Inspirational students graduate high school

For most graduates, last week’s commencements signified the end of childhood and the beginning of adulthood. But some had to grow up earlier.

Facing a variety of challenges — from learning English, to surviving cancer or being a teen mom — for them, graduation was an especially significant accomplishment.

The high school years are “a very difficult time” for teenagers, said Ronda Tamerlane, of Sonora, a marriage and family therapist.

Teens are trying to establish their own identity and negotiating how to be an adult, an individual.

“There’s this urge to not stand out, to be like everybody else,” Tamerlane said.

Recent graduates Jessica Alarcon of Summerville High, Kayla Smith-Taylor of Ted Bird High, Kristina Oliver of Sonora High, or Jessica Gomez of Tioga High have demonstrated perseverance in the face of challenges.

Jessica Alarcon, Summerville High

Jessica Alarcon, 18, moved from Mexico City to Twain Harte in 2004, during seventh-grade. She spoke no English.

“I didn’t even know what ‘Hi’ meant,” Alarcon said. “There were days when I couldn’t understand any English at all. It was really frustrating.”

By her junior year, Alarcon said her English was vastly improved, but that she still has room for improvement. She said other students asking her so many questions helped her to open up initially.    

Alarcon was on the academic decathlon team and placed fifth in the entrepreneurship program in the Occupational Olympics held this spring at Columbia College. She also helped to develop the school’s Honor Code. For her senior project, she taught Spanish classes at Twain Harte Middle School.

She plans to attend San Joaquin Delta College and study business with a goal of moving to Africa and opening a shelter or human services center.

“She’s just a champ,” said Principal Dave Urquhart. “Amazingly successful.”
   
Kayla Smith-Taylor, Ted Bird High

Kayla Smith-Taylor’s mother was sent to prison in Chowchilla in October 2005 for drugs. Her stepfather, who raised her since she was young, died in May 2006.

In December that year, doctors amputated her left arm just above her elbow because she had a golf-ball sized tumor from a highly malignant carcinoma that “just randomly showed up,” said Smith-Taylor, 18, of Escalon.

She overcame these and other challenges in her life, however, to graduate from high school.

Recalling the cancer, she said doctors first thought the lump was fatty tissue. They later discovered it was cancer that would not respond to radiation or chemotherapy, thus requiring amputation.

Smith-Taylor was in foster care during her surgery but was back at school at Sonora High within days.

Following the surgery, Smith-Taylor lived with her step-aunt and step-uncle at Don Pedro for a year but switched to Ted Bird High. She lived with her mother in Fresno for a few months before turning 18 last June. She now lives with her boyfriend, TJay Miller, in Escalon.

She decided to commute to Ted Bird because she enjoyed the school and the teachers and “everybody here already knew my story,” she said.

She and Miller have dated since before her stepfather died, and she credits his ongoing support for her success.

“He’s definitely the biggest part of my emotional recovery,” Smith-Taylor said.

“I always think: It could be worse,” she said.

Smith-Taylor plans to attend Modesto Junior College in the fall and wants to study zoology. She hopes someday to open a wildlife refuge for wolf rehabilitation.

Kristina Oliver, Sonora High

Kristina Oliver, 18, of Sonora, started high school like any other girl with hopes of doing well and getting good grades. However, by the middle of the year she was partying all of the time — drinking and smoking marijuana regularly.

Then she found out she was pregnant. Her daughter Michaela, 2, was born in September 2006 when Oliver was 15.

After finding out she was pregnant, Oliver switched over to Cal-SAFE, the teen-parent program run by the county Superintendent of Schools Office.

“That school is amazing,” Oliver said. “There was everything there you needed.”

After Michaela was born, Oliver moved to the Bay Area to live with her mother but did not like Fairfield’s version of Cal-SAFE. She decided to move back to Sonora.

She was emancipated at age 16 and returned to Cal-SAFE at the end of her sophomore year.
Cal-SAFE instructor Joane Job has become a second-mother to Oliver, helping with her senior project, scholarship applications and everyday things like car trouble.

“She’s amazing,” Oliver said. “Every time I had a problem, she had 10 people to call.”

After returning to Sonora, Oliver juggled work, school and her daughter. She had her own place for a while but has been living with friends recently. She is on a waiting list for her own apartment and will attend Columbia College in the fall where she will study to become a firefighter.

“It has been a rocky road,” said Associate Principal Chace Anderson. “But she’s going to graduate on time.”

Oliver earned no credits her freshman year she said, and attended summer school for three summers. She also joined cross country her senior year and took U.S. Forest Service training this spring.

In between, she moved to Fairfield and back again.    

In all, Oliver says she’s attended about 12 different schools. 

“I did a lot of work,” Oliver said. “It feels really good (to graduate with my class). I worked really hard.”  

“Just going to school is a happy place for me,” Oliver said.

Jessica (Calvillo) Gomez, Tioga High  

Jessica Gomez, 17, of Greeley Hill, was born in Santa Clara County three months premature.

After her youngest sister was born, her mother left her and her middle sister with their grandparents in San Jose while she moved with the third sister’s father to Mexico. Gomez doesn’t remember her own father.

When she was in second-grade, Jessica, her two sisters, grandparents and mother moved to Modesto. In the middle of her sixth-grade year, her mother moved them in with her and a boyfriend for a while, then they moved around in a trailer to different campgrounds until her mother met another boyfriend. Gomez described him as “so mean.”    

Halfway through her eighth-grade year, Gomez and her sisters, Elizabeth and Tiara, were placed in foster care.   

Gomez recalls hiding in her room with her sisters, being locked in a closet, having to stand in the corner for hours, and sometimes going without food.

“Life before was very ... You couldn’t do anything,” Gomez said.

Gomez and her sisters were lucky enough to be placed in the same foster home, with Penny and Ruben Gomez, of Greeley Hill, in what was meant to be a short-term placement. Their adoptions were finalized in December 2008, Gomez said.

“We’ve grown ... learned to be individuals ... learned to be a good person,” she said.

Gomez said her difficult upbringing doesn’t make her special or different from other people.

“There’s always someone worse off than you,” Gomez said.

Gomez said she doesn’t think she would be the same person had she not been adopted by the Gomezes.

“I would have been depressed. Probably have tried to run away more,” Gomez said.   

Tioga High Principal Sandy Bradley said “she has gone through a lot and is now accepted for George Fox University in Oregon, a Christian College where she plans to study psychology and then hopefully go to work helping other young people who are stuck in the foster system and need counseling and guidance. Pretty uplifting!”