Coronavirus can't stop teachers, neighbors from offering drive-by congratulations to O.C. high school grads

Los Alamitos School District graduation parade

May 29, 2020 9:30 AM PT

It was late Saturday morning on May 23, and Evelyn Bahena Casas was in her room when suddenly her aunt burst in.

“She was like, ‘Your teachers are here! Your teachers are here!’” Casas said. “And I was like, ‘Oh, wow.’ I put my shoes on, ran downstairs, my cousin started recording me, and I was getting more and more excited. I was shocked.”

Her Sunny Hills High School FFA (Future Farmers of America) agriculture teachers Brian Kim and Jeremy Cates had sent emails to the 42 Agriculture Academy Completers, students who have been in their program for all four years, but Casas had missed it.

Even if she had gotten the email, she might not have expected the visit.

“We said, ‘We have a surprise for you on Saturday,’ but we kept it vague,” said Kim, who is not only an alumnus of Sunny Hills but a former Agriculture Academy Completer. “They might have thought we were mailing things.”

What the students didn’t know is that Kim and Cates had taken one of the trailers from the Fullerton high school’s 3-acre farm, where students raise lambs, pigs, goats and cows and, with the help of the school’s farmhand Adrian Pacheco, turned it into a float.

Their float had to be sturdier than a usual parade float, because they had to be able to drive it on major streets to get to every student’s home.

Video by Jose Trinidad Castaneda

As high schools cancel or postpone their graduations, some have found creative ways to highlight their students in ways that adhere to social-distancing guidelines.

Sunny Hills Principal Allen Whitten joined Kim, Cates and Pacheco on Saturday, taking photos and compiling video of the graduation run.

They started around 9 a.m., and it took them until almost 5 p.m. In between each stop, they looked up directions, put together each student’s celebratory lawn sign and blew up balloons with a helium tank lent to them by a local church, as it was otherwise difficult to find helium with the closure of nonessential businesses.

As they approached each home, they played a graduation mix from their wireless sound system. Cates announced the students on the loudspeaker, asking them to come out. He’d then ask the parents to come out. Neighbors would hear the celebratory commotion and honk their horns.

Cates remembered one of the students just happened to be fully dressed in her graduation cap and gown, taking photos with her family in the frontyard, when they pulled up. Others were accidentally woken up, and one came down in her bathrobe.

The teachers handed them their stoles. They gave out any awards they would have given at their awards banquet, had it not been canceled. They asked everyone to sign their name on the 16-foot banner on the side of the trailer. And then they took pictures.

It had been a couple of months since any of the students had seen Kim, Cates or Whitten in person.

“Not being able to see the teachers has been hard, because they really pushed us to do our best,” said Casas, who will be attending Fullerton College in the fall. “But at the same time, we have to enjoy the good things that have come our way.”

“I’ve been teaching for 13 years, and seeing some of the reactions from students and parents is at the top of the list of experiences I’ve ever had,” Cates said. “It meant a lot to the students, but it meant just as much to me and I’m sure Mr. Kim and Mr. Whitten as well.”

Many other high schools across Orange County have also gifted their seniors lawn signs, so neighbors walking and driving by know that someone in that household is graduating.

The Santa Ana School District put up banners on light poles across the city, highlighting their valedictorians and salutatorians.

Yorba Linda High School tacked large photos of all of their graduates on the school’s surrounding chain-link fence for everyone driving down the busy Bastanchury Road to see.

Yorba Linda High School put photos of their graduating seniors along their chain-link fences for all drivers-by to see.

On Wednesday morning, graduates of the Los Alamitos Unified School District had a two-hour car parade, where 534 cars, many holding multiple graduates, drove around the Rossmoor neighborhood, while an estimated 2,000 attendees along the route cheered them on.

Students wearing their caps and gowns stood up through their sunroofs, stuck their heads outside the car side windows and sat in the backs of their trucks. They decorated their vehicles with balloons, chalk messages, temporary stickers and even giant-sized posters of their faces.

Los Alamitos School District graduation car parade

It started with about 13 volunteer board members from the Rossmoor Homeowners Assn., who were thinking about what they could do for this year’s 739 graduating seniors. They eventually decided to organize a car parade.

It would begin at the Shops at Rossmoor, which conveniently had a large parking lot that could fit hundreds of cars, bumper to bumper.

“When the event committee first estimated we might get 300 to 400 cars, the first thing I did was mentally calculate,” said Ralph Vartabedian, president of the homeowner’s association. “If we need maybe 20 feet per car … How do you find a place to assemble a mile of cars? Are we getting in over our heads?”

But after securing city and county permits, a $2-million insurance policy, support from the school district — which sent out the mass emails to students — as well as the police, fire and sheriff’s departments that came out to help monitor the route, the car parade went off without a hitch.

Video by Ralph Vartabedian

Board member Pei-pei Kelman, whose child graduated this year, delivered hundreds of fliers to everyone in the neighborhood. Art Remnat, who runs the homeowner association’s website, arranged an FM radio channel the graduates could dial into once they arrived at the parade to get instructions.

Stephen Kelman, 17, of Los Alamitos High School, was one of the 10 valedictorians this year. He was in one of the earlier cars leading the parade, finished the loop in about an hour and came back afterwards to cheer his classmates on because his house is near the parade route.

“It’s definitely a confusing time, and certainly it’s different for everyone, but I mean, it’s not like I’ve had an actual graduation before to compare this to,” said Kelman, who will head to UCLA in the fall to study computer science and engineering. “It’s just nice that the people who did have it are coming out to support us when we don’t.”

“It really exceeded my expectations,” said Vartabedian, who is a former Los Angeles Times staff writer. “I thought maybe the kids would think these are a bunch of stuffy adults along the route, but I think they really appreciated it.”

Sponsors of the parade included Southland Credit Union, Creative Yard Cards, Los Alamitos Education Foundation, Rotary International, Laird Real Estate & Assn., Marian Last, Tim Weidenkeller of Farmers Insurance and Helen Harlan of Rossmoor Living.

“This is such a thoughtful, wonderful thing to do for our kids,” said Andrew Pulver, superintendent of education for the Los Alamitos Unified School District. “Being apart has been so difficult for all of our students, but our seniors are especially sad and disappointed about not being able to enjoy all the traditional activities to mark the end of their high school years.

“So the parade comes as a powerful message of love and recognition from the community. We are all immensely grateful.”

Additional reporting by Vera Castaneda and Benjamin Brazil.

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Coronavirus can’t stop teachers, neighbors from offering drive-by congratulations to O.C. high school grads

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