Elizabeth Saldana’s formative childhood memories are made up of her experience at The Roadium.

The Roadium Open Air Market is located a short distance away from El Camino College. The market is an outdoor swap meet that consists of a mix of vendors who sell a range of products and budget items.

Saldana, 19, has been at The Roadium her “whole life.” She grew up helping her parents, who have been vendors at The Roadium since 2009.

Saldana began working at her parents’ stand when she was around 5 years old, and as she got older, she began to help her neighboring vendors sell their merchandise.

“Everyone [at The Roadium] knows me, they have seen me since I was little,” Saldana said. “I have four siblings and I always used to take care of them when I was younger, in my free time I would just take my sisters on a walk in a stroller around [the market].”

Saldana used to attend El Camino College, where she was enrolled in courses and hoped to pursue healthcare, but after a year, she decided to shift her focus and work full-time at The Roadium.

Saldana had worked as a vendor at her parents’ business up until last month when she began a new job working for Lety’s Cosmetics, a neighboring vendor at The Roadium who needed her help.

“I want to go back [to El Camino], I just need to manage my time and plan myself out too, with school and work,” Saldana said.

Working as a vendor is only meant to be temporary, Saldana said, as she hopes to return to college soon.

“I like it, but in the end, I want to try to go higher and not just stay in the same place,” Saldana said.

Vicenta Saldana, a vendor at The Roadium and Elizabeth’s mother, specializes in selling clothes during the weekdays, and during the weekends she focuses on selling cleaning products and medicines.

Speaking in her native language, Spanish, she explained that her husband is to be credited for establishing their stand at The Roadium.

Her husband was working in construction in 2009 and was struggling to find steady work, which prompted him to take a risk and use their savings to start selling at swap meets and establish their business.

“His dream has always been to have his own business,” Vicenta Saldana said. “I have a lot of dreams, but now I just need to complete them. My first goal is that I just want to keep pushing my girls to find careers.”

Despite the college’s proximity to The Roadium, Vicenta Saldana said that she hardly sees students supporting the vendors.

“I would appreciate it if the students came here, even if it’s just to walk and look from time to time or to be able to say ‘Look what I found at the swapmeet, I’m going to go buy it,’” Vicenta Saldana said.

Vicenta Saldana said that the swapmeet is similar to a mall, as it has food, household items, and clothes.

There is a stigma that the products are low in quality, she said, but what people don’t realize is that the products from a mall and a swapmeet are produced from the same source.

Dolores Arzola, a vendor at The Roadium who specializes in selling shoes, clothes, and “a little bit of everything,” said that she has a daughter who is a psychology major at El Camino College.

Her daughter, Jennifer Guerrero, as well as her other six kids, have all helped her run the business.

Speaking in her native language, Spanish, Arzola said, “I think [young people] don’t have much information that there is a swap meet because mostly it’s older people who come to find a bargain.”

Arzola said the lack of awareness for swap meets makes her job difficult because there are days when all she can do is hope that she’ll be able to sell her merchandise.

“Only during summer vacation do we begin to see a lot of younger kids with their parents [at The Roadium]… but students from the college, we rarely see.”

Vicenta Saldana said that there needs to be more efforts to bring people in to support The Roadium.

“If the people from the college came here to walk in their free time or before entering or before going home, businesses would possibly improve,” Vicenta Saldana said.