London-Bound Fashion Student Scoops Up Scholarships

When tallying up college tuition and costs for the year, it’s no surprise when the total starts running into five figures. Yet motivated, bright young students have no choice but to pay these often exorbitant costs if they wish to attend college. 

The Bay Area Gardeners Foundation is just one of the many local organizations providing scholarships to college-bound students to offset the onerous costs.

Twenty Bay Area students were awarded $1,500 scholarships Saturday, four who graduated from . For many of these economically disadvantaged students, every dollar is a step in the right direction.

“The stories from the students were really emotional,” said the foundation’s president, Connie Guerrero. “They’re going to overcome the challenges they have, and these scholarships will help them in meeting the goals that they have.”

The Bay Area Gardeners Foundation originally formed in the North Fair Oaks area with Catalino Tapia and a group of gardeners who gathered funds to help students with financial need, the primary requirement for the scholarship. It’s a way to lift these students out of their impoverished neighborhoods and launch them into better lives.

And these students aren’t callously leaving their families by heading to college. Quite the opposite, these students are able to lift their families out of the vicious cycle of financial trouble by providing inspiration and sources of hope.

An aspiring designer is London-bound

Many of the winners, like Sergio Mendoza Medrano, come from the self-described ghettoes where he felt “confined by an ethnic pool.” Though this is their home, the eagerness to escape to a new place could be unmistakably heard in their voices.

Medrano is headed to the University of the Arts London this fall but graduated back in 2010. He had to defer a year in order to work to raise money for his $32,000 annual tuition.

“I always knew I wanted to go to art school, but it corrupted me emotionally to know that my family couldn't supply that,” Medrano said. “I felt sabotaged.”

Despite the British pound’s unfriendly conversion rate for dollar-spending Americans, Medrano is much more prepared financially with this scholarship and the Will.i.am scholarship in hand. Check out this of Medrano explaining what this particular scholarship from the R&B group Black Eyed Peas front-man meant to him.

And rather than focusing on all that he was deprived of while growing up, Medrano is channeling all his energy into fashion, a cathartic, yet invigorating, space that allows him to live in the present, he said. It’s a vehicle to escape to the opposite ends of the world.

He said he wanted to explore people of all colors and backgrounds, not just people who fit into the “Latino, White, Black or Asian” category, but British Indian immigrants or people of African descent.

This curiosity isn’t a desire to forget his roots, but a teenage boy's natural yearning to meet others so different from himself and expose him to experiences that he couldn’t even fathom.

“I’m so infatuated with the psychology of fashion that I didn’t want to stop,” he said.

He criticized the industry’s attempt to feature diverse models, giving examples of dark-skinned women, but with pointy noses, “just like a Scandinavian’s,” he said.

But, he conceded, the industry is progressing in its equal and accurate representation.

“Fashion reflects society,” Medrano said, in response to the critiques of fashion as being “superficial.” “It’s society that’s superficial.”

A businesswoman in the making

Jessica Esquivel Rosales was accepted to 12 different colleges but settled on Santa Clara University, where she will pursue a business degree.

This business acumen has been in Rosales since she was a sophomore, balancing work to support her family, school, extracurriculars and her social life.

Though she didn’t have a plethora of role models in her family, she said she always knew she would go to college in order to achieve the successful career that she’s always wanted.

“I know I’m probably going to be the child who’s going to change my family for the generations to come,” Rosales said.

Her acceptance into Santa Clara University meant leaving the small living room that she slept in. But the North Fair Oaks house mainly served as a place to sleep, as Rosales’ busy schedule from zero period at 7 a.m. to late hours working and completing homework kept her racing around town. 

“It was hard to know what I had to do to get into college,” she explained.

Her brother didn’t graduate from Sequoia High School and her stepfather had to drop out in sixth grade in order to help his family financially. And this decision is one she will be completely responsible for, pulling together tuition costs and paying off her own loans. She quickly caught on, however, and is the recipient of several other scholarships, including one from the Redwood City Rotary Club.

Rosales helped out in the county offices with the Status for the Commission on Women, where she was able to work with great mentors. She was inducted into the Hall of Fame for her community services, an unfathomable selflessness when the teenager could barely make ends meet herself. She said the women there served as examples of how to make a better life for themselves and their families.

“I jokingly asked my mom, ‘what are you going to do when I’m gone?’” she laughed. “But I’m just excited to move on.”

Other recipients:

Jorge Gonzalez Delgado graduated with a 4.0 GPA and will be attending Santa Clara University.

Maria Del Carmen Gutierrez plans to attend Saint Mary's College.