A Second Chance at Their Goals : Education: For 1,000 students receiving their eighth-grade diplomas this year, the achievement had a twist: The graduates were adults.

Mito Mitov’s first life was a full one. He went to college in his native Bulgaria and worked for 25 years in a steel plant before seeking asylum here.

This month, Mitov marked a milestone in his second life: He passed the eighth grade.

The 49-year-old metallurgical engineer was one of more than 1,000 adults who were awarded an eighth-grade diploma this year, the most modest certificate issued by the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Adult Education Division.

Pride mixed with embarrassment characterize these graduates, whose average age is about 30. Their number includes native English speakers and immigrants, geophysical engineers and housecleaners. Their collective histories embrace war, political upheaval and poverty, from Azerbaijan to Watts.

What they have in common is a white piece of parchment paper in a gold-embossed case, and what teacher Marian Blake calls “an Everest” of education still before them.

“I take this life like I am second-born,” said Mitov, who left his mother and brother behind in Bulgaria. “I start again from level zero.”

Even the most determined of their number are burdened with the same anxiety: that time may have run out on their hopes.

“It’s like, in my life I’m still short, no matter how much I work and go to school, I’m still missing something,” said James Solomon, a 30-year-old custodial worker pursuing his eighth-grade diploma at Watts Adult Learning Center.

Solomon, who lives with his wife and four children in Inglewood, did not meet requirements to graduate, although he attended high school. He returned to school 1 1/2 years ago to start his education anew.

Across the Southland this month, students received diplomas at graduation ceremonies that, for some, were tinged with regret.

Svetlana Zeotina, a 56-year-old geophysical engineer from Baku, Azerbaijan, fought back tears as she described the war that drove her from a scientific research institute to a night class for eighth-grade diploma students at Reseda High School.

“All my life is broken,” said Zeotina, who is unemployed and lives with her mother and niece in Reseda.

“Eighth grade. Can you believe it?” asked another graduate, 29-year-old Erwin Herrera, staring despondently at his diploma..

Herrera recovered quickly and explained his plans to get a high school diploma, a university degree and a law degree--the same path he had nearly completed before political violence drove him out of Guatemala. He and his father, both former soldiers in the Guatemalan army, live in Tarzana, and Herrera said he hopes to join the military here.

“I am starting all over,” Herrera said. “I don’t know if I have enough time.”

Students wore their best clothes for the ceremonies, and those who could brought family members, who sat through long speeches, in sweltering auditoriums, to see their loved ones’ moment on stage.

“A lot of people don’t think eighth-grade graduation is a big deal, until you see this,” said teacher Susan Milton at a North Hollywood commencement. “They work so much harder to do it. Some come six years just to get this.”

“Eighth grade is not a big deal to my family. But it’s a big deal to me, it is very important to me,” said Fereshte Termehi, 41, a college-educated Iranian woman who escaped her homeland by camel, fleeing through the mountains to Turkey.

Termehi, who got her eighth-grade diploma at Reseda Community Adult School on June 11, came to the United States 1 1/2 years ago with her three children and her husband, a high school math and science teacher.

The family paid the equivalent of $30,000 to escape Iran after Termehi’s husband was jailed for four months because he had tutored in the families of high officials under the Shah, Termehi said. She works part time teaching Hebrew in a preschool but said her attempts to find better-paying work have met with no result.

For Termehi and other college-educated immigrants who are among the ranks of eighth-grade graduates, learning English is their chief barrier to advancement. But large numbers of the students enrolled in eighth-grade diploma programs are there not just to learn language, but to acquire basic knowledge and math skills that they somehow missed in their adolescence.

And in a time when college-educated engineers are having trouble getting jobs, these adults have walked a rocky path.

Many are on welfare. Some have spent years working long hours at menial jobs. But a surprisingly large number have managed to find themselves a well-paid niche in those last remaining corners of the economy that do not require a high school or a junior high education.

Stone masonry, carpentry, housecleaning, auto repair and restaurant work pack their resumes. One young woman from Thailand said her big break came when she landed a job as a dealer in a Bell Gardens card room.

“You come here, you have to look around and do whatever you can to survive,” said James Alexander, a 21-year-old former accounting student from Costa Rica who earned an eighth-grade diploma from Reseda. For Alexander, who lives alone and said he knows no one from his country, survival has meant working one job as a waiter, another removing asbestos and going to school five days a week, three hours a night, in between.

“Sometimes I don’t sleep,” he said.

Talking of their decision to return to school, some cited their embarrassment in not being able to read. Others spoke of their difficulty finding jobs, or simple boredom, as reasons for giving education another try.

“I had been sitting around long enough,” said Demitria Pryor, who was born and raised in Watts but dropped out of school after becoming pregnancy in the ninth grade. Pryor fits the mold of most native English speakers in the program: People who have completed school past the eighth grade but who tested below an eighth-grade level when they returned to school as adults, said Francis Buchanan, coordinator Watts Adult Learning Center.

Pryor, 27, an unemployed mother of three, said she is proud of her eighth-grade diploma and has set her sights on completing high school.

The Los Angeles school district does not keep statistics on how many eighth-grade diploma recipients go on to earn high school diplomas. But nearly all the graduates interviewed said they planned to continue.

“I’ll keep going if it takes another 20 years,” said Carolyn Taylor, 32, of Watts, who is working her way up to an eighth-grade diploma and aiming to complete high school.

Mitov, the emigre, said a high school diploma is his next goal, too. He attends night school at North Hollywood High School and was working as a welder nearby until a recent on-the-job injury.

Few graduates seemed free of the uneasiness felt by Solomon, the custodial worker studying in Watts: that their hopes may founder because of lost time.

“I started school at an older age, and I see these high school kids--they are doing trigonometry,” Solomon said. “I don’t know when I’ll ever be doing trigonometry. You see what I mean? I’m behind time. Being an adult, you’re behind time.”

The eighth-grade diploma affirms that adult students have acquired basic math and reading skills sufficient to enter a high school program.

But the diploma has little value outside the school system. Although the diploma is authorized by the State Board of Education, few employers recognize an eighth-grade certificate.

“The greatest value it has is in the minds of students,” said Milner.