clunky black cassette recorder.

He went from station to station, trying to get his break. Finally, he got a call from one in Corona, Calif., far out in the desert, in the Inland Empire. Sotelo could barely afford gas to drive there.

"Have you done news before?" the station manager asked. "Yes," answered Sotelo, who came in the next day and flopped. He says they let him stay because he worked for free, sleeping in his car, washing his face at a nearby park. Then one day he was fired for not having proper documentation.

Sotelo made his way to Sacramento, where the legend of Piolin truly began.

"We went to number one. Nobody thought we would ever do that," he says. "We were so young." He slept in an apartment with no furniture, and had gas money for the first time. But a competitor told immigration officials to check on the new DJ, he recalls. And one day when he left work, police were waiting outside.

Sotelo was detained and released pending a hearing. He went back home, told his father he was on vacation, and started picking up aluminum cans again. Months later, he went to San Francisco for his hearing. The judge listened to his story, expressed sympathy, but said, "You still have to go back."

As police were about to lead him away hours later, a clerk walked up to Sotelo and said, "Here's your work permit." He was told to stay in Sacramento. "Be careful. We're going to keep an eye on you."

A year passed before Sotelo set foot out of Sacramento. He says he never told his family that he was almost deported. "I told them that I was working so hard that I couldn't take a vacation."

These days, with the newfound success, that old lie is his new truth. Piolin is always working, even now, at 9:30 on a Friday night. El Circo, the Mexican circus, is in L.A. He's a headliner. His fans are waiting when he steps out the van.

"Piiiiiiooooooolin!" the children yell. Dust kicks up as mothers drag them over for pictures. Digital video cameras come out, followed by digital cameras, and finally, camera cellphones. Sotelo stops for almost every one of them, at least 200, mostly immigrants like him, many illegal.

Under the big top, his act, a comedy classroom skit, flops, mostly because it's plain not funny.

But no one gets bigger applause during the curtain call -- not the hilarious clowns, the death-defying acrobats, the nimble teenage juggler, or the stunningly beautiful sword balancing ballerina -- than El Piolin.