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Let me share a story with you. It was 1981 and La Frontera Center, a little mental health clinic in South Tucson, wanted to raise money to build a new facility.

The clinic operated from a small building at South Sixth Avenue and East 30th Street and needed to expand services. It served primarily poor Latino, Yaqui and Tohono O'odham clients.

When La Frontera went with hat in hand to national funders, it had to show community support.

How could La Frontera raise the $500,000? How could it ask the community to help?

Spanish-language radio, that's how.

La Frontera organized a 36-hour radiothon on KXEW-AM, which was the main conduit of information for Tucson's Latino community. Several thousand people — poor and rich, young and old — turned out and donated what they could.

I thought of this story in the wake of the "news" that Spanish-language radio played a leading role in urging its listeners to participate in the recent immigration protest marches.

Many people are asking what's going on. Nothing new, I say.

Spanish-language radio in Tucson, and in the rest of the country, has always had a close relationship with the Latino community.

I grew up in the world of Spanish-language radio. My father helped put KXEW, Tucson's second 24-hour Spanish-language radio station, on the air in 1963.

For 20 years, locally owned and operated KXEW kept Spanish-speaking and bilingual Latinos abreast of issues and events.

When a family was in need, the station asked listeners to contribute. When people died, their deaths were announced. Fund-raisers, protests, school lunches, wedding anniversaries, birthdays, community events and immigration news were daily staples at 1600 AM.

KXEW still keeps its listeners informed and involved, said "Rockin'" Rupert Pacheco, morning on-air DJ and program director.

Although KXEW now is part of Clear Channel Radio, the nation's largest radio station chain, it remains connected to the local community by asking its listeners to support a family or event.

Of course, English-language radio stations do the same. And talk radio can get its listeners to flood elected officials with telephone calls and e-mail.

But there's a different bond between Spanish-language radio and its listeners, who still rely heavily on radio for community news.

So when Spanish-language radio DJs urged listeners to participate in the recent immigration protests, it came as no surprise to Pacheco, who did not endorse the protests.

"A lot of people listen to their radio," said Pacheco, a 1975 graduate of Cholla High School.

They certainly did on that cold March day in 1981.

"The radiothon was very critical," said Nelba Chávez, former executive director of La Frontera Center and now deputy director of the state Department of Economic Security. "It reached out to people in all segments of the community," she said.

An estimated 5,000 people, according to an Arizona Daily Star article, arrived at the old cattle corral on West 29th Street, east of the freeway, where the new clinic would be built.

I can recall schoolchildren with their cans of coins. Elderly barrio women pulled pennies and dimes from their tiny purses. Blue-collar workers and white-collar professionals joined the festivities.

It was Spanish-language radio appealing to its listeners, who in turn showed they cared.

The immigration protests 25 years later were no different.