Beating the Odds : Fund Celebrates Needy Students Who Succeed

When Romulus Johnson was only 3, his older half-brother murdered their mother. The boy’s father could not hold down a job and moved so often that young Romulus had to attend seven elementary schools.

When the family arrived in Los Angeles without enough money to pay the rent, home became a 1970 Dodge. As he moved from one place to the next, Romulus looked on as a drive-by shooting struck down one neighbor and drugs claimed many others.

“Conventional wisdom would tell you that someone like me would be dead or in jail by now and certainly not in college,” Johnson, now 18, told a ballroom full of people Tuesday at a Beverly Hills hotel. “But I was never much one for the conventional wisdom.”

Today, Johnson is in the middle of his freshman year at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Ore., receiving straight A’s and pointing toward a career in education, business or law. He delivered the story of his chaotic and troubled youth with uncommon confidence and poise to a room full of dignitaries, headed by First Lady Barbara Bush.

The luncheon gathering was a celebration of the Fulfillment Fund, a nonprofit organization that supports Los Angeles Unified School District students with scholarships and a program that pairs students with mentors from the professional community.

Mrs. Bush joined Gayle Wilson--wife of California Gov. Pete Wilson--and Los Angeles schools Supt. William Anton in awarding 200 scholarships of $500 and more to disadvantaged students from around the school district. Ten teachers, nominated by the students, received $2,000 awards for excellence.

Students who continue achieving will have their scholarships renewed each year they are in college, said Dr. Gary Gitnick, co-founder of the organization. “Some of you are already high achievers,” Gitnick told the students, “while others are bright but not yet doing as well. What’s special to us is that you all have potential.”

Mrs. Bush and Wilson also delivered messages of hope and personal sacrifice--tinged with the theme of volunteerism espoused by their husbands. But it was the organization’s success stories that drew the most enthusiastic response from a crowd of more than 1,300.

Van Le told of arriving in East Los Angeles as a Vietnamese refugee--ostracized by her native community and the new society she had chosen. “I don’t think I ever felt more alone or isolated,” Le said. “I had to be a number of different people and it was hard.”

Then a counselor at Belmont High School, seeing her promise, recommended her to the Fulfillment Fund. The group helped pay her way to Harvard University, where she is a sophomore, tutoring other students and working at the campus radio station.

“I have rediscovered myself,” she told the new scholars in a speech that several times brought her nearly to tears.

Another beneficiary of the fund, Debbie Esparza, did not address the crowd but shared her story from a table at the back of the room. She said she was 14 and pregnant when she ran away from home in the San Fernando Valley to live with her boyfriend. At 15, she gave birth to a daughter and thought she would never go back to school.

But Arlene Anderson, a counselor at John H. Francis Polytechnic High School in Sun Valley, learned that Esparza had tested as “gifted.” The counselor hounded Esparza until she agreed to return to her classes, then nominated the teen-ager to become part of the Fulfillment Fund.

Esparza said her mentor from the fund, public relations executive Michael Saltzman, has become not only an adviser but a close friend. “If you feel like no one cares then it is hard to try,” she said. “But he cares and that has helped a lot.”

Esparza, 22, is still raising her daughter, Veronica, now 6, and working to pay her way through Mt. St. Mary’s College. She is scheduled to graduate with honors in May and plans to teach college English.

The students receiving their scholarships Tuesday said they had been inspired by the glitzy gathering.

Oscar Sierra, a senior from Los Angeles Jordan High School, was still star-struck after seeing the First Lady, meeting his mentor--a banker who helped finance the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas--and winning a $500 scholarship.

“When they put the lights down it was like I was in a dream,” Sierra said. “But then they turned the lights up and I was still here. And it was like the dream was real.”