Stressfully studying
for her future

Community college student gives as much of herself to others as she can, and hopes a university degree will lead to a better life.

The clock reads 6:10 a.m.

Rosa, 20, a student at East Los Angeles College, is helping a teen from her neighborhood with his biology homework.

Anthony is 15 and lives three houses away from Rosa, on 92nd Street in Watts. He comes over to Rosa’s place every morning to get homework help and perhaps a ride to Lincoln High School in East Los Angeles.

“Come on, get it out,” says Rosa, as she tightens her brown ponytail.

Beneath an oversized sweatshirt, Anthony shrugs his shoulders and reluctantly pulls a binder out of his backpack.

“Get it out,” Rosa repeats with the firmness of an experienced mother. “Finish it!”

The homework goes slowly, and Anthony is easily distracted. By now he’s missed his 6:30 a.m. MTA bus for school, so Rosa has to drive him there. During the commute she continues to badger Anthony to finish. Sometimes he ignores her and stares out the window, pretending not to hear.

They arrive just after 7 a.m. and sit in the parked car until he finishes his work. Now it’s 7:25 and she must head back to Watts for work at 8.

Rosa strives to be a role model for the teens who live on her block and for her three younger brothers - ages 18, 15 and 8.

She said she helps them because she feels “like it’s the right thing to do,” and if she doesn’t, no one else will. If not for her insistence, Rosa said, Anthony wouldn’t even be in school.

“He would be locked up in jail or on the run again,” she said.

This year Rosa hopes to be the first in her family to attend a four-year university. She is planning to transfer to the University of California at Berkeley or UCLA in the fall and major in sociology.

“I’m always pushing myself,” she said. “I have to find a way to get out of this neighborhood.”

But it is nearing the end of April and for many schools, admission letters have already been sent. No letters have arrived at Rosa’s home yet.

In Watts, where drugs and gangs are facts of life, Rosa has never even sipped alcohol or smoked. But many young people here are more easily influenced by their environment and risk being sucked into a downward spiral of destruction.

It may start with relatively minor offenses such as tagging - spraying graffiti on buildings or overpasses — and lead to more serious forms of crime: drug-dealing, auto theft, gang violence.

Rosa is keenly aware of this and fears for her brothers, who are impressionable and could easily be led down the wrong path. The oldest, Henry, was arrested for tagging in February. He has dropped out of high school and is now awaiting a court hearing. She is afraid her younger brothers and other teens in the neighborhood might follow on Henry’s path.

And Rosa worries about what will happen to her brothers when she leaves, because she is their hope.

“My greatest fear is getting so stressed out I just give up and I’m like, ‘Forget it,’” she said. “And my brothers, I feel like if I give up, then they’ll be like, ’Oh, she couldn’t do it; we probably can’t do it.’“

“There are a lot of bad influences,” Rosa said. “There’s drug- dealing right here at the corner of my house. The tree, that’s their spot. Since the kids see that, they get used to it and comfortable with that kind of environment.”

Last week she used some of her financial aid money to treat some of the neighborhood teens to dinner at Hooters to celebrate a good report card, which means no failing grades.

“I take them out because no one else will,” Rosa said. “They want someone to notice their grades. I wanted them to know that someone was paying attention.”

“I make them go with me. If they wouldn’t have gone out with me that night, they would have gone out with my brother and jacked something,” she said.

Rosa was born in Mexico, but she has no memory of the place. She was an infant when her mother came to the United States in 1985. Rosa’s mother and stepfather, who immigrated in 1989, sell clothes at a flea market a few miles away. Rosa’s mother, Leticia, has been in the business almost 15 years. Her stepfather used to work as a cook at Dave and Buster’s in Orange County, but he had to quit because he is undocumented.

Rosa also was an undocumented immigrant, until she married her high school boyfriend, Gabriel, her senior year. By doing so she avoided the dead end of being paperless and was able to apply for college.

Leticia, 40, hopes for the best for her four children and works tirelessly to provide a good life for them.

“I had to eat from the trash can,” said Leticia, who spoke in Spanish that was translated by Rosa. Leticia grew up as the oldest of 12 siblings in Mexico. “When we ate, we ate together from one plate - raw eggs, two for all of us, with tortillas and salt on the plate. I didn’t want that for my kids.”

They bought the house where they currently live, off 92nd and Alameda streets, three years ago. The house is painted pale green, and its four bedrooms are home to seven people. The yard is asphalt and a black iron fence surrounds the property.

Despite its uninviting exterior, the home is a haven for neighborhood children. Kids of all ages come and play in the courtyard and alley next to the house. There is a pool table, two dogs running around and a couple of junked go-carts for them to play with.

Rosa’s brothers and their friends are constantly trying to fix the go-carts, but for now they remain stuck next to the house.

Inside, Rosa’s mother’s altruistic heart and an enormous television take up much of the living room.

“Kids around our house come to this home ... it’s more distracting than what goes on outside our gate,” Rosa said. “We have the big-screen TV, so we buy chips and order pizza and stay in here. That’s the way we all get out of Watts.”

“My mom goes to Costco so the kids can grab a snack or instant meal,” she said. “That’s causing a [financial] strain on us, but we always have money to buy food and pay the [mortgage].”

“Her goodwill keeps them here. She even saves up so such-and-such family has presents [at Christmas].”

Now the clock reads 8:20 a.m.

Traffic was bad and she is late for her first day of onsite tutoring at Markham Junior High School. Her supervisor scolds her for being tardy.

After two hours of tutoring and helping a teacher, she heads to the East Los Angeles College Extension Center for her administrative job.

Rosa makes $8.11 an hour and spends her money on books, food and gas for her red 1966 Mustang.

By 12:15 p.m., she is home eating lunch with her mom.

She usually studies in the living room before class, but today she is preoccupied with other thoughts.

Frank, 19, one of Rosa’s good friends, is in the hospital. He tried to commit suicide by overdosing on pills.

“He was like me. He would take kids out fishing and be a good example for them,” she said. “There are only like three kids on track and going to school and college. Frank was one of them.”

Rosa is thankful that Frank didn’t kill himself and has gotten out of the hospital. But Rosa says he is still depressed.

Now it is 3:30 p.m. and Rosa is off to school, where she’ll be in class until 10.

Then she does it again the next day.

Leticia is proud of the work her daughter is doing - going to college and helping those around her.

“I shouldn’t say this to her, but I feel like she is me, but way more successful,” she said. Leticia says it will be difficult for the teens Rosa helps, like Anthony, when she leaves for college.

“I hope they learned something [from her], that they take it and put it into practice,” Leticia said. “I will finish whatever she started here. I’ll keep taking Anthony to the bus stop and pick him up - and see him like my own.”

In the meantime, Rosa waits for her college admission letter. And Leticia is ready for Rosa to fulfill her dreams.

“I always thought since she was born that I wanted her to be the best at what she wanted to be. If she wants to be a teacher, then the best teacher. If she wants to be a sociologist, then a very good sociologist,” Leticia said.

“You have your children, life lends them to you. So you make them people of good. And if their wings are strong already, they can fly on their own. [But] if she feels weak or fragile, then she can come back and I’ll make her stronger.”

Editor's note: At the time of this writing, Rosa was waiting to hear whether she was accepted at any of the universities she applied to. At the end of April, Rosa received letters of admission from U.C. Santa Barbara and Berkeley. She plans to attend Berkeley in the fall.