Photo credit: Journal Inquirer, June 22, 1994  

Photo perservation credit: Iris Jimenez

I was born on June 20, 1994 at Hartford Hospital. 

My first name, Jesseina, (Jesse-na) was a typo. My mom meant to write Jessenia, but she wrote Jesseina with an EI. That typo made me the first and only person on the planet with that exact spelling. If you Google just "Jesseina" — you get me.

On June 21, 1994, when I was one day old, the hospital listed me as Jesseina Jimenez. That was because my mother hadn't signed the maternity registry documents yet. Until the legal papers are signed, that's just how the hospital does it. Jimenez is my mother's family name.

The Journal Inquirer also misspelled Jimenez to Jiminez in the News paper artical in 1994.

Torres is my biological father's last name, Edgardo Torres, the man who inspired my passion for art. I carry his name as my legal name and my artist name: Jesseina Torres. Both names are me. The hospital-assigned name was Jimenez, the name I live and create under is Torres.

One day after I was born, I was held by First Lady Rosalynn Carter in the Hartford Hospital Maternity Ward. We were there for the launch of CIRTS — the Connecticut Immunization Registry and Tracking System. It was created by Every Child By Two, founded by Rosalynn Carter and Betty Bumpers, together with Connecticut First Lady Claudia Weicker. CIRTS went statewide in 1998 and was replaced by what we now call CT WiZ on September 18, 2018. The photo ran in the Journal Inquirer on June 22, 1994.

For 31 years that newspaper was saved by my Aunt Iris Jimenez. When you Googled my name before, it said "we couldn't find a public figure." There was no official record.

This year we changed that. We scanned the original at 600 dpi, transcribed it, and preserved it permanently on the Internet Archive so it can never be lost again. Now "Jesseina," "Jesseina Jiminez," and "Jesseina Torres" all point to the same person — and to the same record.

That page is my living archive.

— Jesseina Torres, Hartford, 2026