Of Dreams, Dignity and a New Life

Six years ago, the national I Have a Dream Foundation made its pitch to 256 sixth- and seventh-graders at the Holmes, 52nd Street and Hillcrest schools in Los Angeles.

If they studied and went to college, the children, called “Dreamers,” were promised privately sponsored scholarships of $1,000 a year for four years.

Now the first class of L.A. Dreamers are of high school graduation age. Almost half, 113, have earned their scholarships.

And the program is still there for some kids who fell behind. Of the 143 teen-agers who aren’t graduating on schedule this month, 58 still participate in I Have a Dream. The foundation provides tutoring, field trips, mentors, and, perhaps most important, project coordinators for each youngster. Those “PCs” never give up on them, students say. Following are the comments of two Los Angeles Dreamers set to attend college this fall and two who had some setbacks but hope to go on with their educations.

Vinette Brown, 18

When counselors told Vinette Brown to attend the best schools, she listened.

After Hillcrest Elementary and Audubon Junior High in Los Angeles, Brown attended high school at the private Cate School in Carpinteria, her fees paid by an I Have a Dream sponsor.

She starts at Boston University this fall on a BU scholarship of $22,200 annually and plans to study international relations. She was accepted by Cornell, New York University, Tufts, USC and UC Berkeley before selecting Boston.

“I always knew I was going to college,” said Brown. “It’s something my parents wanted for me and I wanted for myself, and I would have gotten there.

“But I Have a Dream helped. It got me to Cate School, and what I learned there is really going to help in college.”

The foundation provided emotional support for Brown and her parents when she transferred to Cate, said project coordinator Rigoberto Orozco.

“Getting used to the different atmosphere was my main concern,” Brown said. “There were 66 students in my class and about six African-Americans. Only one came from Los Angeles. The rest grew up in white neighborhoods. They’d already been exposed to what I was entering.”

When the foundation adopted her seventh-grade class, she seldom thought about a grant. “I thought more about the activities we did with the group,” she said. “We went to the ballet a couple of times. We went to Disneyland, Magic Mountain. We went to a homeless shelter and distributed food.”

Later she valued the educational services. “I could always count on my parents,” she said. “But this gives me more people to get help from.”

Aldo Gutierrez, 17

Aldo Gutierrez is a long way from his accounting degree, but he has calculated his debt to I Have a Dream.

“If it wasn’t for I Have a Dream, I think I’d be in jail, or still gangbanging, or maybe even dead,” said Gutierrez.

He graduated from Verbum Dei High School on Friday and will attend a Cal State campus in the fall, probably San Diego or Northridge. He will be the first in his family to attend college.

But in seventh grade, he joined a gang and was headed elsewhere.

“I Have a Dream gave me opportunity,” he said. “My friends in gangs would tell me to come someplace, and I’d say I have to go to the computer center or office at I Have a Dream.

“My friends got so used to me saying I have to go here or there, they just stopped asking me to come.”

A little later, project coordinator Henry Ward persuaded him to work hard in school.

“He put it into my head that I was smart, and that only if I applied myself would I get to believe it,” Gutierrez said.

His 2.4 grade point average as a freshman improved to 3.3 as a senior, he said. Gutierrez wants to do well for his mother, who manages a small pillow factory. “My mom was working very, very, very hard so she could buy us clothes and food. I did not want my mom to do this her whole life. Also, I wanted to be a role model to my younger brothers and sisters.

“The project coordinators are great people,” he said. “He (Ward) will help with personal problems. He’ll motivate you to go to school. He’ll give us rides when we need them. If you do not have money to catch the bus, he’ll give you money. If you’re hungry, he’ll buy you something to eat.”

Bernardo Carrillo, 17

At the Crenshaw offices of the foundation, a driver was about to give Bernardo Carrillo a ride home.

“Can I wait until I get my hug from Mrs. Middleton?” the teen-ager asked.

Carrillo sat for 15 minutes until I Have a Dream’s executive director emerged from her office and embraced him.

“I haven’t had this hug for a long time,” Myrtle Middleton said.

“I couldn’t go without my hug,” Carrillo agreed.

“Bye, sweetie,” Middleton called as he left.

Carrillo was heavily involved in a gang for several years and dropped out of Huntington Park High School 18 months ago at the start of his junior year. “I wasn’t making anything (progress) at school and decided I should get a job and not waste my time,” he said.

In and out of school since then, he’s remained active in I Have a Dream, taking advantage of counseling, cultural experiences, the computer learning center and mentor programs.

“He’s been one of my most active students,” said project coordinator Lori Jaramillo.

Now Carrillo plans to enter night school and become a paramedic. He says I Have a Dream is largely responsible.

“I would have been dead by now if I didn’t have (the foundation) and my mom pushing me. They talk to you and tell you to face facts, that life is not always going to be fun like this. Sooner or later, what you do is going to catch up with you.”

Recalled Jaramillo: “I remember getting phone calls late at night where, after an incident, he’d call to tell me that he was alive and what he had survived. And I remember thinking that I might never hear from him again. And trying to persuade him that there was another way out.”

Carrillo has a job making sandwiches in a Culver City cafe. He takes home $160 a week and receives all the food he can eat. He shares an apartment with a cousin.

“That’s not the life I want,” he said. “I want a big house with kids, and I want to give my kids all that they want. And I have a chance with I Have a Dream to make my dreams come true.”

Karla Avelar, 19

Karla Avelar dropped out of Taft High School in Woodland Hills in 11th grade. She was estranged from her mother, who was disgusted with her gang activity and failures in school. Last fall, when she was six months pregnant, her boyfriend threw her out.

So the teen-ager visited the only person she could think of who might help--Marta Melendez, her project coordinator at I Have a Dream.

Melendez arranged for Avelar to return home to her mother.

Avelar has a 7-month-old daughter and is working for her general equivalency degree in I Have a Dream’s learning center. If she continues at her current pace, she’ll receive her GED in six months. Then she hopes to attend college.

The 1990 killing of her brother, a gang member, in a drive-by shooting helped motivate Avelar. “My mom was suffering a lot,” Avelar says. “She told me, ‘I don’t want to lose you.’ ”

But persuading Avelar to finish school was a long battle.

“I remember when she was a little girl in seventh grade,” Melendez said. “I would tell her, ‘What do want from your future? You’re becoming a chola .’ She would say ‘I don’t care.’

“We would sit down and I would draw diagrams. On one side I would draw Karla the Chola; on the other Karla the Dreamer. At the end of the drawing of the Dreamer, I would show her getting a diploma or getting married.

“And for a while, she would stay in school and do well. But she would get distracted because of family or gang situations. I would find her at the corner of San Pedro and 36th hanging out with the homeboys.”

All the while, Avelar said, Melendez stood by her.

“I told her nobody cared about me and I wasn’t good enough to be somebody in my life, not like her,” Avelar says. “She told me that if I tried, I could be like her or better.

“I told her nobody loves me,” Avelar said. “She said, ‘Nobody loves you? I love you.’ ”