How College Can Tear at a Family’s Soul

Steven Cortez was dumbfounded. His college counselor--his mentor, a man he considered as much a buddy as a teacher--was suddenly threatening him: If you do this, don’t ever talk to me again.

Steven had bumped into Eddy Estrada at a Starbucks in Monterey Park one morning last summer. They had been sitting in the sun with their coffees, laughing and chatting, when Estrada asked Steven about the classes he planned to take that fall as a sophomore at East Los Angeles College.

Steven’s eyes strayed downward. “You know, there’s been a change in plans,” he began. He had decided to drop out, he told Estrada. “My dad thinks I’d be better off working.”

His father, an ironworker who had lifted the immigrant family into the middle class, believed that Steven’s college life was a waste of time. It was taking so long, and his 23-year-old son seemed so unproductive--just going to class a few hours a day, then hanging around the house studying. Father and son had been arguing constantly. But now, everything was resolved. Steven would join his father’s union and go to work.

Normally, Estrada is a gentle, jovial man--at 52, he is the same age as Steven’s father. Steven had never seen him look like that--never heard him swear like that: I can’t believe you’re considering that. Look how far you’ve come. You are going to leave all this? And for what? To be a welder? To live your father’s life?

*

Estrada had seen young men like Steven make this choice before.

Nationally, Latinos born in the United States receive bachelor’s or higher degrees at the lowest rate of any ethnic group--11% by age 29 compared to 32% for whites.

At East Los Angeles College, hundreds of young men and women become the first in their families to embark on a college career.

Such students “drop out in droves,” said Georges Vernez, director of the Center for Research on Immigration Policy at the Rand Corp. think tank.

“I have to work,” they say. Then they’re gone.

“As an instructor, my biggest competitor is work,” said Julian Camacho, a professor of Chicano studies. “This is a working-class college, and you have to be flexible, but sometimes I want to take work by the neck and strangle it.”

Estrada was frustrated because Steven seemed such a sure bet to move on from East L.A. College to the University of California.

The counselor literally picked Steven out of a crowd three years ago in a registration line to recruit him into a college writing program. “He just looked smart,” Estrada said.

Steven is smart. He is driven, quick and articulate. He talks so fast he is almost breathless. He brings to school the same intensity he brings to weightlifting, his chief passion. In class, he was the kind of student whose hand shot up before the professor finished the question.

After his first few semesters, Steven had a 3.7 grade-point average. The young man with the slicked-back hair and clean-cut good looks seemed to have the confidence of an Ivy Leaguer.

But inside, Steven was being torn apart. At home with his father, there were questions and arguments--what exactly did he have to show for his time in college? Why was it taking so long? Shouldn’t he be working, earning money?

Steven felt the pressure constantly. And deep down, it stoked his own doubts.

Like many college students who are told they can do whatever they want, Steven felt overwhelmed and confused. Should he pursue medicine? Teaching? Acting?

Deeper still another thought nagged: “What happens if I fail? What if I waste my time going to school? I would tell myself my dad was right--I should have listened.”

A Self-Made Man With Strong Hands

Steven’s father is a welder, a self-made man who finished school in Mexico at age 14. When Steven tries to describe him, he glances at his hands, turning them over. Asked why, he says: “Well, you have to see his hands. He has a man’s hands. You can tell a man’s hands.” Large and rough, those hands are covered with calluses. One finger is missing a nail.

Silvestre and Esperanza Cortez were a young couple raising two boys when they began their lives on the Eastside. Silvestre learned English and constantly upgraded his welding skills. He became a master craftsman, working on skyscrapers. Esperanza got her driver’s license, took English classes and eventually opened her own store selling natural remedies.

After years of sharing homes with other families, and even settling for a while in a converted garage, the family bought a house in Bell, with a small backyard, an avocado tree and a clothesline. Both parents became U.S. citizens.

“I love him. I tell my dad, ‘I don’t know how the hell you did it’--the life he’s lived, the scars he’s had,” Steven said, his voice trailing off. “I will never work as hard as him. I will never be as good as him.”

Silvestre Cortez declined an interview. From his wife and son comes a portrait of a driven and ambitious man. He loves work, loves skyscrapers, loves the idea of building things of worth. There is artistry and courage in what he does--striding across beams with a bucket of tools, or hanging in midair in a shower of sparks.

He is a marathon runner, rising at 5 a.m. for work, then running long distance at night, or sometimes lifting weights in the garage like Steven. He speaks to Steven in English and insists his son answer in Spanish. That way, both can practice the language they are weakest in.

Silvestre has taught his sons to value character and hard work; action, not words. He was also, said Steven and Esperanza, sometimes rough with his sons. Steven said he meted out physical discipline for misbehavior, even minor missteps. He shouted and seldom gave them compliments. Esperanza, ever the mediator in father-son clashes, knew the father loved his children and wanted their lives to be better than his. But she also knew the sons often saw only the anger.

“He wants to help,” she said. “But it is different in this culture, and they don’t understand.”

As Steven grew into his teens, Esperanza said, she and her husband were perplexed by the changes in him. He had been a model child--”an angel.” But as he got older, he changed. He never got into serious trouble. But he seemed a little more aggressive, undisciplined.

In Mexico young men were more respectful. Here it was different, and there were bad influences everywhere: gangs, drugs.

They felt that the schools were part of the problem. In high school, classes let out so early--not after eight hours as in Mexico--and there were so many days off and vacations. The system almost seemed designed to encourage idleness.

Steven, meanwhile, was learning ways of dealing with his world. He never joined a gang, but gang members “were all over the place, you know, and you have to, at a certain point, be friendly with them,” he said. “You have to know your territory.”

Not knowing was to risk being jumped, like the time he and a friend were walking home from high school: “Four guys came up. They’re like, ‘Hey, where you guys from?’ I looked at them--I mean I’m carrying all these books! I said, ‘C’mon man, we’re from nowhere.’ . . . First thing I know, I get sucker-punched in the side.”

He got out of that scrape, avoided others and learned not to show fear. At Bell High School, he got a little tougher, and his friends did too. Kids he knew began to drop away--to warehouse jobs, to jail.

Steven did fairly well in high school, but was not so outstanding that he drew notice. He signed up to take the SAT but skipped out the day of the college entrance exam. His parents, unfamiliar with the college system, didn’t know anything about it, he said.

He graduated, worked at Kmart, partied, got a tattoo. He fought with his father, joined the Air Force, then within weeks realized he had made a terrible mistake. He came home with a new determination: to go back to school.

“I’ll get two years,” he thought. “See what happens after that.”

A Student Comes Into His Own

At East L.A. College, Steven came into his own. He was enthralled by the writers Richard Rodriguez and David Hayes-Bautista. He was fascinated by biology, by anatomy and by the ancient Greeks who shared his interest in fitness.

He began writing about his life, about his conflicts with his father, analyzing them with his psychology texts. He didn’t talk about his new interests at home. With old friends, he learned to tone down his new vocabulary.

He seemed bound for a university. Estrada, his mentor, urged him to transfer. Estrada was also the first in his family to go to college. He has a son Steven’s age, a recent UCLA graduate.

Estrada’s job is to help students transfer to four-year schools, a leap that just a fraction make each year.

He is full of energy, always joking and always on: When he takes East L.A. College students on bus tours to various universities, he doesn’t let them drift. He stands at the front of the bus and lectures them on the benefits of a university education.

If only you could take what he has and bottle it, said his assistant, Olivia Altamirano--that ability to inspire students.

Estrada said people sometimes ask him why so few students from his college earn bachelor’s degrees. “They say, ‘What’s the problem? They can just go to a community college and transfer out,’ ” he said. “But a lot of things are tearing at these students.”

They often are poor, doubt themselves and have low expectations. Or they want to finish quickly and don’t want to go far from home. Tell them they have the grades to go to UCLA and they won’t even apply, Estrada said. Cal State Dominguez Hills is closer, they’ll say.

Estrada sees himself as a counterforce. Someone has to be an advocate, he says. “Do you think people with money want to go to Cal State Dominguez Hills because it’s just down the hill? No. They want to go to Stanford.”

Those schools--UCLA, Stanford--they are yours, he tells students. They belong to you. Take them. Students listen, but often he can see them thinking, “He doesn’t understand; I have to work.”

‘There He Is--a Future Doctor’

Even as he racked up a 3.7 GPA, Steven still felt doubts, but those around him didn’t. Linda Oronoz, a friend from school, remembers pointing him out to her mother. “I told her, ‘There he is--a future doctor, right there,’ ” she said.

At home there were constant arguments. Steven’s father, his mother said, didn’t understand that Steven was a top-flight student. He couldn’t understand why, once again, his son seemed to only be in school a few hours a day. Was he really enrolled full time? Why couldn’t he commit to something?

“I can be taking a full load of classes and be totally under stress, knowing I need to turn in this paper, and he doesn’t understand,” Steven said.

“They always tell you in school, you know, follow your dreams, and you start dreaming, right? Now my dad calls me the dreamer. He knows I’ve always wanted to be something grand, you know, something big, and for him it seems unreal, unreachable.”

“ ‘You ought to be embarrassed,’ ” he said his father told him. “ ‘Twenty-three years old and without a job.’ ”

The crisis reached its peak in August, shortly before Steven ran into Estrada at Starbucks. He had been going to college full time but was taking a lighter load over the summer. His father said he could come work with him on construction crews--he would soon be a foreman, he said.

Steven resisted. But inside he began to think: “Forget school; it’s getting me nowhere. It’s not making money, and once I finish college, am I guaranteed a job? No, I’m not. Maybe my dad is right. He made it. He raised a family, learned the language; he assimilated.”

Steven made a decision. He would not re-enroll. He went down to the offices of the Ironworkers local to get an apprenticeship, his first step toward a welding career. An official there said: “No problem. You seem like a bright guy.”

When Steven told his father, Silvestre went out and bought him $150 worth of tools--a hard hat, a belt, a sledgehammer and a “rat’s tail”--a kind of wrench. For once, his father seemed as happy as a kid, Steven said, “and I was happy that he was happy.” That night, at home, Steven put it all on and looked at himself in the mirror. This is it, he thought.

There was some appeal to it all. To be a worker, to do tough, real work. “To wear that tool belt,” Steven said, “was to be a man. Like my father.”

There was just one more piece of paperwork to take care of down at the union office. On the way, Steven stopped at Starbucks.

A Chance Meeting Changes a Life

Steven saw Estrada before the counselor spotted him, the first time he had seen him in months. He came up behind Estrada in line and poked him in the ribs. “Hey, Eddy, how you doin’?” A moment later, they were sitting in the sun, and Estrada was listening to Steven’s plans to drop out. He was about to lose another one, he thought.

So he got angry. He scolded. He lectured. He reeled off the numbers--Steven would be making $15 an hour as a welder. It was a lot now, but what about in the future? The cost of college wasn’t much compared to its returns--compared to what he would make as a professional.

“Your father loves you,” he told Steven. “He wants the best for you. But you can’t live his life.”

Estrada even offered him a job: Show up at 8 a.m. on Monday and you can be my student assistant, he said. If you’re not there, I’ll know. And I won’t talk to you again.

Steven already knew his answer. But his face was full of fear.

“Oh, my God,” he said. “How am I going to tell my dad?”

He told his mother first. When Esperanza Cortez heard that her son had made up his mind to return to school and transfer, she quietly rejoiced. But you have to talk to your father, she said. Steven was too nervous to do it that night. The next day, his father asked him how things had gone at the union office.

Steven sat down and told him everything. About Estrada. About money. About transferring. “Everything, everything,” Steven said. “Even the swear words. Just like Eddy said it.”

His father listened in silence. When Steven had finished, he was quiet. “Well,” he said, finally. “He is right. I think you should do that.”

*

This fall, Steven finished the semester with his usual high marks, and has enrolled for spring. Then he will transfer, perhaps to UC Davis or UCLA.

He still argues with his father. But things have improved. They run together. Steven, as usual, struggles to keep up.

About school, he no longer has doubts. “This is my domain. This is my home,” he said. “I am going to be a scholar. I am going to make it through school. I am going to be a professional. It feels great.

“My dad bought this poster and put it in the garage,” he said. “It’s a picture of a man running on a road, and it says, ‘The race is not only to the swift but those who keep running.’ I think he wants to tell me something, and he’s right. He has that.

“That’s what keeps me going. I figure if he can do it, why can’t I?”