With a broad grin and a nod to his family, 29-year-old Raul
Escalante accepted a piece of paper from Gavilan College that
proved he had turned his life around.
With a broad grin and a nod to his family, 29-year-old Raul Escalante accepted a piece of paper from Gavilan College that proved he had turned his life around.
The first in his family to graduate from college, Escalante is off to University of California, Berkeley next fall, where he will study political science. After that, his sights are set on Harvard Law School. With such a bright future before him, it’s hard to believe the stories of his rocky youth.
Instead of looking up to his father, a hardworking man with the callused hands to prove it, Escalante fell in with a rough crowd and turned to drugs as a teen. For years, school was the farthest thing from his mind. Then he met a girl who encouraged him to put his troubled past behind him and focus on what made him happy.
“He’s destined for greater things,” said Sabrina Hernandez, the girl who saw Escalante’s potential even when he didn’t see it himself. She is now his girlfriend of several years. “I’m proud of him. No matter what, I’m going to be by his side.”
Escalante’s only regret is that he didn’t realize what he was capable of sooner.
“Everything I’ve done, I’m really proud of, but I wish I had done this when I was 19 or 20,” the Morgan Hill resident said. “If I didn’t finish, I would have gone back to the way it was. There was no other option. I want to be the role model I never had.”
In addition to his diploma, Escalante accepted a $1,000 scholarship and was recognized as Gavilan’s Outstanding Transfer Student.
“This is the biggest occasion in my family’s history,” he said.
After a series of special awards were distributed – Maria Minerva Sernas Sanchez received the Career Technical Education Award and Joanna Lance the Outstanding Scholar Award – nursing student Samantha Davidson was the first student across the stage. Like the two dozen other nursing students that accepted diplomas Friday evening, Davidson, 23, of Hollister, was dressed to the nines, wearing white patent leather high heels decorated with first aid crosses. She carried a matching purse, and decals on her cap made her easily recognizable to her family in the bleachers.
“It’s been a long process,” Davidson said of the six years she’s worked toward her degree at Gavilan. She decided to become a nurse because of her grandfather, who died after a long bout with cancer when she was still a teenager. “He was in and out of the hospital for as long as I remember. I remember him saying how the nurses were the ones who were always there.”
“You become a family here so we’re going to miss each other,” said fellow nursing student Leslie Hudson, 27, of Hollister.
To celebrate her graduation, she and her family planned to leave for Hawaii the next day. “I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time,” she said.
After spending six years with some of their classmates, saying good-bye won’t be easy, said Sara Espinosa, 26, of Gilroy.
“We’re a tight knit group,” she said.
Even the two male students graduating from Gavilan’s nursing program said they would miss their classmates.
A member of a field largely dominated by women, Robert Huerta, 24, of Hollister, said he enjoyed being one of only two men in the program. But “having another guy in the class to vent to was really nice,” he said.
For Huerta, the years of sacrifice and hard work that culminated in Friday’s ceremony were well worth the effort.
“I love what I do,” he said. “I love caring for other people. It’s one of the most gratifying things a human being can experience.”
Gavilan College staff conferred a record 518 diplomas Friday evening. The college also bestowed an honorary degree upon Santa Clara County Supervisor and Gavilan alumnus Don Gage, who could not attend the ceremony on account of his wedding anniversary.
Keynote Speaker Michael Treviño, another Gavilan alumnus and assistant dean at the University of California, Hastings College of Law, reminded students that while they are turning the page on one chapter of their lives, they are about to embark on another
“Remember that what you do matters,” Treviño concluded. “And never relinquish the power you have to change.”
His words triggered a loud round of applause from the audience.
“Tonight’s ceremony is called commencement, which means the beginning of something,” Treviño said. “Completing your educational goals is not the end of your journey but rather the beginning of using your education to take your next steps, whether it is in a vocation or transferring to a four-year college. Seize the moment.”
