test of strength

Neighborhood seniors overcome obstacles to achieve academic success

Story

High school graduation is a milestone.

Some acquire their diploma easily. Others earn theirs against all odds.

These graduating seniors didn’t let life’s blows keep them down. This month, they will cross the commencement stage knowing their tribulations made them stronger.

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A VIDEO at lakehighlands. advocatemag.com/ video

KIMBERLY AGUIRRE is not going to Mountain View College.

It’s a perfectly good school, but she’s determined to attend a university, and it’s not going to be in Dallas.

The 17-year-old senior at Adamson High School was born in Oak Cliff to a 15-year-old mother and raised here by her grandparents. When she enrolls at the University of Houston next fall, she will be the first person in her family to attend college outside of Oak Cliff. continued on page 21

Her grandparents, whom she calls mom and dad, were born in Mexico. Their traditional values call for sons and daughters to live at home until they’re married. Her aunts and uncles, whom she considers brothers and sisters, all followed that tradition.

But Aguirre is different.

Just after he was born, his dad committed suicide. And when he was 5 years old, he was in a car accident that injured his digestive system.

Possibly one of the best-liked students at Sunset High School, Reyes could pass for 14 or 15. But he has an old soul.

“I feel old already,” he says. “My friends will come and ask for advice about their girlfriend or whatever, and I’m like ‘Why are you asking me?’ ” he says.

They tell him it’s because he has been through a lot in life.

He has certainly known a lot of pain.

For most of his life, he blamed himself for his dad’s death, and he thinks some of his relatives blame him, too.

The car accident that damaged his intestines left him with digestive difficulties that many hospital stays, many doctors and many medications couldn’t solve.

When he was about 12 years old, he decided to stop taking medication for his digestive system. He was tired of always trying something new and dealing with a whole new set of side effects for little or no relief.

Reyes closes his eyes, shakes his head from side to side and sucks air through his teeth, remembering his stomach pains.

There were good days. But most mornings, he forced himself to stand up, get out of bed and go to school.

And when he got there, he often stayed quiet. He didn’t want anyone to touch him or talk to him.

“If I had a headache or something, it wouldn’t bother me,” he says. “But when my stomach would hurt, I would be in agony. I would be so frustrated, and I would have mood swings.”

But he was there, and he was learning.

One morning last year, around Halloween, Reyes woke up in tears. His stomach had been bothering him for weeks, and he couldn’t stand it any longer. He asked his aunt to drive him to the emergency room at Methodist hospital.

“I told her, ‘Watch. You’ll take me to the hospital, and I won’t get out for a month,’” he recalls.

Doctors removed a portion of his intestines. It was a difficult and painful surgery with a long recovery time. He stayed in the hospital until just before Christmas. And he was in homebound classes until the end of January.

Now, he can’t lift anything over 20 pounds. But he is healed from the surgery.

Reyes is on the golf team, and he’s in theater tech, doing all the lighting and sound for the school’s stage performances.

“He came to school when he was sick, and he refused to graduate a year later,” assistant principal Belinda Rosas-Delgado says. “He would come to school even when he was not supposed to.” continued from page 19

The 20-pound weight limit prevents him from doing some of the things he used to do. But he still volunteers to help teachers with their rooms — painting, hanging pictures and reconfiguring desks.

And in the summer, he volunteers at the Hampton-Illinois Branch Library.

After his graduation in May, Reyes and his mom plan to go to his dad’s grave and take pictures with his cap and gown, holding the diploma.

“Now I’m like, ‘You know what? That’s not my fault. That’s his fault,’ ” he says.

Reyes is the second person in his family to graduate from high school, after his mom.

He plans to attend community college and transfer to a university to study theater tech.

“I love Oak Cliff, and hopefully, after I graduate, I can come back here and be a teacher,” she says. “But I don’t want to be in a bubble and not see the world.”

That attitude is a change from a year ago, when Aguirre almost dropped out of high school.

She had attended private schools all her life. But when the recession hit, her grandfather was laid off from his job as a janitor, and she had to switch to public school. It was a rough time, and Aguirre wanted to drop out so she could work full time and help the family.

“My mom looked me dead in the eye and said, ‘No. You’re not dropping out,’ ” she recalls.

She started spending time in Adamson’s Education is Freedom office, where the nonprofit’s employees help students prepare for college.

She found a role model and mentor in “Miss Kim”, Education is Freedom’s Kimberly D’Mello.

“If it wasn’t for her and this whole organization, I would’ve never gone,” she says. “I might go to Mountain View and get a part-time job or something. But I wouldn’t be going away to college.”

It took many months of stubbornness, but Aguirre’s parents finally accepted her decision to go away to college.

“Kim was never given any support from her family with respect to forwarding her education, but she realized that in order to get out of the struggle, she needs to get a college degree,” D’Mello says.

“To her family, college was for rich people. It took her years to get her grandmother to let her apply to a university.”

Recently, Aguirre’s parents went with her on a university visit, and they started to see her side of it, she says.

“I’m not going to be left behind and not do anything with my life. I’m not going to have a baby,” she says. “I want something bigger. I don’t want conformity. I want something big.”

Aguirre plans to earn a degree in education from University of Houston and become an ESL teacher.