They’ve been building engines and racing ever since, out of their house in San Gabriel. They married in 1991, at nineteen, and bought Diana’s first car together-a 1955 Studebaker-making hundred-dollar monthly payments to Tom’s boss. Dating for three years, Diana and Tom went to nostalgia drag-race meets like the Antique Nationals, in Palmdale, California.

high schools, but working together at a restaurant in Alhambra. She and Tom met when they were sixteen, juniors at rival L.A.

“In California, my mom would leave the keys in the car at the store, and when she came back we’d be parked in a different place. Diana rode horses bareback when she was small, and learned to drive a ranch truck as a child. In summer, the family would go back to Sinaloa to help on the ranch. I’d go to school and say ‘copacetic’ or call somebody ‘daddy-o.’ My second-grade teacher said I was an old soul,” she said, laughing.

“I was learning my language when I was nine, watching classic hot-rod movies with my dad in the garage. In El Sereno, a community at the edge of L.A., her father was an electrician, but he always worked on vintage cars. Diana was born in Matatán, Mexico, and came with her family to California when she was six.

Detroit drag race city airport