Class of '09: A journey from small village to Berkeley

Since her family moved to California when she was 2 years old, Lindsay senior Juana Mendoza has never been able to return to her hometown of Huacao, Mexico, a village of some 400 people little more than 1,000 miles northwest of Mexico City.

That’s because her parents and older siblings (Mendoza is the fourth child out of eight) worked year round to support the family as field workers.

The articulate 17-year-old always wanted to meet her great-grandparents, who, at more than 100 years old, still live in the old village that has nearly been vacated as its residents emigrated to the U.S.

“There was a lot more opportunity (in Lindsay),” Mendoza said. “My father once had a small farm in Mexico and sold goats. But (Huacao) is impoverished. It’s hard to get milk or fresh fruit there.”

Instead, her father picks grapes and oranges for a living while her older brother, Angel, works in a local packing house and her older sister, Maria, picks strawberries and raspberries in Watsonville, then sends some of her earnings back to the family in Lindsay.

After giving birth to her sixth child, Mendoza’s mother quit her job in packing houses.

But Mendoza has yet to hit the fields.

“I’m a terrible worker,” she laughed. “I stay home and take care of my younger siblings.”

Ranked No. 3 in her class with a 4.0-plus GPA (adjusted after excelling in seven AP classes), Mendoza is no slouch in the classroom.

She was often named as the treasurer of multiple organizations, including the French and Spanish clubs. Mendoza mentored from seven to nine underclassmen at a time as a leader of the school’s Link Crew program, and she was named as the top business student of the Future Business Leaders of America Club.

In addition, Mendoza was instrumental in getting a new program called My Strength — which looks to erase violence and sexual abuse among students — off the ground.

After all this, her role as secretary in the student council seemed like an afterthought.

Four state schools accepted Mendoza for her accomplishments: University of California, Los Angeles, University of California, Davis, University of California, Berkeley and University of California, San Diego.

Mendoza settled on Berkeley, where she received $40,000 in scholarship funds and plans to study business — though she might take a culinary class, “just to see if I want to become a pastry chef.”

Ironically, college wasn’t on the agenda until three years ago.

“It just didn’t seem like the right thing to do, and work seemed like a better idea so I could start helping out with food or whatever the family might need,” Mendoza said.

But a serious back injury in the fields put her father in bed for a month and out of work for a year, forcing Angel to give up his full-ride scholarship to Fresno State to provide for the family during Mendoza’s freshman year.

“That’s when I started reconsidering college,” she said. “I thought, ‘I’m gonna’ get this done and do this for my dad. I’m gonna’ give him so much money he won’t know what to do with it.’”

Despite the extracurricular involvement, Mendoza learned to study amid the raucous noise of her small home (three of her siblings sleep in bunk beds in the living room) while essentially doing homework for two.

She helps her younger, mildly autistic brother to keep his grades up because he wishes to follow in his sister’s footsteps and attend college.

Needless to say, Friday’s graduation ceremony — where she gave the commencement speech in Spanish — meant a little more to Mendoza than most. Partly because her parents opened a door with a risky move to a small California town. And partly because two doors were shut when Angel and her closest older sister, Lucia, gave up college to help with the family bills.

“When (Lucia) graduated, she was depressed because she thought, ‘This is where everything stops for me; I just have to work.’”

Mendoza said. “So what it means for me is advancement. She paved the way for me to have all these opportunities opened for me.”

Contact Jason Peterson at 784-5000, Ext. 1048, or jpeterson@portervillerecorder.com.