Miami Commissioner Manolo Reyes' new mission is to improve quality of life for city residents
MIAMI - We first brought you the story back in November about City of Miami Commissioner Manolo Reyes navigating a cancer diagnosis as well as re-election for his District 4 seat.
He won re-election despite his diagnosis and now, he's giving us an exclusive update regarding his fight.
CBS News Miami first sat down with District 4 Commissioner Manolo Reyes right after he won his seat for the third time.
He had just completed his first treatment for Leukemia.
The commissioner is now in remission and is back in city hall in person.
"When you receive the news that you have such a disease, which is most of the time terminal. It is quite shocking. You start thinking about everything," said Reyes.
Reyes had 5 treatments in total to fight cancer, each treatment bringing a different obstacle.
"When I got out of the hospital with the second treatment, I was in a wheelchair. You see I couldn't walk. Besides leukemia, I had an infection in my hand that almost gave me septic. That if I would've gotten septic at the time I would have died," said Reyes.
He says the outpouring of support is what motivated him to continue working.
"There were people praying for me in churches of all denominations. There were people praying for me not only in Miami, in Chicago, New York and even people in Miami that called me," said Reyes.
It's for that reason he says his new mission is to improve the quality of life in the city of Miami.
"We have to keep on serving these people that had placed their trust in me," said Reyes.
We also talked about the topic of trust – a big one right now in the city, as there are calls for Miami Mayor Francis Suarez to resign, the US marshals ordered to seize Commissioner Joe Carollo's assets and an embattled city attorney months away from leaving her post.
"In order to get more transparency to what's going on in the city of Miami, we are trying to bring what is called an office of inspector general who will have the power to audit any one of us. If anybody committed a crime that is for the state attorney and the authorities to take place and take action," said Reyes.
While his city works through controversies, the commissioner says he's just happy to be here to work through what's next.
"I never lost my faith and all the love I received from everybody. That kept me strong. And here I am with you again now. And having an interview with you and it's just like a continuation of the first one we had and I thank you. And thank you for your interest and all your viewers. Thank you to everyone that prayed for me," said Reyes.
