If her life is a fairy tale, Melodia Martinez has overcome far
too many villains, kissed more frogs than princes and spent more
than her fair share of time in the deep, dark woods.
If her life is a fairy tale, Melodia Martinez has overcome far too many villains, kissed more frogs than princes and spent more than her fair share of time in the deep, dark woods.
However, it does not mean the Hollister born and raised woman will be denied her own happy ending.
If you would have asked Martinez as a teenager where she would end up in life, she wouldn’t have had a clue. Yet her story of success is rife with failure and despair from a descent into a world of alcohol abuse and drug use and her struggle to leave old habits behind.
“Most of my madness and partying was from 13 to 18 years old,” she said. “It’s really sad that some of the people I hung out with are still living this way.”
Martinez, 44, now spends her time working with foster kids at the Family Resource Center in Hollister, helping them to become prepared as they age out of the system. While working with the teens, Martinez has also been working hard at San Jose State University as well, and she is two months shy of earning a master’s degree in social work.
Considerable successes for a woman most had given up on before she reached adulthood, and an accomplishment that even Martinez herself would have thought impossible during the twilight of her youth.
“I grew up with a lot of anger because I never felt like I had a childhood,” she said. “I remember being 5 years old, standing on a chair serving my eight brothers and sisters dinner from a pot because my mom was working.”
Angry and tired of taking on a parental role, Martinez started hanging out with the wrong crowd. As an adolescent, she describes herself as the “worst of the worst.” Even during her first pregnancy, at the age of 14, Martinez was still throwing punches and her attitude around.
“I just didn’t care about anything,” she said.
Five months into her first pregnancy, Martinez found out the father of her son actually had a wife and children of his own in Watsonville.
“When I found this out, I made a decision to cut off all ties with him,” she said.
Twelve days after turning 15, Martinez gave birth to her son, Anthony.
“I went from parenting my siblings, to parenting my own children, and I missed out on my childhood,” she said.
Young and misguided, Martinez lived in a one-room shack in her grandmother’s backyard, and continued her partying lifestyle. A few years later at 18, she was pregnant again. This time the father wasn’t married or lying, but he did give her an ultimatum.
“He told me I could either be with him or have the baby, and I said the hell with him and had my daughter, Lisa,” she said.
By now, life was looking up for Martinez, and she joined a grant program through the University of the Pacific for farmworkers’ children, but her educational career wouldn’t last long. With her children being cared for by others at home, she went back to her longtime lover, drugs and drinking, and married a man in prison for murder.
“During the ceremony, I was crying the whole time, but not weeping because I was happy,” she said.
While on a visit with her imprisoned husband, Martinez brought her son along, and while talking to the felon through the glass, she saw her son’s reflection and something snapped.
“I realized that if I didn’t change my life, my son could end up in there,” she said.
After returning to Hollister, Martinez married again and this relationship stuck for 18 years before ending in another bitter split.
On her own once again, Martinez rented an apartment and headed to the unemployment office because she couldn’t make ends meet. She was given a skills test and learned she would have to work her way up from a basic skills course, teaching her how to spell and write a sentence.
“Not having the elementary education really set me back,” she said.
However, she stayed with the program and, over the next seven years, Martinez earned an associate’s degree in liberal arts at Gavilan College, a bachelor’s degree in social work at San Jose State University and, by summer, she will own a master’s.
“I want to give back to my community,” she said. “My children grew up here, and my grandchildren will grow up here.”
After receiving her master’s, Martinez plans to continue work with the Family Resource center.
“It’s really sad,” she said. “I used to party with the parents of some of these foster kids.”
Her supervisor, Maria Corona, said she has become an asset to the group.
“When a person has the types of experiences in their life like Melody, it improves the ability to better understand the teenagers they’re working with,” Corona said.
Giving hope, support and encouragement to young people who aren’t sure of their futures is something Martinez is passionate about.
“There are a lot of teenagers out there that don’t realize what college money and support is out there for them,” she said. “I see so much negativity in the news that I want them to know success can be theirs, too.”
