3 Who Passed Test of Adversity

Not every graduate can make the honor roll, win a scholarship to a prestigious college or be named most likely to succeed.

But for every one who stands in the spotlight on graduation night, applauded for the highest achievement, there are many others hidden in the rows of caps and gowns, for whom just graduating is a triumph.

There were those who stood on the brink of failure, desperately needing a helping hand. Others thought they were tough, and then found out how tough they really needed to be. Some had no one to rely on and gutted it out on their own. Somehow they all made it through.

For them, the diplomas conferred this week and last were confirmation that they had overcome obstacles most never face.

Here are three of this year’s valedictorians of adversity.

*

Esselena Barnett came to Cleveland High School in Reseda four years ago with a bad case of lip.

“I was one of those tough kids that didn’t have to answer to authority figures,” she said.

Esselena thought she was on top of the world. Her cousin played on the school’s basketball team. She hung out with the jocks.

Then, the summer after ninth grade, everything fell apart. Her cousin died in a car accident, and Esselena’s volatile home life exploded. Her mother, who is in jail on a drug conviction, was doing drugs one day with a man who tried to force himself on Esselena, she said. Esselena and her mother wound up in a fistfight, and the daughter went to live with her grandmother, but didn’t stay.

“We had difficulties because of my smart attitude,” she said. “I ran away. She wouldn’t take me back.”

After boarding with friends for a month, she found a home with her aunt--the mother of the cousin who had died.

She has been more of a mother to her than her own mother, Esselena said. “She’s helped me out.”

All the while Esselena kept catching that 6:30 a.m. bus from South Los Angeles for the Valley every school day, but her campus life was plummeting.

“I just didn’t care anymore,” she said.

Ditching and fighting became routine. Study ceased. She got four fails and two Ds on her 10th-grade report card. Twice she attempted suicide.

Then Esselena mouthed off in front of someone who knew what to do about it. Barbara Yanuck, then a drama teacher, was finishing her master’s degree in psychology and was about to become coordinator of the school’s Impact program, which tries to help students who are at risk of failing because of gangs, drugs or family problems.

“I was loud-talking down the hall,” Esselena said. “I was cussing and going on. She pulled me into her class. She set me down and talked to me.”

Yanuck enrolled Esselena in peer counseling, a class in which she teaches mediation, dispute resolution and assertiveness to students who then help their classmates. She also persuaded her to join Red and Blue Ribbons, a campus extracurricular group dedicated to improving communication between various racial and social groups on campus.

Over time, Esselena accepted the interest as sincere.

“All of her kids are special to her,” she said of Yanuck. “She thinks that everybody’s problem is her problem and she has to solve it. If she doesn’t, it worries her.”

Yanuck pushed Esselena to take summer school to make up the failures. Now, she gets A’s, Bs and Cs, with only an occasional D.

“She’s working,” Yanuck said. “She’s taking care of herself now. She’s built self-esteem so that she knows she’s OK now.

“I know Esselena is going to be all right, which makes me feel real good.”

Esselena plans to study sign language at El Camino College starting in the fall, and wants to become an interpreter for the hearing-impaired.

*

Through the last day of school, Cindy Cano still didn’t know if she’d become the first member of her father’s family ever to earn a high school diploma.

“I needed economics to graduate,” she said. “It all depended on my final.”

Her counselor, Edel Alanso, called with good news from her teacher at 9:30 the night before William S. Hart High School’s graduation last Wednesday.

“I passed it with a D-minus,” Cindy said with a big smile.

Considering what Cindy had already gone through, it was hardly likely that economics would stop her.

At first--before she got cancer--Cindy’s problem was herself.

“Before, I didn’t care about my life,” she said. “I cared, but I wanted to have fun. That’s all I focused on. I had fun, but I always got caught.”

She had a comfortable middle-class life. Her father, who owns a masonry business, provided a handsome home in a new development. Still, in her first year at the Newhall school, Cindy started to cut class and hang around with gang members.

“My first fight was in the ninth grade,” she said. “I fought a senior. I won her. I really thought I was tough. Anybody who gave me a dirty look, I’d tell them something. If they told me something back, we had a fight.”

Cindy’s desperate mother, Blanca, pulled her out of school in the 10th grade, enrolling her in the district’s Learning Post, a home-based program primarily for students who have to work or have children. Confined to her room with 25 hours of home study a week, Cindy raised her grades to A’s and Bs through May, 1992.

“That’s when I went to the hospital because I was sick,” she said. “They told me I had ovarian cancer.”

The surgery to remove the tumor was easy. The chemotherapy turned Cindy’s life upside-down.

“I lost my hair,” she said. “I got real sick. I didn’t want anyone to be around me. I cried every day, for little things.”

The isolation further sharpened her focus on study. Her only contact with friends was by phone. Some never called.

“I thought I had a lot of friends, but when I got sick, I found out who my true friends were,” she said.

Her mother hoped she would return to school, but Cindy didn’t want to.

“I didn’t want to face the questions people were going to ask about my sickness,” Cindy said. Eventually, she decided to go back so that she could participate in the graduation ceremony.

“I went back for my mom,” she said.

In her first weeks back, Cindy wore hats to cover her despoiled hair. Her friends were protective, she said, deflecting the curious. But she decided she couldn’t let others fight her battles for her.

“Now I can talk about it to anyone,” she said. And she finds that she can be friends with anyone.

Though Cindy will have to be tested regularly for five years, the treatment appears to have been successful.

“My mom said my illness was bad, but it brought goodness to me too,” she said.

Now, Cindy sees a bright future. She plans to enroll in College of the Canyons in the fall.

“I want to be a social worker or probation officer,” she said.

*

Striking out for the unknown at the age of 14, Roberto Lopez crossed Central America by bus, learned English in a year and then toughed out a precarious relationship with his father--all to graduate from Granada Hills High School.

He never doubted that he would make it.

“I know I’m determined to get through,” he said. “No matter what it takes, I’ll get through.”

Roberto came from a broken home in Managua. His father, a merchant seaman, only rarely visited. His mother sent him to live with her parents, who raised him. Then his grandfather died, and the civil war in Nicaragua claimed the life of his grandmother’s brother and his two sons--killed by Contras.

“It was scary,” Roberto said. “Children 14 or 15 were taken in the streets” and never seen again.

In 1989, Roberto’s mother and grandmother decided to send him north to his father, by then remarried and living in Panorama City.

They put him on a bus for Texas. His father was to meet him, but didn’t find him for two days.

“We didn’t get to the same place,” Roberto said. “I was scared because I was alone.”

On the advice of a traveling companion, Roberto presented himself to the Immigration and Naturalization Service to apply for residency.

He was given papers showing he was a lawful applicant and allowed to leave with his father for California. He said he is still waiting for his residency to be approved.

His first semester in high school, Roberto had three English as a second language classes. The next semester it was two, then one, then none.

He has maintained a 3.4 grade-point average and got through trigonometry, a rare achievement for a student who spoke no English in the 10th grade.

Living in a densely populated apartment row where gangs stalk the sidewalks and drugs are sold openly, Roberto used a simple device to keep from drifting off track.

“I was thinking about something to motivate me,” he said. “I found what I needed. I thought about my grandma. I wanted my family to be proud.”

His academic classes well in hand, Roberto volunteered this semester to be a teacher’s aide in the bilingual world history class of Cathy Rogge, who had been his 10th-grade ESL teacher.

He was sailing toward graduation this spring when his father decided to send him back to Nicaragua.

A sensitive, stoic youth, Roberto is uncomfortable elaborating.

“We had this argument,” he said. “Family thing. Misunderstanding and all. . . . He was mad at me, and I was mad at him.”

A few days after dutifully checking out of school, Roberto came back to see Rogge. His father hadn’t spoken again about sending him away, he said. She led him to the attendance office to re-enroll.

“I was overjoyed when he came back,” Rogge said.

Roberto’s life after high school is uncertain.

“Hopefully, I can go on my own in a little while,” he said.

He wants to be a cardiologist and plans to attend a junior college. He can’t enroll until his residency is approved, however, because the tuition would be too high. In the meantime, he’ll look for a job.

He says he has no doubts of his ultimate success, no matter how long it takes.

“I know I’m going to keep with it because that’s what I want,” he said.