Community Commentary:

For five years, one of the most rewarding parts of my job as executive director of Save Our Youth (SOY) has been taking our students on college tours.

This April, 12 SOY scholarship students and two SOY staff road-tripped to Northern California during spring break. Students were invited from our scholarship program. We distribute thousands in monthly financial incentive checks to low-income youth who put effort into their academics

The first stop on our tour was Sacramento, where we stayed in an 1895 mansion turned youth hostel. The former funeral home has an eerie feeling, and the boys and girls each had their respective dorm rooms. The next morning, we woke early to make a VIP tour of the state capitol given by the office of Assemblyman Van Tran. The state capitol stood grand and majestic amid the other government buildings in downtown Sacramento. The enjoyed a great tour of the building, the Assembly and Senate chambers and even were among the first people to take pictures of the newly unveiled statue of a bear outside Gov. Schwarzenegger’s office.

After the tour, we piled in our car to visit UC Davis en route to San Francisco. A cold front was making its way from the Bay Area so we had to duck into libraries and classrooms as the rain fell and let up. There was one student particularly interested in the School of Veterinary Medicine, so we schlepped in the rain to that department and lucked into a surprise opportunity: watching with graduate students an operation on a dog’s knee. Lab coats, masks and all!

Later that afternoon, we drove to San Francisco, where we stayed in a youth hostel near Union Square. We stay at hostels because they usually only cost about $20 a bed per person and we can book a dorm room for the boys and one for the girls. Also, the communal aspect of hostelling in regards to respecting others who might be sharing your space is a good experience for those who might be living in a dorm room in the near future.

The next day we took BART under the bay to Berkeley. We made arrangements to meet Jenny Corona, a SOY scholarship alumna and former Estancia valedictorian. We met at the steps of Sproul Plaza amid the rancor of UC Berkeley. We always try and hook up with a SOY graduate to guide us around the campus we are visiting. It is very rewarding for staff to see a formerly apprehensive and shy kid transformed into a confident young adult. This transformation is always clear when they are taking their peers around their new university.

After a tour of the campus, libraries and football stadium, we went to go see Jenny’s dorm room on the eighth floor of a high rise building that was high enough to overlook the Bay Bridge, Golden Gate and the city of San Francisco in the distance. I told Jenny that this view will cost her $3,000 a month once she graduates. She shared her room with two others on a co-ed floor. We bid her farewell and made our way back to the BART and back to the city.

The next day, we drove down to Santa Cruz in the rain. The campus was very wet and spread out along the redwoods. We explored the many paths through the forest as they connected to other parts of campus. We always get lost there.

The next day we had a long drive to San Luis Obispo. We arrived at the campus of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo late Friday afternoon. Juan Miguel, another SOY Scholarship alumnus, met us with some of his fraternity brothers. He is finishing up his sophomore year and is majoring in architectural engineering. An undocumented person, he has overcome more obstacles than others when going away to school. The campus was fairly vacant given it was late Friday. But he showed us everything with a lot of pride and enthusiasm.

We stayed in another hostel that night and drove home the next day, stopping at UC Santa Barbara to meet up with Estancia graduate Okairy Lomeli — the first student I took on a campus tour. As a college student, Okairy has blossomed from her education, including a quarter abroad in London as well as spending this winter in Washington, DC. She will graduate next month and start her master’s degree in the fall at the USC School of Social Work.

Tired, but relieved the trip was winding down, I asked the students in my car if they wanted to go away to school.

All of them responded with an emphatic, “Yes!”

TREVOR MURPHY is the executive director of SOY, based in Costa Mesa.