US tech worker helps fellow Venezuelans

SAN MATEO — At his stand-up desk in a Silicon Valley office complex, Guido Nunez-Mujica’s phone buzzes nonstop as he tries in vain to concentrate on his work. The text messages are from 6,000 miles away in Santiago, Chile, where he’s helping resettle a group of young Venezuelans trying to retrace his own immigrant’s journey to a better future.

Between deciphering data and writing code, he fields questions that come flying fast: What’s the fastest bus line downtown? How do you apply for an immigrant ID card? Any leads on a job?

“Sometimes I’m rude and tell them to look on Google, or I have to just turn off my phone because I get five messages all at once,” says the 34-year-old.

The demands on Nunez-Mujica’s time and energy are part of his solitary battle to give those trapped by his homeland’s economic crisis a fresh start abroad. Since the end of last year, he has shelled out around $40,000 of his own money helping some 40 Venezuelans — most of them complete strangers — migrate to other South America nations.

The acts of generosity range from a few months of free rent at an apartment he manages in Santiago to bus fare for a surgeon so he could move to Peru with his wife and daughter.

Nunez-Mujica has now launched the crowd-funded Salto Project — based on the Spanish word for leap — to scale up the assistance effort, convinced that the only immediate solution to Venezuela’s mess is helping those who can escape. So far he has raised $5,250 but the goal is more than $40,000.

“There’s no way someone like me can do anything about the situation in Venezuela, but if I can do a little bit to help people leave that helps me to sleep at night,” he said in an interview from the offices of Slice Technologies, where he earns a modest tech worker’s salary coming up with solutions to improve the e-shopping experience.