my encounter with a homeless woman

there's a homeless woman who regularly hangs around the place i work (i work fast food). what really made me feel sad was that she's an older filipina woman. i'm also filipina. i speak and understand tagalog almost fluently and so i spoke to her one simple sentence. she came up and asked me with a noticeable accent (to me) "did you call number 39?" i replied in tagalog "not yet." in all honesty, i don't speak tagalog to all the filipinos i see at work, i think with her i was hoping she'd feel a little bit of comfort knowing there's someone who can speak her language in a predominantly white city. she said in english "don't speak tagalog. we're in california." 

at first i was a little bit shocked to hear these words come out of her mouth. it was a possibility, yeah, but i thought that it was the least likely thing for her to say. i joked with my coworkers saying i encountered some friendly fire. but throughout the rest of my shift, i couldn't stop thinking about it. it just makes me even more sad because what happened to her for her to say those words? was it her family immigrating here and forcing her to forget her roots? was it her parents trying to make her fit in? was it her trying to fit it? was it heavy racism that she experienced? did she start to hate herself and her culture seeing those around her? i just have all these questions that i didn't have when it first happened. and what made me wonder these things is she said "WE'RE in california" not "you" or "this is." it so faintly sounded guarding, whether it be looking out for herself or even me.

the encounter just sticks with me even though i probably won't encounter her again because my manager talked to her. i don't know what he said but we get a lot of homeless people. probably telling her to not be rude to others because it drives the other customers away. it gets hella busy at my work so i mean i guess (i work at I N O). i want to ask her questions but i'm not sure she'll trust me to answer.