Genesis of a Dream : As 6th-graders, they were offered college money if they stayed in school. Where are they now? : ‘I Don’t Want My Kids Saying I’m a Dropout’

Name: Ruby Rabago

Age: 16

School: Opportunities Industrial Center.

Goal: Cosmetology or computer programming

In the four years since she left elementary school, Ruby has had two children: dark-haired Adrian, 2, who sits on his grandfather’s lap, and 2-month-old Christina, who sleeps on a couch in peach-colored sweat pants and a matching shirt.

Ruby is visiting her father’s small, two-bedroom home at the Pueblo Del Rio housing project, which surrounds Holmes Avenue Elementary School. Her mother lives in Mexico with nine children while Ruby and three siblings live here.

“I like kids,” she says. “But I never thought about having a baby of my own--not so soon . . . I don’t regret it, but I would have wanted to wait.”

Ruby says she had no information about birth control when she had her first child at 14. However, Marta Melendez, her Dream project coordinator, says she counseled Ruby many times about protection.

Ruby says she broke up with Adrian’s father six months into her pregnancy. Her current boyfriend, Christina’s father, is 19. Ruby, who lives behind her older sister’s house in South-Central Los Angeles, says her boyfriend has a full-time job and visits the children every day.

Ruby, who receives welfare payments, has been in and out of school since she left Holmes Junior High to have her first baby. She entered a general equivalency degree program but dropped out again when she was pregnant with Christina.

“She would sit at the computer with Adrian on her lap,” Melendez says. “She would work, work, work on her math and reading with one arm hugging the baby and the free hand going on the computer. She was doing great. We even thought she was going to be able to test for her equivalency degree this summer. Unfortunately, she stopped coming.”

Recently, Ruby signed up for another equivalency degree program. She says it’s important for herself and her children. “I don’t want my kids saying, ‘You dropped out when you were 14, so why shouldn’t I?’ ”

She hopes to become a cosmetologist or computer programmer so she can support her children, but right now college isn’t in her plans.

“I would like to use the opportunity (for a college scholarship),” she says. “But then again I think it’s necessary for me to stay home with my kids. (Right now, a sister baby-sits while Ruby is in class.) I know they are going to start school and that they are going to need my attention.”

That reasoning frustrates some at the foundation who know that tests in elementary school identified Ruby as gifted.

“She is the most concrete-thinking person I ever met,” says Melendez. “She doesn’t see past tomorrow. I believe she’s where she is because she doesn’t contemplate the future as part of herself”

Nevertheless, Melendez says, Ruby is mature in many ways.

“Ruby is a person of the world. She talks to everyone. She doesn’t make enemies. She is the only one from her sixth-grade graduating class who knows every single (I Have a Dream recipient) from Holmes school. She has that special way of connecting with people.”