Fulfillment Fund Helps Youths Find Role Models for Success

Dr. Gary Gitnick grew up in a rough Omaha neighborhood. Many of his childhood friends never made it out of their impoverished community and a couple of them ended up in jail after killing a man during a grocery store robbery. But Gitnick’s life took a different turn.

Thanks to the intervention of a group of local businessmen who inspired him to stay in school, Gitnick, 51, went to college, be came a doctor and is now chief of staff of UCLA Medical Center.

With his own past in mind, Gitnick 13 years ago founded the Fulfillment Fund, a scholarship program that pairs hundreds of disadvantaged and disabled Los Angeles students with role models.

The Fulfillment Fund is currently the largest private donor to the Los Angeles Unified School District, spending more than $300,000 annually on scholarships and cultural activities, said Michael Saltzman, a spokesman for the nonprofit organization.

About 132 junior and senior high schools participate in the program. Fulfillment Fund scholars are chosen by school counselors. Scholars who intend to go to college receive $500 to $2,000 in scholarships upon graduation from high school.

The Fulfillment Fund seeks to enrich students’ academic lives through a host of sponsored events and activities. There is an annual Career Day for disabled students and a Scholars Day luncheon where students dine at the Beverly Hilton hotel with teachers and about 300 volunteer role models. In addition, students visit college campuses and take a trip to Camp Bloomfield in Malibu for lessons on developing leadership skills.

Andrea Cockrum, executive director of the organization, said that by 1992, the fund expects to donate about $1.5 million in scholarships and tuition for more than 300 college-bound and matriculating students. And that amount doesn’t include money spent for role model workshops, standardized test underwriting, luncheons or the $100 savings bonds awarded annually to 75 eighth-graders, she said.

“If our organization wasn’t around, many would fall through the cracks,” she said.

Indeed, one former student who nearly fell through the cracks was Debbie Esparza, a junior at Mt. St. Mary’s College in Brentwood.

Esparza was 15 when her daughter, Veronica, was born. Feeling she had nowhere to turn, she ran away from home and dropped out of school. “At that time, I was like, ‘Who has time for school?’ School was last on the list,” Esparza said.

But a concerned school counselor got the former honor student back in school and picked her to be a Fulfillment Fund scholar. Esparza said it was a move that changed her life.

“I was a little nobody,” said Esparza, who received a $500 scholarship when she finished high school. “I was just another kid in school with problems. The counselor got me involved with people in the fund, and the next thing, I know I’m in college and giving speeches to high school students who are where I once was.”

Esparza said Fulfillment Fund organizers motivated her to excel and backed up their words with financial help. She began taking the fund seriously in the 11th grade, after attending a glitzy Scholars Day Luncheon. While at the luncheon she found herself surrounded by doctors, lawyers, business executives and celebrities who had come from backgrounds similar to her own.

“It wasn’t like they were saying, ‘I came from the ghetto, but look at me now.’ It was more realistic,” said Esparza, who receives financial aid but still receives money from the fund to pay for school books. “They said obtaining success was going to be difficult, but it is possible.”

About 300 role models volunteer as mentors for the fund, and the list reads like a Who’s Who guide to Los Angeles--with jobs ranging from judges to powerful business executives and doctors. And many of the role models, like Officer Maritza Gentry of the Los Angeles Police Department, openly discuss their own traumatic childhoods with students.

Gentry, a native of Nicaragua who was abandoned by her parents at age 6, became a ward of California and was sent back to Nicaragua. She returned to the United States with her mother at 14, married at 15 and had three children by the time she was 19. When her mother died, Gentry was left to care for an 11-year-old sister, and she realized that it was sink or swim. Gentry taught herself to speak English, and by age 24 graduated from Pasadena City College. Nine years ago, at the age of 31, she joined the police force.

“Every child has the potential to be successful no matter what background they come from,” Gentry said. “I’m basically an example, and that’s what I tell them.”

Although her childhood memories are still somewhat painful, Gentry says being a role model and sharing her trials with the students is gratifying, especially when it makes a difference.

Jeanette Ayala, a 16-year-old fund scholar from North Hollywood High School, said Gentry is one of only a few people she looks up to.

“Maritza is my idol,” said Ayala, who often gets advice from Gentry and passes it on to her friends. “She told me about her life and it gave me inspiration, because whenever I want to give up I think ‘if she can make it. . . . I know I can do it.”

And that’s what the fund is all about, said Gitnick.

“The point is, it takes very little to make a big difference in a young life,” he said.