Natalee Waters | Roanoke Times

Leonard Carter works the camera as Veronica Freites, host of WDBJ's "Con la Vero" ("With Veronica"), interviews Salem Avalanche players Edwin Maysonet (from left), Rodrigo Escobar and Ervin Alcantara.

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• What do you think about the media offerings targeting the Latino community?

Spanish Media

• "Con la Vero" ("With Veronica") WDBJ (Channel 7) at 12:30 p.m. Saturday, and again Sunday at noon on digital channel 7Too. For more information, e-mail urbanfirm@aol.com. To watch the show online: wdbj7.com

• "Abriendo Puertas" ("Opening Doors") Cox Channel 9 on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 3:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. For more information, call 798-7235.

• Spanish radio programming (music, music requests and announcements) airs on WTOY (1480 AM), Monday through Friday, 4 to 6 p.m.; Saturday, 4 to 9 p.m. For more information, call 798-7235. E-mail surmyv@yahoo.com

• Desde la estrella ("From the star") The Roanoke Times runs a regular Spanish column by Ricardo Valdivieso and Yolanda Puyana every Friday. For more information, call 981-3340.

Denise Allen Membreno never understood just how brutal her Honduran-born husband’s life had been until the day she asked about the food she’d prepared for his lunch that morning.

“Did you have enough to eat?” she recalls asking him.

“I had plenty,” he told her. “But if I hadn’t, don’t worry; I have good concentration.”

That’s when it hit Membreno, a freelance radio and television producer and former WDBJ (Channel 7) reporter, just how little she knew about the lives of Hispanic immigrants.

“I’d never known anyone before who’d regularly gone without food to eat and who’d learned to work through the hunger,” she said. “And the fact that it was my own husband … I can’t even pretend to understand.”

Fostering understanding of Hispanic life and culture is Membreno’s goal in creating “Con la Vero,” a new paid-programming show about and for Hispanics in Southwest and Central Virginia. The show is the latest addition to the palate of media offerings targeting the region’s burgeoning Latino community.

Producers of the show, which airs on WDBJ (Channel 7) at 12:30 p.m. on Saturdays, have featured Local Colors executive director Pearl Fu, a makeover segment at a new Hispanic-owned beauty salon, and interviewees ranging from a Richmond immigration lawyer to foreign-born members of the Salem Avalanche.

“Con la Vero” is Spanish for “With Veronica.” Host Veronica Freites, a Dominican Republic native who’s lived in Roanoke for 37 years, owns the Latin Corner, a Williamson Road Hispanic store that offers money-wiring and translation services.

“When I first came to Roanoke, there were only four or five Hispanics in the whole city,” Freites says. “Now, we’ve grown to thousands.”

Exactly how many thousands is a matter of debate. Census figures have counted fewer than 3,000 legal Hispanic-born Roanokers, but estimates for the entire community — including undocumented, illegal immigrants — range from 12,000 to 16,000. Freites and Membreno say there are 30,000 Hispanics living in the wider viewing area, including the immigrant worker hotspots of Henry, Franklin and Bedford counties and Galax.

With Hispanics now the largest minority group in the United States and the subject of a national, white-hot immigration debate, the show’s producers felt the time was right to premiere the show.

“What we intend to do is bring people closer to understanding each other’s heartbeat,” Freites said.

Hispanic viewers, once the planned English captions are introduced, can work on their English by watching the show. Producers also hope to educate them about finding lawyers, doctors, businesses and entertainment activities.

Surmy Rojas has been offering her similarly themed “Abriendo Puertas” (“Opening Doors”) talk show on Cox Channel 9 for 16 months. It airs Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 3:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.

She’s also the co-host, with Luiz Mejias, of nightly Spanish music programming on WTOY (AM 1480), which airs Monday through Friday 4 to 6 p.m. and 4 to 9 p.m. on Saturday.

The Cuban-born Rojas, who emigrated in 1994, praises Roanokers, most of whom “want to know more about the Hispanic community and love to see their city becoming more diverse.”

“I also understand [anti-immigration] people who see our community growing and growing and growing, and I think that if you see strangers coming in with different ways of living, it’s normal to wonder about them and worry,” Rojas says.

“But the truth is, most Hispanics are harmless, just like most Americans. I hope my shows can help show this and also help Spanish-speaking people to settle into this society and this city.”

Since there’s no central neighborhood or barrio where Roanoke Hispanics primarily live, many area Latinos communicate through postings at local stores or in their churches. Businesses also advertise in two Spanish-language newspapers that cover the region, one based in Harrisonburg (Nuevas Raices) and the other in Galax (Noti Hispano).

“We need more people like Surmy to help get the word out — about medical issues, driver’s licenses, whatever,” says BB&T banker Aggie Sirrine, a first-generation Mexican-American. Sirrine has purchased ads from such Latino media outlets for her part-time real-estate business, highlighting the fact that she speaks Spanish to attract Latino home-buyers.

Catering to Hispanics makes good business sense, she adds. Revenues at BB&T, for instance, have grown 20 percent since it began catering to Spanish-speaking customers.

“Hispanics are growing at twice the rate of the general population, but most merchants are still slow to grasp that we have tremendous buying power,” Rojas says.