Hoover High senior sets high ambitions

Many high school graduates are expected to achieve solid grades before moving on to earn a college degree, but that’s Hoover High senior Caitlin Argueta’s back-up plan.

Her first goal is to be accepted into either the U.S. Naval, Coast Guard or Air Force academies.

Her steady pursuit to achieve that goal, though, comes after many years of Caitlin coping with a difficult family life at home, where she was the only child caught in the middle of her parents’ personal strife.

Growing up in Glendale, Caitlin, 17, attended Edison Elementary before enrolling at Roosevelt Middle School. In the seventh grade, the campus became a refuge for her, even during the summer when she would help the office staff with light tasks or assist the janitors in wiping tables.

She was happy to help and also be encouraged by the staff there with support she could not find at home.

Ory Rivas, a secretary to the school’s counselor, got to know Caitlin and saw her potential.

“She would always tell me, ‘I just want you to know I really like you coming here. Whatever you’re going through, I just want you to know that I believe in you … and we all really adore and admire you.’”

Caitlin said it was the first time someone had told her they believed in her, and she was motivated to continue to help the staff and others. In her eighth-grade year, she was Roosevelt’s student body president.

“Ultimately, helping people would make me forget about my darkness at home,” she said.

When she entered high school at Hoover, she was unsure what to pursue academically. Her family had not pushed her to attend college, unlike many of her friends whose parents expected that of them, and eventually, she hopes to become the first person in her family to do so.

At Hoover, her counselors, teachers and friends have helped support her academic pursuits. Along the way, Caitlin has also been involved with school clubs and volunteered at the Natural History Museum and the California Science Center as an exhibit host for NASA’s Space Shuttle Endeavour.

She also established Hoover’s Patriots Club, which educates students about the military and U.S. Constitution, while promoting values of independence, justice and integrity.

A friend who joined the Army suggested that Caitlin also join the military, but her advanced placement U.S. history teacher, Christian Hong, advised her to look into the service academies.

“You’re a leader,” she recalled him telling her, and she began to seriously consider them in January.

“I felt inside of me I had more to offer than just go to a civilian university for four years, get a bachelor’s and then just do what everyone does. I felt I had more to offer: I can go to school, I can serve my country, I can do so much more,” she said. “I’m made for so much more, is what I thought. That’s what ultimately motivated me to start applying to the academies.”

A career counselor showed Caitlin how to apply for the Naval Academy’s summer seminar, where students spend several days taking academic classes and enduring physical trials.

Caitlin was accepted, and for several days she slept in Bancroft Hall, woke up for early-morning physical training tasks, once with a Navy SEAL, and took chemistry, political-science and martial-arts classes.

In June, she returned from Maryland with a sore body but an encouraged spirit.

“If I could do this all over again, I would,” she thought to herself.

Since then, she has been preparing to submit her applications to the academies, which include a physical test. In an effort to lower the time she takes to run a mile, she’s been regularly hiking and running.

All the while, she said she lives by the word “integrity,” which she defines as “doing the right thing when no one’s looking.”

“I feel like people like me, ultimately you are afraid … There are a lot of moments where I doubt myself. I wish I were like any other ordinary person that would just settle. It’s not me. It’s not in my nature to just settle,” she said. “I’m not competitive in trying to beat the other person. What I mean by not settling is just for myself. If there’s chemistry class, I’m going to take advanced placement chemistry because it’s going to challenge me more.

“I live by a few sayings, and one of them is, ‘It’s not over until I win.’ I don’t stop. If I face a challenge, I just won’t stop.”