A Dream Rekindled : Pair Aids Birmingham Senior After Scholarship Mishap

Dinora Marroquin had worked for it. She endured 1 1/2-hour bus rides from her Koreatown home to Birmingham High School in Van Nuys. She tackled advanced placement classes in English, though English is not her native language.

And in February, she was one letter away from her dream: A scholarship to the prestigious Scripps College.

But the letter never came.

There was a mix-up on the address attached to her financial aid form, it turned out. And by the time the 17-year-old senior figured out what had happened, Scripps said sorry, but it had given away the very last of its scholarship dollars.

Dinora cried.

So did Azar Sagheb of Encino when she heard Dinora’s story Tuesday morning. She was so upset that she and her husband, Harry, offered the girl $12,000 to replace the scholarship----not the first time the Saghebs have made such a gesture.

“You don’t know what this means to me,” the bright-eyed Dinora told her benefactors as she met them for the first time Tuesday afternoon at their home.

“Well,” said Azar Sagheb, “you made my heart drop this morning when I heard your story.”

The story began in El Salvador, where Dinora was born. She arrived in Los Angeles when she was 7, not speaking a word of English. Her father, a maintenance worker, had dropped out of school after the sixth grade in El Salvador, his family unable to afford more schooling. Her mother finished the ninth grade.

Dinora learned English and transferred to Birmingham for its humanities program. She earned a semester’s worth of college credits taking advanced placement courses and became interested in psychology.

The admissions people at Scripps--a private women’s college--were impressed, and offered her a spot in this fall’s freshmen class.

“I wanted to go to this school so much,” Dinora said. “I’ve worked so hard.”

She sent her financial aid forms to an office in Iowa and waited. And waited. When the office sent back the forms for her final approval, before mailing them on to Scripps, the package kept returning to Iowa.

Dinora’s address, the Postal Service said, did not exist, although she says that the envelope was indeed correctly addressed.

“I assumed that Scripps had received my applications,” Dinora said. “Everything was done.” By the time the mess came to light this spring and was sorted out, Scripps had spent all its scholarship money, officials said, on an unusually large incoming class. And too bad, because Dinora would easily have qualified for financial help.

Crushed, Dinora and her history teacher and mentor, Marsha Rybin, tried to find other monies, but to no avail. It was May now, and very late in the scholarship game.

“I had lost all hope,” Dinora said.

While Dinora was eking out an alternate plan--community college maybe, and then reapply to Scripps in a couple of years--Rybin was still searching for money.

On Tuesday morning, Rybin called Azar Sagheb, who, along with her husband, had given two Birmingham seniors scholarships in each of the last four years, and sponsored six students this year because, as Azar put it, “I couldn’t say no to any of them.”

But Rybin was not calling to ask for more money, she said. She called to see if the Saghebs might know of any other scholarships still available.

Rybin didn’t get that far. Azar said they would take care of Dinora’s first semester at the pricey school.

“She didn’t hesitate and she asked no questions,” Rybin said.

Both the Sagheb children went to Birmingham, then on to college and successful careers, and helping out the school’s promising students is their way of returning the favor, they said. Other than that, the Saghebs are reluctant to talk about their charitable donations or the source of their wealth.

“You need to give back to society,” Azar said. “I suppose there are other ways, but . . . “

“Oh, this is a good way,” Dinora assured her with a nod and a grin. “This is good.”

Dinora hesitated a moment and Azar put a hand on the girl’s shoulder.

“I never thought that people like you existed,” Dinora said.