EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the third in a four-part series on Latino youth in Santa Barbara doing great things.
BY RON SOBLE
DAILY SOUND CORRESPONDENT
They are among the best and the brightest of America’s youth, these Hispanic students who graduated last June from Santa Barbara area high schools. One has begun studies at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, chasing a dream to become a fashion designer; another is about to begin studies at UC Santa Cruz, ready for a major in marine biology; a third is beginning a freshman year at UC Berkeley with a goal of entering medical school.
These stories are written at a time when Santa Barbara’s Hispanic neighborhoods are reeling from lethal Latino gang violence.
However, Hispanics have much to be proud of, while shaking off the stain from the criminal actions of handfuls of misguided youngsters. All 12 students in this four-part series were honored by the Santa Barbara Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. They were selected by counselors, department heads and principals.
This week’s part 3 snapshots: Maria Romero, of Carpinteria, a graduate of Carpinteria High School; Collette Rivera, of Santa Barbara, a graduate of San Marcos High School; and Nora Mireles, of Goleta, a graduate of Dos Pueblos High School.
MARIA ROMERO
“I liked art ever since I got my hands on a piece of paper and crayons. Ever since I was a little girl, I made dresses for Barbie.”
Now, Maria Romero, 18, a June graduate of Carpinteria High School, is beginning to piece together her dream as a freshman at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, where she is majoring in fashion design.
“I am very, very excited,“ she says. “I was very nervous when I first got here because I always lived in a very small town, Carpinteria.”
Maria, friends call her Mari, moved into a dorm on Sutter Street at the end of August, about eight blocks from her classes on New Montgomery Street near the financial district. Her roommate is from South Carolina.
“I’m barely getting to know the city,” Mari said during a telephone conversation.
Mari was born at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital. When she was 1 year old, her father, Ricardo, now 52, decided that California was too expensive, and moved his family to a small farm he owned, along with his mother, in Mexico’s central highlands in the state of Guanajuato. They lived on the remote 38-acre spread for 12 years.
The family, at the time, included Mari’s mother, now 38, also named Maria; a brother, Ricardo, Jr., now 12; and a sister, Diana, now 9. Born later was another sister, Joana, now 4. Rounding out the Romero clan on the farm was Mari’s aunt, Carmen, and her father’s mother, Guadalupe.
Surviving California’s pricey environment can translate into a scramble to eke out a living. In Carpinteria, Ricardo works as a mason. Maria cooks in a Mexican restaurant.
Today, at their Carpinteria residence, mostly Spanish is spoken. Ricardo speaks English with some difficulty; Mari says her mother has an understanding of English, but speaks Spanish; the siblings are growing up bilingual.
Living on the farm in Mexico, where her father tended fields of corn, wheat and sorghum, Mari attended two nearby schoolhouses, one with three rooms, the other with five. In her dozen years there, Spanish was the only language she could speak, read and write.
Memories of the farm linger in Mari’s mind. She recalls rising early, before school, to help milk the cows and feed the pigs. There is another chore she remembers, too.
“Dad worked in the fields, and mom would fix him lunch, and I would carry it to him in a little basket.” Ricardo misses life on the farm and the three-bedroom red brick house he said he built there.
“I want to go back to be a farmer again,” he said during a telephone conversation. What’s more, he says, “I’m thinking to send my family back to Mexico.”
But until Mari receives her bachelor’s degree, he plans to remain in Carpinteria to provide financial help and any other support his daughter needs.
“I need to be over here,” he says.
Mari suggests she understands her father’s dilemma. “It was harder in Carpinteria than in Mexico,” Mari says. “It just took a lot of effort. In Mexico, we were free, but far away from resources.”
Mari says her grades always have been good, both in Mexico and at Carpinteria High, where they were near straight A. What’s more, in high school, her academic record was bolstered by taking several honors courses.
When Mari neared age 14, Ricardo made a decision that almost certainly changed her life forever. Gathering his family together in the farmhouse, he said he wanted his children to learn English so that they could go to school in America and have a chance for successful, comfortable lives.
“He wanted us to learn English because we were born in this country (with the exception of Ricardo Jr.) and to make our own decisions when we got older and make our own future” Mari says. For his part, Ricardo says he told his children, “Don’t be afraid. Just listen and you will catch English little by little.”
Leaving Mari’s aunt and grandmother behind to take care of the farm, Ricardo, Maria and the children crammed into an expensive (for them) apartment in Carpinteria.
Mari spent time in middle school trying to learn some English, but was not very successful, before entering Carpinteria High.
The high school, with more than 800 students, was a big deal for a 14-year-old girl who spent her early years growing up in rural Mexico. It was as if she parachuted onto a different planet. She had little grasp of English or the American lifestyle.
It followed, then, that she became depressed during her first day in high school by her almost total lack of comprehension of the English language. Suddenly, her frustration triggered a burst of tears. Her teacher didn’t understand, so she took Mari by the hand and escorted her into the office of Gerardo Cornejo, then the school’s assistant principal, who now holds the No. 1 position. Mari is soft-spoken, standing 5-feet, 3-inches tall. Cornejo is an imposing package at 6-feet, 240 pounds.
“He looks strict, but he’s approachable,” Mari now says.
Cornejo recalls that he, too, was frustrated because he spoke no English when his family moved to California from Mexico when he was 6 years old. It was his mother who reassured her tearful son that “you will learn the language and you will move on,” he said in a telephone conversation Sunday from Mexico City, where he was visiting family.
Drawing on his youthful experience, Cornejo says he told Mari in Spanish, her face still wet with tears, “It’s going to be all right.”
“That made me feel better,” Mari reflects, her voice in virtual command of English with little hint of her Hispanic upbringing.
Describing what turned out to be a successful academic life at the high school, she mentioned a couple of teachers who inspired her.
A senior English course with Jim Baird, a now-retired teacher, introduced her to the seminal science fiction writer, Ray Bradbury, and his work, “The Martian Chronicles,” a collection of stories about life on Mars.
“I like fiction” with a touch of fantasy, Mari suggests. In Bradbury’s book, she saw a parallel “with the colonization of America.”
Her interest in art and a career in fashion occupied her thoughts throughout high school. That’s why she found it exciting when an art teacher, Sarah Alexander, took students to an art show in Santa Barbara. “It was very open to what I knew to talk about,” she says of the show.
Then, in her senior year, Alexander accompanied her students to a fashion show in Santa Monica. For the first time, Mari viewed models on a runway displaying new clothing designs.
That was it. There was no turning back. Now, she envisions her own brand name – MARI — on her designs.
“The whole point is to make your brand to be a successful fashion designer,” she says.
Thus, began a search for a fashion design program following graduation. She settled on Academy of Art University in San Francisco, founded in 1929.
The school stages its own fashion shows in San Francisco using student designs and, as part of the master’s program, its graduate students attend New York’s annual Fashion Week, previewing spring-summer looks of world famous designers.
“The School of Fashion at Academy of Art University has showcased collections from graduates of the master’s program during …New York Fashion Week since September 2005,” Ian MacKintosh, the university’s School of Fashion spokesman, said in an email from Manhattan where he is attending the September show.
Packed into a 1993 green Jeep Cherokee on Aug. 30, were Ricardo, the driver, his wife, Maria, and their children. Mari and her bundle of belongings were about to be dropped off at her dorm in San Francisco. An emotional scene broke out on Sutter Street.
“Everyone cried,” Mari says.
Well, maybe, not everyone.
“No, no, no,” says Ricardo, he didn’t cry.
“Somebody has to be strong.”
COLLETTE RIVERA
Collette Rivera recalls being as calm as the ocean. The San Marcos High School sophomore, clad in a wetsuit and goggles, on a September morning three years ago, was one of 56 relay swimmers participating in the first Channel Relay Swim from Santa Cruz Island to Ledbetter Beach. Kayakers and a boat accompanied them.
About 100 dolphins, popping in and out of the water, were nearby spectators.
“I don’t remember being nervous,” says Collette, a San Marcos High School graduate, who was a member of the school’s varsity swimming team.
The event was a fund-raiser for the Community Environmental Council, a nonprofit that partnered with Ocean Ducks, a local group of swimmers. The 22-mile swim, across Santa Barbara Channel, spotlighted environmental issues.
“She was definitely a pioneer” in the first relay swim, says Sigrid Wright about Collette.
Wright, the council’s assistant director for community relations, was one of the relay swimmers.
“We were very blessed to be surrounded by (the) dolphins,” Wright says.
For Collette, now 18, the call of the ocean has been with her ever since. Her goal: a major in marine biology at UC Santa Cruz, where she begins her freshman year in a few days.
Collette says she also was accepted at UCSB, where she could have majored in the same sequence. Instead, she says, she “wanted to leave the nest” and be on her own.
“My parents said they’ll miss me, but they’re glad I’m going to college and have that experience and that stuff,” she said in a telephone interview.
Collette’s family lives in Santa Barbara. Her father, Keith, brought up in Torrance, in the Los Angeles metro area, is an architect. Her mother, Laurie, grew up in Santa Barbara, and is a landscape architect. They met while attending Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo.
Andre, 14, a freshman at San Marcos High, is Collette’s brother.
Family roots are multi-ethnic. Hispanic, Italian and Irish threads are in the genealogy.
Collette’s great-grandfather on her father’s side, Andre Rivera, emigrated from Mexico to the U.S. before World War I broke out, along with his wife, Mary, and two sons.
Collette says she took four years of Spanish at San Marcos but speaks little of the language away from school.
A swimmer since she was 6 years old, Collette competed in events calling on her butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle experience. However, she isn’t interested in competing at UC Santa Cruz.
“I’ve done as much competitive swimming as I want to do,” she says.
At San Marcos, an instructor Collette particularly remembered, Dovas Zaunius, taught an American literature honors course in her junior year. “He made me think on a deeper level (on) things that tied into your life. He had really good class discussions.”
Except for a B in U.S. history, Collette says her grades were straight A. In addition, she took a number of “weighted,” or advanced, courses. “They were more interesting. The teachers were usually better.”
Physics, chemistry and biology are classes Collette enjoyed, as she looked ahead to a career in marine biology. But the sea also influenced her work in high school art classes. “I liked freehand drawing and oil painting.”
In her junior year, Collette displayed an oil painting at an art show in Santa Barbara put on by Channelkeeper, an environmental group. The 15- by 20-inch work shows a local dock scene and hangs in her home’s living room.
Balancing her academic and professional goals against her artistic ability, Collette doesn’t see a conflict.
“Art is for pleasure, not really a career. I’m more interested in science as a career choice.”
NORA MIRELES
Rene Mireles, according to his daughters, Nora and Leah, both teens and, in age, only 2 years apart, envisions both entering the medical profession.
“My dad wanted us to do something worthwhile to be financially stable,” says Nora Mireles, 18, who graduated in June from Dos Pueblos High School. “He always wanted to say that his daughters were doctors.
“We always joked we could open a practice together. I’m not sure that would happen, but it would be really cool if it did.”
“He wants us give back to society what we accomplish,” says Leah, 16.
Nora aspires to be a surgeon, Leah, a senior, an obstetrician.
Nora, whose family lives in Goleta, began her academic adventure at UC Berkeley on Aug. 27. As a freshman, she is already taking courses such as chemistry and physics that take her on a pre-med track toward a goal of entering the university’s joint medical program with the San Francisco School of Medicine.
Nora’s father, Rene, the second oldest of 14 children, emigrated to Los Angeles by himself from the Mexican state of Oaxaca when he was 19 years old. He is an elementary school teacher in Carpinteria.
Rene speaks three languages, English, Spanish and Zapotec, an ancient language spoken by Native Americans in the area of Oaxaca, in southern Mexico, that has a Pacific Ocean coastline.
Her mother, Jessica, was born and raised in Goleta, and is a piano teacher. Her family lives in the same house where Jessica was raised.
Fluent in Spanish, Jessica met Rene while attending USC and working as a waitress at a Santa Monica restaurant where her future husband was a cook.
Besides Leah, Nora has a brother, also named Rene, 12, and a sister, Isabella, 2.
Nora, who stands 5-feet, 1-inch, and her sister, Leah, who is 5-feet, 8 and 1/2 inches, playfully poked fun at each other when they were growing up over their height difference.
“She does better in school than I do,” says Leah. “I compensated for that by making fun of her height.”
With her medical school goal in mind, Nora crammed pre-med type courses, such as biology and anatomy, into her academic schedule. She even took an anatomy class at Santa Barbara City College in addition to the honors programs she loaded herself up with at Dos Pueblos.
A student-athlete, she also is proud of playing on the high school’s varsity soccer team where she tenaciously guarded goal. But this activity led to a temporary crisis in her young life.
In her junior year, she suffered a serious knee injury, tearing the right knee’s ACL, the anterior ligament that stabilizes the knee joint, in an off-season practice session.
Suddenly, Nora found herself on crutches with a brace on her knee. The accident ended her high school soccer experience playing for the Chargers.
“I was so depressed because I couldn’t play soccer,” she says, that, for a while, it affected her classroom concentration.
She credits a Dos Pueblos High counselor, Marguerite Bianchi, in getting her on the right track again.
“She was just an amazing counselor and helped me tremendously,” Nora said in a telephone interview. Part of the problem, she says, is that the injury occurred when she was taking a load of extra-curricular activities plus her regular menu of courses.
“She got me focused and managed my time, and she helped me with everything,” Nora says.
By her senior year, she was getting A grades again, and was accepted by several schools in the UC system besides UC Berkeley, including UCSB, UC Davis and UCLA.
Now, as a UC/Berkeley freshman, she faces a rigorous academic challenge at one of the nation’s top institutions of higher learning. Just the size of UC Berkeley is an eyeful.
Berkeley has about 30,000 students, two-thirds of them undergraduates, according to the school’s Web site. That means, in terms of population, it is second only to UCLA in number of students.
Nora noticed that right away in her first-year chemistry and physics lecture classes, each drawing about 300 students. She was no longer in the comfortable world of Dos Pueblos, but, instead, in the big show of academe.
Normally, Laura says, her sister “is very cool under pressure.”
Berkeley, however, can affect your persona.
Nora sounded “real excited” when she recently called home, according to Laura.
Apparently, Nora couldn’t wait to tell her sister what she discovered about a Chicano studies instructor. The teacher had actually written a book the class was reading.
Such facts will induce a Berkeley graduate student to yawn. But for a still wet behind the ears freshman, hey, that’s a big deal.
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