Shanelle Scales-Preston

Shanelle grew up as the daughter of a union tradesman — her father a proud member of UA Local 342, the plumbers and pipefitters union, who also ran a small business — and a mother who worked on the floor of a local glass factory. Theirs was a working-class household held together by labor, loyalty, and a deep belief that the community around you is either something you invest in or something you lose. She attended Pittsburg High School, and later earned her degree from California State University, East Bay — staying close to the place and people she would one day be elected to serve.

The Pittsburg she grew up in had three youth centers. By the time she was old enough to notice their absence, all three were gone. That absence planted something in her that would not be satisfied until she brought them back. She also watched her brother struggle with drug use and undiagnosed mental illness in a neighborhood where the line between survival and tragedy was thin — a family story that would become the fuel for her most important policy work decades later.

Pittsburg sits on the industrial northern waterfront of Contra Costa County — a community shaped by labor, manufacturing, and the kind of grit that comes from building something with your hands. It is a city of real people with real struggles, and Shanelle understood its rhythms before she understood politics. Today she and her husband are raising their two sons in the same city, attending her church, volunteering with the Gateway Rotary Club, and serving the Pittsburg Reads literacy initiative. The roots were always the point.