Sneak Peek: American stories of belonging along I-70 Share Updated: 9:01 AM PDT Mar 17, 2021 Sneak Peek: American stories of belonging along I-70 Share Updated: 9:01 AM PDT Mar 17, 2021 Hide Transcript Show Transcript We started our journey in Denver, Colorado, where the snow was melting under the shadows of the Rocky Mountains. Almost time for baseball season. Okay, we met Laura Hekmati, picking up her son at practice retired, and we're going to add the marinade and the butter. They invited us home for dinner, where we learned this American family is made up of a multitude of cultures. Hesh Marie is a Persian last name. My husband is half Mexican, half Persian. I'm Mexican American. Think nourishment this food. Amen. We're talking about what it feels like to be an American. The thought process is that when you say America is a melting pot, that it actually devalues the different cultures that do make up America and that the salad bowl analogy is better. You're still a tomato and your piece of lettuce, but you can still be friends like something like that. And with that, we set out to learn where others see themselves in this salad bowl that is America. Buy me stepping in this country and walking freely in this country. I'm American. On the way out of town, we popped in on Alejandro Flores Munoz, a gay undocumented Mexican immigrant. We make it. It's almost like a masa, and then we put it inside the taco. The DACA recipient, whose mother brought him to the U. S. As a little boy, is now opening one of Denver's first cloud kitchens for online delivery only. His business, he says, makes him feel American. I want to now be in a position where I can showcase that I am paying taxes, that I am employing people that I am building a company. I don't know. I don't think words will showcase as much as action from Colorado to Kansas. It used to be like America was the land of opportunity. But now it just feels like that's the struggle. We stopped in Hays, with its Wild West routes, more than two dozen Christian churches and a lot of red, white and blue. It's hard to get the job, the career that you want, because once you fall down a whale, it's really hard to climb out. Yeah,