The Dean of Dreams : Don Mroscak is ‘dad’ and mentor to Garfield High students. He’s also committed to getting them into college.

Don Mroscak is racing the clock.

By midnight on this particular day, hundreds of college applications must be postmarked--and all around Mroscak are Garfield High School seniors clamoring for his attention.

Eric Escarzaga is frantic because he left his essay at home. Juan Mungia is frustratedover his grade-point average. And Ignacio Villa is worried that without financial aid, he will have to return to Mexico, his college dream not realized.

Mroscak soon finds solutions.

In his gentle and soothing manner, he suggests that Eric call up the essay on the school’s computer and make a new printout. “And over the weekend I want you to call me,” Mroscak says, handing the student his home phone number. “We need to find you a private college where you will feel comfortable,” he says, concerned because Eric has multiple sclerosis.

Mroscak tells Juan that despite a D in trigonometry, he has done respectably in other classes. “I sense a feeling of frustration in your voice,” Mroscak says. Juan nods and says his friends are pulling him down. “In your own quiet way, tell yourself, ‘I’m gonna do it. . . . I’m gonna go to college.’ ”

He reassures Ignacio: “I’m not going to abandon you on this. We’re gonna have to work on finding money for you. My goal is to get you graduated in June and come September, to get you in college. It will happen.”

If anyone can make anything happen, it’s Don Mroscak, College Coach Emeritus.

“No child, especially a minority student, should be denied the right to get an education and above all, to get a college education. These kids are hungry for college,” he says.

Mroscak, who retired from his job as director of college counseling at Garfield High three months ago after a 37-year career as an educator, can’t stay away from his kids at the school. So twice a week, as a volunteer, he greets students at his desk at the school’s college center, encouraging them to apply to top universities and helping them complete the paperwork and pursue financial aid.

For the last 25 years, Mroscak--a 60-year-old bachelor who has lived in Montebello all those years caring for his 91-year-old uncle--has helped thousands of Garfield students get into college.

Last year, half of Garfield’s 850 graduating seniors went on to community colleges, 30% to state and private four-year colleges, and 3% to vocational schools, he says. Three percent signed up for military service and the rest entered the work force. Mroscak says the number of Garfield students advancing each year to post-secondary education has increased by at least 20% over 10 years ago. (The Los Angeles Unified School District could not provide fully comparable districtwide figures.)

To many students, Mroscak has become a dad. To others, he is a friend, a protector and the ultimate mentor. And to all, the man who is respectfully called Mr. Mroscak (pronounced mah-RAW-zik) is a weaver of dreams.

His colleagues describe him as an innovator who works tirelessly with parents, teachers and the community to expand college opportunities for Garfield’s 4,000 students.

Teachers, counselors and other co-workers have seen him help students achieve their goals for college with financial-aid workshops, always making sure his kids get help with filling out complicated forms, and with writing essays and autobiographies.

Often, over a cup of coffee, he speaks to reluctant parents who don’t see the need for their child to go to college or don’t want a child to move away for college. And when he can’t convince those parents otherwise, he finds others who can.

His commitment to Garfield students, 99% of whom are Latino, has gone beyond his job description, says Ed Martin, a counselor at the school who has known Mroscak for more than 20 years.

“He devotes 24 hours a day to his kids,” Martin says. “Students are constantly calling for advice about college and personal problems. Kids knock at his door and walk in for help. At school there are times when I lose my cool with students, but I have never seen him angry. If I was looking for a quintessential educator, he would be my choice.”

Ruby Solarzano, who as office manager for the college center has worked closely with Mroscak the past nine years, agrees.

“He truly is the most giving person I have ever met. He opens his home, his heart, his wallet for these kids,” she says, then recites a litany of kindnesses he has shown students over the years, including giving money for college-application fees and paying for air travel to college. Many times, Solarzano says, Mroscak has offered his home as shelter to kids who are kicked out of their homes or have no safe place to go.

“For a lot of students, East L.A. is their whole life. They’ve never been out of their neighborhoods. They don’t know about the possibilities until they’ve met Don,” she says.

Mroscak has a few dreams of his own.

“What is important for me is the dream that I have, and that’s to get youngsters here to realize that they should not be satisfied with just achieving average work but instead to go far beyond that,” he says. “I tell my kids, ‘Don’t wear blinders, don’t think in square boxes, and to don’t take “no” for an answer.’ ”

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Mroscak says the advice he passes on is rooted in his own experiences as the son of Polish immigrant parents who came to the United States in 1918.

“It is ironic the similarities of the Mexican culture and the Polish culture,” he says. “Basically, the majority of us are Catholic. The majority of us are blue-collar workers. And the majority of us keep to ourselves, we’re afraid to go out of our neighborhoods, our familiar surroundings”--which is why he encourages students to consider higher education and to venture beyond their communities when it comes to college.

He says that he grew up with prejudice and that that is another strong tie he has to his East L.A. students.

Born in Springfield, Ill., Mroscak was raised in the Midwest, where “we were looked down upon because we were Polish.” As a youngster, he attended Catholic school along “with doctors’ sons, lawyers’ sons, rich people’s children,” he says. “That’s when I noticed, ‘Hey, I don’t have much.’ I always had the feeling then that maybe if I had been from a monied group, I might have fit in better. But I didn’t let that bother me. I just accepted it. Underneath it all, I think that experience gave me the ambition to go on and do more. So possibly, it was the best thing that happened to me.”

So was college.

Like so many of his students, Mroscak was the first in his family to graduate from college. He attended the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., received his bachelor of science degree in 1956 from St. Edwards University in Austin, Tex., and returned to Notre Dame that summer for graduate work.

He began his 33-year career with the Los Angeles Unified School District in 1960 as a teacher and dropout-prevention counselor at Manual Arts High School.

He joined Garfield in 1967. In 1972, he received a Master of Arts degree in educational administration from California Lutheran College.

“I had never been in East L.A.,” he recalls. “I went to the park and talked to the kids to see what they thought.” Their comments sold him on the school. He later served as head counselor, career counselor and college counselor, a post he held for 12 years.

He serves on several educational and community boards and is a member of numerous groups, including the National Assn. of College Counselors, the Western Assn. of College Counselors, the Los Angeles Teacher Counselor Assn., the Unionized Teachers of Los Angeles, the National Education Assn. and the East Los Angeles Rotary Club.

This past summer, Mroscak became the second non-Latino to receive the Maclovio Barraza Leadership Award presented by the National Council of La Raza, a political and educational foundation based in Washington, D.C., for his commitment to his students.

Roy Torres, a 1982 Garfield graduate, credits Mroscak for his success. A 1987 graduate of California Polytechnic University at Pomona, Torres, 29, is a teacher with the Los Angeles County Office of Education’s alternative-education program.

“I grew up on welfare. I came from a single-parent family with no father,” says Torres, the first in his family of three generations in Los Angeles to go to college.

“Because Don believed in me, I began to believe in myself. Some people talk about what they want to do for communities, but he does what he believes and it works because it comes from his heart. He’s the original good guy.”

Ana Rubalcaba, 39, a 1972 Garfield graduate, says: “Only because of Don I aspired to go to college. My parents would have been content with me just graduating from high school, but Don knew I could achieve beyond that.” Today, Rubalcaba, an East Los Angeles Community College graduate, is a loan officer for Western Financial Savings Bank.

Jose Espinoza, class of 1984, says Mroscak has been more than a mentor.

“He’s been my dad,” says Espinoza, who lived with Mroscak during his senior year in high school because of family problems.

Mroscak encouraged Espinoza to apply to Yale University. He was accepted, and in 1988, Espinoza graduated with degrees in political science and economics. Seven months ago, he earned a master’s in business from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

“Whether it’s financial or girlfriend problems, Don has been there for me,” says Espinoza, 28, who recently joined an Anaheim investment advisory firm. “He co-signed my loans for Yale. He was at my college graduation. He co-signed for my new house. He’ll be the grandfather of my children.”

Such adulation embarrasses Mroscak.

“I just focus on the good that I see in kids,” he says. “Today, everyone comments on negativism, on the disintegration of the family, drug involvement, gang activity. These kids see this day-in, day-out. They live it.

“Instead, I’ve always talked about the need to be a good person and what that implies, like building character, honesty, integrity and having inspiration. I want kids to know that the No. 1 goal in life should be to be a good person and everything else will follow.”

Mroscak says that as an educator, “I’m not here to indict our kids. I’m here to build them up.”

And that means making college for all students a real possibility, not a pipe dream--especially for youths whose parents pressure them to work after graduation or students who don’t apply to college because of cost.

“We have to dispel one myth about college--that the lack of money can keep you from getting a college education” when, in fact, Mroscak says, a low-income background coupled with good grades makes for an excellent financial-aid package.

“We’ve got to get Latino students in the college mainstream and let them know that they can have top-level jobs. We have to teach our young people to become leaders and then the leaders to become role models. We can’t give up on our kids.”

That’s why Mroscak says he will continue to return to Garfield--that is, when he’s not busy fund raising for scholarships, recruiting for Garfield’s Alumni Assn., working with Mount St. Mary’s College’s outreach program or starting a “Dollars for Scholars” chapter at both Garfield and Van Nuys High School.

“We are all put on this Earth for some reason. I was put here because I enjoy helping people more than anything else. I care about my kids. That’s why I still come here,” he says.

“This is home.”