When COVID-19 ended Verónica Pérez’s 12-hour shifts at a South Philadelphia restaurant in 2020, it nearly ended much more. She survived the virus, but lingering health problems made it impossible to return to the work that had kept her away from her children for most of each day. Six years later, the business she built from her own kitchen — Pizca de Amor, a traditional Mexican dessert and catering company — supports her family, anchors her Sundays at the Latino Market at FDR Park, and has made her a leader among the market’s vendors.

Verónica walked into the café where we met with a radiant smile — the picture of a woman who rebuilt her life one dessert at a time.

Even before she got sick, had worried about how much the restaurant job took her from home. Recovery sharpened that resolve. “I fought to get better because I couldn’t leave my children alone,” she said.

Looking for a way to earn income from home, she taught herself to make all kinds of traditional Mexican desserts. At first, she sold just one or two a week, but she was not discouraged by her children. She named the business Pizca de Amor, “a pinch of love,” and began catering events of all types, displaying her postres on a table shaped like a Cinderella carriage that she customizes for each occasion.

Then came the Latino Market at FDR Park, where Latino vendors sell cultural foods and crafts every Sunday. Her desserts have become a staple, and today she leads the vendor group. She has acquired a commercial kitchen to prepare her food and desserts and says she can now live on her business income — though the experience changed her habits. Material things, she says, matter far less than time with her children.

The same determination has spilled into her neighborhood. When her daughter, Aurora López, 11, and her classmates at Southwark School reported broken bathrooms that left students sharing a single stall, Pérez organized fellow parents and pressed the school district for more than a year. After Aurora testified before City Council about flooded, unsanitary restrooms, the district agreed to install toilet trailers with handwashing sinks before the new school year.

Verónica also serves on the Committee of Restaurant Workers in Philadelphia, helping workers who are underpaid or harassed on the job — conditions she knows from her own years in the industry — and tends a plot at the Growing Together Community Garden on Reed Street, proudly sharing photos of her recent beet harvest.

This exemplary immigrant says that the heart of everything she has accomplished has never changed.

“No one taught me how to make desserts or how to start a business,” Pérez said. “My children have always been my motivation, and my daughter Aurora has consistently encouraged and supported my ideas.”