Rising to the Occasion

The assignment in Advanced Placement English is to illustrate the imagery of Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Patricia Barragan chooses bold colors as a backdrop to portray the mountains, trees and river that Keats described.

The city, she says, makes her feel wary and confined, but in nature, she feels a sense of freedom, a widening of horizons. A senior at Locke High School in Watts, Barragan has been accepted for the fall term at UC Berkeley, where she plans to study environmental engineering so she can help preserve what she fears is being lost. The youngest of seven children, she would be the first in her family to attend college.

Barragan, 17, is valedictorian at Locke, which has the lowest Academic Performance Index rating of all noncharter public high schools in Los Angeles County. Even among California high schools with similar demographics, Locke received the lowest score possible.

The low rating, says assistant principal Elois McGehee, weighs heavily on students and staff, and for many, it feels like another slap to a school already battered by criticism.

“The bottom line is, we need to improve,” says McGehee. “We know that, and we’ve always known that. . . . We’re constantly fighting a negative image. We do some good things here. We have some good kids here, but it seems we’re always fighting against something else that puts Locke down.”

The past month has not helped the school’s image. One teacher was arrested on charges of sexually assaulting students. Another was transferred while misconduct charges are investigated by school officials.

At least 25% of Locke students are wards of the state and many others live with relatives other than their parents. About 50 of the 2,000 students are parents themselves. Only 6% have home computers, and up until two years ago, there were not enough books for students to take home to study.

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When final grades are posted, three or four of the school’s top 10 graduates are likely to be undocumented residents, ineligible for federal financial aid and jobs requiring Social Security numbers.

McGehee says she challenges students to overcome adversity, and graduating seniors such as Barragan and salutatorian Claudia Arevalo are proof of what can be attained when one is inspired to succeed.

“I tell them, ‘With all the obstacles you face, you know what? No one expects you to make it, so why don’t you prove everybody wrong and be the one who makes it. . . . Everybody expects you to fail. You have a drug-addicted mother, you don’t know where your father is, you live in a foster home with other kids who are not your siblings, whom you have no relationship with. You’re in an economically depressed area. For all intents and purposes, the world has written you off. You’re not going to make it. Why don’t you prove them wrong. Show them that despite all this, you can make it and compete with people who had all the great things in life.’ That’s what I tell them.”

Arevalo, one of Barragan’s best friends, has been accepted at Mount St. Mary’s College in Los Angeles. She hopes to become a math teacher. Like Barragan, English was not her primary language when she entered school.

And, like Barragan, success likely will extend well beyond her personal life, says Warren Fox, executive director of the California Postsecondary Education Commission, the state’s planning and coordinating agency for higher education.

“One would think that faced with multiple challenges of language issues and being the first in their families to go to college--not quite knowing what it takes to get to college in terms of curriculum or financial aid--many students would doubt they can do it,” Fox says. “The nice thing about students who do make it is that not only are they successful, but they certainly then act as role models for other students, who will look at them and say, ‘I can do it too.’ ”

In that regard, Barragan and Arevalo are not alone. They are among the 22% to 28% of this year’s 200 Locke graduates who will enroll in four-year schools, says John Mandell, the school’s college counselor. Another 50%, he says, will attend two-year institutions.

Mandell has been at Locke since 1986. He has turned down opportunities to work at other schools because, like many teachers, he says, he feels greater pleasure and purpose working with Locke students.

“We have teachers who provide money, clothes; they buy students glasses, take them places they wouldn’t otherwise be able to go, give them rides to school,” Mandell says. “I’m not sure that happens at other schools.”

He receives calls and letters from students who have gone on to top schools, but has no statistics reflecting graduates’ success in college. He says, however, he has no doubt about Barragan and Arevalo.

From where the two students started their educations, there were no shortcuts. Lacking many advantages, they persevered and avoided pitfalls that claimed many peers.

“They have had to find more character elements within themselves,” says their English teacher, Tom Nauman, who heads the department. “That’s true of all these kids. They have managed to succeed in the face of considerable distractions. There’s always a background element of fear here, and it’s probably true of other inner-city schools, fear of violence of one kind or another.”

The school recently was locked down for an hour as helicopters swarmed above and police searched the community for suspects in a drive-by shooting across the street from campus that claimed the life of a former student. Police routinely patrol the grounds on bicycles.

The school, say some students, has gained the reputation of a “dumping ground” for students from overcrowded schools or for those who have been expelled from other schools.

“This school doesn’t throw kids away,” Nauman says. “Kids who come here are given a chance. They’re not going to be turned away, ever, for any reason.”

As Arevalo lifts her drawing of Keats’ urn to clips above the chalkboard, she turns to the taller Barragan, who stands and assists her.

Arevalo’s urn is smaller than Barragan’s, the colors softer, drawn evenly in pencil. She has, interpretively, included a human chain stretched across the middle of the urn. “Keats, to me, is talking about romance and emotion, and in order for that to happen,” she says, “there has to be a human connection, a human chain.”

The human chain in her own life recently became entangled. She never met her father, and Amalia Arevalo, the woman she believed was her mother, died eight years ago. It wasn’t until March that she learned that the woman was not her biological mother. Amalia had agreed to care for Arevalo so her mother, a guerrilla soldier in Guatemala, could fight. When her mother died, Amalia accepted responsibility for raising her and brought her to the United States.

“My whole foundation was taken from me. That was one of the pillars I had based everything on,” Arevalo says, “and it felt that it was taken away.”

She has always thought that students allowing personal matters to interfere with school were somehow weak, but that has changed in recent months. She admits losing focus. In English, she recently failed to turn in a term paper. In Advanced Placement economics, she blew off a project.

“I’ve been preoccupied trying to figure out who the heck I am,” she says. “I’m OK with knowing the truth. I’d rather know the truth, even though it’s painful, than not know the truth at all.”

As stated by Keats:

Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--

that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need

to know.”

The Locke class of 2000 will receive diplomas June 22, and both Barragan and Arevalo will give speeches. Neither yet knows what she will say.

But as they reflect on their pasts and futures, a common message emerges. It has to do with overcoming great odds and believing in oneself. It has to do with the journey to truth and beauty.

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Of the seven children in her family, Patricia Barragan is the luckiest. She was too young to work in the fields with the rest of the family, too young to be afraid when her mother, Maria Villalobos, packed up the car in the mid-1980s and moved her five youngest children from Northern California to L.A. with little money and even less of a plan.

Villalobos suffers from a respiratory disability. Her two older daughters remained in San Jose, so when the family arrived in L.A., it was left to her oldest son, Juan Barragan, now 29, to support the family.

There were times when Juan and his three brothers had to take turns going to school because there weren’t enough shoes to go around. Eventually, they all dropped out to help support the family. Only Juan returned to graduate.

“My whole family sacrificed so that I could have a better life,” Patricia Barragan says. “They sacrificed their dreams so I could realize mine. I became a part of their dreams, so college is very important to me.”

In eighth grade, she was salutatorian at Gompers Middle School. The valedictorian was Minerva Barragan (no relation), who also is a member of this year’s Locke graduating class.

Minerva was a straight-A student at Gompers, and she remembers how proud she felt when she was named valedictorian.

“I felt special because no one in my family had graduated even from middle school,” she says. “My mom told me she knew I could make it. She was very proud.”

In high school, Minerva’s grades fell. She had a baby her junior year. Her parents moved to Colorado, so she lives alone with her son. In addition to school, she works 38 to 40 hours a week as a grocery store cashier. This fall, she plans to enroll in community college to study office administration.

“My dream is to live long,” she says, “to see my son grow up. I want to buy a house for my son and me someday, and I want him to go to college and be somebody.”

To go to college, to be somebody. It is a dream shared by many Locke students, including Patricia Barragan. She wants to open doors for future generations of her family, prove that all things are possible. That’s why she chose Berkeley, where she is among 8,300 student admitted from 33,192 applicants.

Richard Black, Berkeley’s acting assistant vice chancellor for admission and enrollment, says admission takes into account the extent to which students have taken advantage of and excelled in programs offered by the school. It is the accomplishment of the student, not the high school, that determines admission.

That policy, says Black is “the continuation of a decade-long process of looking at everything in the [student’s] folder, and less and less at strictly quantitative measures such as grades and test scores.”

Barragan says some of her peers have discouraged her from going to Berkeley, but those sentiments only make her more determined to succeed.

“A lot of people have said, ‘You can’t go there. You’ll never make it.’ I want to prove to them that I can make it. It’s stereotyping when people say you can’t make it because you’re a minority. I can’t stand that. I want to prove to them that I can make it. I also want to be a role model for women and show people that you can do whatever you want if you try.”

To be named valedictorian is not a measure of intelligence, she says. It is a measure of how much work one is willing to do to be the best. Since her first day at Locke, her goal has been to finish first in her class

“I’ve never considered the valedictorian to be the smartest person. I always considered it to be the person who worked the hardest for four years. To me, that’s what valedictorian means.”

Success is a way for her to thank her family, she says, to pay back some of what they have sacrificed.

When asked what Barragan’s success means to the family, Villalobos begins to cry. She says in Spanish that she worries about money. Barragan has yet to find out whether she will receive financial aid.

But Villalobos also says she feels great pride for her daughter. What does it mean? She can barely get the words out. “It means everything.”

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Amalia and Claudia Arevalo arrived in Los Angeles from Guatemala 17 years ago. They found an apartment, and, although Claudia had her own room, at night she would climb into bed next to Amalia.

Claudia was 10 when Amalia died. She didn’t cry at the funeral, but tears came at night, when she would lie in bed and feel the vastness of being alone.

“At night, I felt like my world was crumbling and God was punishing me.”

Amalia, a seamstress, died at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center after mistakenly swallowing a toxic substance. Doctors were trying to determine the cause of her back pain and sudden loss of weight.

Amalia’s sister took Claudia in and became legal guardian, but Claudia says the two never got along. It was too great a departure from her life with Amalia, and so when Arevalo turned 18 in March, she moved in with her godparents, Gloria and Julio Ruiz of Bellflower.

“It’s warm and loving here,” she says. “It’s a wonderful place to live, but it’s not my home. . . . I feel that it’s important for me to become independent so I can have something I can call my own, because since my mother died, I haven’t had that.”

Sometimes when she sees families together, she feels ever more the outsider, ever more alone, and she wonders if she will ever fit in. This past year, as she filled out college applications, she would often pause before filling in the line asking for the names of parents or guardians.

Usually, she would write in the name of her aunt, but sometimes, for reasons she can’t explain, she would write in Amalia’s name, and under occupation, she would write, “Deceased.”

Since moving in with her godparents, she awakens each morning at 4:30 and catches two buses and the Metrolink train to travel the 10 miles to school and arrive by 7. On the bus or train, she studies people, wonders what their lives are like, who they are, where they are going.

“I think, ‘Is she going to work today? What is she going to do? Does she have kids?’ When I see people with lunch boxes, I know they must have families, a wife who wakes up early and makes their lunch.”

She studies people’s hands, searching for clues about their lives.

“I remember my mother had very strong hands. I would describe them as manly hands. I think that was a sign of her strength and endurance.”

It’s all part of her search. Like solving a math equation, if she can determine the values of variables by understanding who other people are, perhaps she can determine where she fits in among them. This fall, her search will take her to Mount St. Mary’s.

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“In choosing what I want to do for the rest of my life, I didn’t think about how much I would be paid. I didn’t think about whether the job would be in demand or, if I didn’t make it, what else I would be prepared to do. I want a job where my input makes a difference. I know that sounds cliche. It’s not that I want to bring about world peace. I want to change at least one person, and I know it will have a domino effect and something cosmic will come of it.”

She says she has no bitterness toward Amalia, whom she still considers her mother, for not telling her the truth.

“Sometimes when I have a big paper due or something, I procrastinate and think, ‘I’ll just get it over with and take my C.’ Then I’ll think of my mother, how she came home at 7 and cooked something to eat, then played tea party with me until it was time to go to bed. Then she would wake me up at 6:30 to take me to the baby-sitter so she could go to work. And I’ll think that I have to put forth more effort.”

Nor does she feel bitterness toward Amalia’s sister, who, despite their differences, provided food and shelter. And she has no bitterness toward her birth mother, who, she learned in March, fought and died for causes she believed in.

Link by link, her human chain takes shape. In each hand, she now feels the grip of a mother, one of them firm, the other the hand of a soldier.

Both are strong, and as she stands before her fellow graduates next week, she will speak to both the living and dead.

She says she will not plan her speech. She wants her words to be spontaneous, drawn from her heart, not a piece of paper. Thinking too much about it ahead of time, she says, might diffuse the passion and verve of her message.

In the moments before she steps to the microphone, she will gather her thoughts, look at the world and seek the strength of new pillars, words that may change at least one life.

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Duane Noriyuki can be reached at duane.noriyuki@latimes.com.