In a room filled with successful business professionals, doctors, attorneys & community leaders, one young man stood out at a Vacaville Rotary Scholarship event. One young man received a standing ovation.
He is not yet an attorney, a doctor or a successful business professional. What he is, is a truly amazing high school student.
You may wonder what makes him stand out among the other scholarship recipients and why his story is published in magazines and talked about in community social circles.
The young man is Jose Medina and he has risen above dire situations in his life that most of us can not even imagine or even want to admit can happen to youth in Vacaville. He comes from a broken home. His father was a meth addict. Physical & mental abuse was a torturous, daily event until the night that his father was arrested for trying to burn down their mobile home with him, his siblings and his mother inside. After that day, Jose was in & out of juvenile hall, smoking pot, skipping school and heading straight into a dead end.
What was it that changed Jose’s way of thinking? What was it that encouraged him to become a better person, a leader, a positive role model for his siblings and peers? What was it that took him from being a "bad” kid to getting a scholarship to attend college? What was it that put Jose among the distinguished people at the awards luncheon?
When you ask Jose, he smiles with pride as he tells you it was one place, one individual and his own determination. The Vacaville Neighborhood Boys & Girls Club and Montoya Grahm. To Jose, the fact that Montoya talked to him-asked why he was getting into trouble and skipping school was the start to a whole new attitude & determination to be great. He started hanging out at the Boys & Girls Club where his mentor asked about his grades, encouraged him and offered him positive programs to replace the dead end activities he had been involved in.
When speaking of his success, Jose had this to say: "Besides my mother, Mr. Grahm is the only person who has never given up on me. It seemed like he knew me for a long time and wanted to help me. He has taught me that it doesn’t matter where you come from, or where you’re at now, but it is about where you’re headed.”
Jose Medina will be graduating from Will C Wood in June and plans to attend Solano Community College. Jose is the first in his family to get a scholarship and the first to attend college.
When asked about college, Jose says "I know it will be difficult but with all the help I have, I am determined to do it.”
Jose is a true testimonial to "It just takes one.” It just takes one member of the Vacaville community to change one student’s direction in life. One student believing that he or she can be great changes generations
Congratulations, Jose Medina, Vacaville is proud of you.