His Own Path to a Life’s Dream

Jose Trejo didn’t arrive in Air Force One. His parents drove him in their 1984 Chevy van, its beige paint faded and chipped, the weary lungs of its air conditioner wheezing only hot air.

His home is not on Pennsylvania Avenue, but in space No. 3 of a Banning mobile home park. His father, Jose Sr., is not president of the United States. He works as a busboy.

There are many paths leading to Stanford. Chelsea Clinton’s offered firm footing and was well lit by camera lights, but Trejo’s was more winding, less defined and, at times, barely visible as he went in search of the $30,000 a year it costs to come here.

Since December, when he was admitted by the school, Trejo, co-valedictorian of his high school class, has filled out as many scholarship applications as he could find. He could have gone to less expensive schools, but Stanford was in his heart and in his parents’ dreams.

They came to the United States in 1980, when Jose was less than a year old. Jose Sr. had been laid off from his job assisting farmers for the Mexican government, and a friend invited him to work as a painter in a small Banning factory.

Jose Sr. and his wife, Julia, received work permits and left Guadalajara. They lived with friends until they could afford their own apartment. Since they had no car, they walked. Sometimes little Jose, whose feet grew faster than their income, was without shoes.

They had two more children, both daughters, born in the United States. The climb was harder than they expected. Sometimes they felt they were slipping backward, and they thought about turning around, going back to Mexico.

Young Trejo heard little and spoke no English until preschool. One day when he was 6, his mother picked him up from school on a Friday, the only day she got off work early, and was speaking to him in Spanish. There were other children around, and he felt embarrassed. He didn’t want them to hear, because he wanted to fit in and he knew that they would look down on him for being different. He ran ahead of his mother, ignored her, hoping she would stop asking what was wrong.

He worked hard in school and fared well. In fifth grade, he received his final B, and in sixth grade, his life changed. When he traces the momentum that carried him to Stanford, he pauses at the memory of a spelling bee, when he stood on stage at the old Banning High School, stiff from nervousness and the unfamiliar rigidness of a new suit bought specifically for the occasion--the clumsy awkwardness of seeing the other students arrive in their casual school clothes.

Even now, his eyes turn misty when he describes the new feeling that surged through him when he heard the final word, “sardonic,” and how he couldn’t wait to get the letters out of his mouth.

“I felt extreme joy,” he says, “like I had never felt before. I had never won anything that big. My mother had tears in her eyes. There were people cheering, and I cried and hugged my parents. It gave me the feeling that I had potential to do what I set my mind to do, and I was more sure of myself.”

It was about that time that his parents, expecting their third child, decided they could not go back to Mexico, that it was here in the United States that opportunities awaited their children.

When Trejo was in seventh grade, his life changed again. Both parents lost their jobs. He remembers going with them to receive public assistance. The lines were long, he says. He hoped none of his friends would see him.

A sense of shame was compounded by helplessness, his parents say. Trejo had a friend who bequeathed him a newspaper route. He and his father would awaken early to deliver the 120 papers. Over the next two years, they took on more routes until they were delivering about 500 each morning, waking at 2 a.m.

Slowly they got back on their feet, a process that continues. Even now, they cannot afford health insurance for the entire family. They rarely eat at restaurants. A 1974 Datsun that hasn’t run since last year remains parked in front of their home. Still, they are relieved to be off welfare.

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Throughout his life, the lessons quietly taught by his parents were to work hard in school, go to college, do better than them. And respect others. His sister Lissette, 12, also is a straight-A student. Esmeraldo, 6, is just getting started.

He was accepted by Stanford in December. He had been here before for a science camp and was drawn by its stateliness, the way air seemed to hold new thoughts and ideas that filled his soul with each breath. If only he had the money, he thought.

One by one, the letters began arriving. Among them was a reply from the Vikki Carr Scholarship Foundation, which provides financial assistance to Latino students from Texas and California. It was for $1,000. The foundation, co-chaired by Carr and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Henry Cisneros will honor Trejo, who is considering biotechnology as a major, and the rest of this year’s recipients as it celebrates its 25th anniversary on Sunday.

Some of the other scholarships required recipients to be U.S. citizens. Because of that and the changing political attitudes toward noncitizens, Trejo’s parents became citizens last year, simplifying the process for their son.

In all, the scholarship checks totaled $15,000. The balance will be covered by grants, loans and work-study.

And, so, two weeks ago Trejo and his parents, following the unfamiliar guidance of a borrowed map, set out from Banning, which is west of Palm Springs, for Stanford. Even then, the journey was not easy.

“We stopped at about 15 gas stations to ask for directions,” Trejo says. “We tried to take a shortcut.”

But there are no shortcuts to Stanford, only back roads.

There was great excitement on campus the day Trejo arrived. Reporters and cameras swarmed around the Clintons. He got a glimpse of them as they walked to the library.

It says something important about this country, Trejo says, that he and Chelsea could end up here on the same campus. They come from different starting lines, arrived on different paths. And even though they may never meet, they hold in common these next four years, a time for new beginnings.