Her efforts can help change South L.A., girl says

By Maria Hsin

Nov. 19, 2007 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

When Jacqueline Rodriguez was 12, she worked nights five days a week with her father and brothers. They scrubbed toilets, vacuumed, mopped and took out the trash at a film production company after her dad injured himself at his day job.

Jacqueline, now 17, is the fourth of eight children. She expected her oldest sister to be the first in her family to finish high school and attend college. But her sister dropped out.

“We all lost hope,” Jacqueline said. “She didn’t make it, and we wondered, ‘Are we going to make it?’ ”

At the time, the family was struggling to make the mortgage payment, and Jacqueline felt she needed to help. She rode three buses to get to a job at a fast-food restaurant on La Cienega and Pico boulevards, a three-hour ride from her home near Florence Avenue and San Pedro Street in L.A.

She would do her homework on the bus rides and during breaks. Advanced placement U.S. history was among the nine classes she enrolled in that semester at Downtown Magnets High School. She described it as her toughest year.

“My parents don’t understand about schoolwork and wouldn’t understand if I told them I couldn’t work,” Jacqueline said.

The summer before her junior year, Jacqueline discovered Coro. She met with a college counselor who mentioned the nonprofit organization. Its focus on leadership training intrigued her.

Coro “showed me that I can do something,” she said. “It made me believe that maybe I’m the one” to create change.

Coro was established in San Francisco in 1942 by attorney W. Donald Fletcher and investment counselor Van Duyn Dodge. The two men envisioned an organization that developed citizen leaders, a new concept at the time. The leaders would be trained with the skills needed to ensure that government responded more effectively to people’s needs, according to the organization’s website.

Coro opened its Los Angeles chapter in 1957. Today, it operates in five other cities, including St. Louis and New York. About 10,000 people have participated in a Coro program, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein, state Sen. Alex Padilla and former state Treasurer Phil Angelides.

The nonprofit’s unique name, Coro, is a made-up word. Its logo, with a dot in the middle of the letter C, resembles an eye and represents the organization’s intent to keep its eyes open in public affairs, according to the website.

Coro’s two-month high school leadership program that Jacqueline participated in gives students real-world work experience and helps them refine such skills as speaking and working in group settings. The course introduces students to business leaders and, in a new twist, will begin emphasizing youth issues, including violence and violence prevention.

Tom Riley, chief executive and president of Coro Southern California, said the organization wanted to lay groundwork that high school students could take to college and the workforce, giving them the ability to influence their friends as well as stimulate change in the broader community. “We want civil involvement to be a choice they want to pursue,” he said.

Anne Reisinger-Whatley served as Coro Southern California’s program director for 2 1/2 years and worked closely with Jacqueline. She said many South Los Angeles students didn’t know of the rich history of the area because they were constantly hearing what their community lacked. Coro helped the students learn how their neighborhoods came to be, how government policies affected their lives and to value what they have, she said.

Reisinger-Whatley said she noticed that Jacqueline now has a better understanding of the role she could play in her community’s future.

“We talked about how change came about and how that can happen now,” she said. “People are not powerless.”

Jacqueline’s main focus is to help middle and high school students. Her voice cracked and tears streamed down her face as she shared what she said were misconceptions about people in South L.A.

“Teachers tell you that by next year you’re going to be pregnant,” she said, adding that adjectives such as “dirty,” “bad” and “ghetto” were often associated with the area.

“People think . . . that nothing good comes from there,” she said. “That if we are there, we belong there. That there’s no progress and we can’t become something better.

“They are talking about me. My culture, my family. Where I live. They are insulting me.”

Jacqueline is excited about working in her community to counter those negative conceptions and help others. But before she does that, she needs to complete her college applications. She is applying to seven colleges, all in California, including Occidental College, Pitzer College and UCLA.

She doesn’t want to go far away. She said she had a responsibility to her younger brothers and parents.

“My parents don’t know about AP classes, the UC system or financial aid. I want to be the help I didn’t get,” she said.

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maria.hsin@latimes.com

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