ABC News correspondent John Quinones shared his “long, hard journey” through the ranks of television journalism Wednesday in a talk titled “Overcoming Stereotypes” for the Harry T. Wilks Distinguished Lecture Series at Miami University Hamilton.

Quinones grew up in the barrios of San Antonio, shining shoes on the streets until he was 13. His father was laid off from his job as a janitor at a high school, and his family joined a caravan of migrant farm workers, picking cherries in Texas and making their way to Ohio to pick tomatoes.

Even though he was a “champion tomato picker,” he recalled one day looking down a long row of tomato plants and his father asked him, “Do you want to do this for the rest of your life, or do you want an education?”

By that time, he already had his heart set on television news, having watched Geraldo Rivera on “20/20.”

“No one believed in me,” Quinones said. “Even my counselors in junior high school. I wanted to take courses to prepare me for college, but they said, ‘We think you ought to take wood shop. We think you ought to take metal shop. We think you should take auto mechanics.”

Quinones started reporting for the school newspaper when he was 16, took drama classes to get rid of his Mexican accent, but still, “I thought I wasn’t going to make it to college because of all the obstacles.”

Quinones was accepted into the Columbia School of Journalism on a fellowship, and got a television reporting job in Chicago.

He won his first Emmy while posing as an undocumented worker for a report on a Chicago restaurant owner who was notorious for taking advantage of workers by not paying them and threatening to have them deported when they complained.

“I knew then that those are the stories I wanted to tell,” Quinones said. “I see the journalist as the guy in the dark room with the candle to shine in the darkest corners of the room.”

When an interview with Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega fell through, Quinones said he received the best advice of his career from ABC News anchor Peter Jennings.

“He said, young man, you’re a new correspondent for ABC News,’” Quinones said. “You don’t always need to talk to the movers and shakers. Remember always to talk to the moved and the shaken. Talk to the peasants who are affected by these wars. The politicians can always call a press conference, but these people don’t have that access. It’s up to the reporter to seek them out.”

Quinones is currently the host of the news magazine “What Would You Do?”, which he described as “a ‘Candid Camera’ of ethics,” in which he and his crew set up situations to test people’s reactions to challenging situations.