Maxsem Garcia wins Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragán’s 2024 Congressional App Challenge in California’s 44th District

When asked what inspired the creation of SnapIt, the student said, “All throughout my life I watched my Mom try her hardest to keep South Gate free of vandalism, constantly driving around the city, reporting any tag or illegally dumped item she could find. She loves this city, our city, and so it infuriated her to see so much vandalism pop up throughout South Gate and not get removed for weeks if she didn’t search for and report it herself. It pained me to see the amount of stress she put herself under so that South Gate could be clean. At first, I never understood why she cared so much about the tagging and the furniture that littered the streets and why she endangered her health just to ensure it was removed. My outlook changed, however, when my friends, who lived outside of South Gate, visited my house one day. They had commented on how they had seen so much graffiti littering the walls of some businesses down Tweedy Blvd, even jokingly saying that South Gate was the new ghetto. A ghetto. At that moment I felt the feeling of shame and anger that my Mom had always felt when she saw our streets vandalized. I realized just how humiliating it was to have people outside of your hometown look down on you and where you come from, to even go so far as to call it a ghetto. Like my Mom, I knewI had to do my part if I truly loved my city as much as I always said I did. And so that’s what I did. I conducted research on why it took so long for a piece of vandalism to be cleaned up, interviewing workers directly from the Graffiti Control Team, and identifying the flaws in the current reporting system. I combined my own experiences with the needs of students with my knowledge of software engineering to come up with an effective solution to those flaws, a solution that would ensure our city stays rid of graffiti once and for all. That’s how SnapIt was made. Ultimately, there were many things that inspired me to develop SnapIt: my Mother’s determination to solve our city-wide problem, my dedication to upholding the reputation of my city, and the vandalism scourge in my city that needed to be addressed. With SnapIt, my Mom is no longer alone; she now has an entire community behind her.”