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Written by Dan England
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Thursday, 24 April 2008 |
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At the tender age of 15, the roots of Marisol Gutierrez’s life already seemed planted like the vegetables she picked with her parents.
She was a single mother with Alex. Nobody in her family had even graduated from high school, let alone from college, and no one encouraged her to seek a better life, either. That seemed impossible, almost, so far away and unattainable, a diploma might as well have been located in a one-room schoolhouse on the moon.
It’s not that her parents didn’t want a better life for her. It’s that they didn’t know anything else. Besides, she was a mother. She needed to work and raise her boy. She needed to join them in the fields. The roots, it seemed, were planted. She dropped out of high school as a sophomore and buried her dreams of leaving the fields and being a role model for her son far beneath the soil.
But officials from Rocky Mountain SER drove by one day and saw her at 16 working in the fields with her parents. They told her they could bus her from the fields in Pierce to Platteville to night school and she could earn her GED. Her parents were amazed. Sure, they said, snatch the opportunity while it was there, just make sure you join us in the fields during the day.
She got her GED, and they pushed her to go to college. College? Really?
That’s why Gutierrez sits in the office of Dream Team today. You’ll see her out working the carnival for next weekend’s city of Greeley Cinco de Mayo celebrations at Island Grove Regional Park.
That’s only part of what she does. Mostly, she helps others like her pull up their own roots and choose a new path.
Before her job in Greeley, she walked in the offices of the Educational Opportunities Workforce Center at Colorado State University. She agreed to work as an office manager. Hey, it wasn’t the fields. She was happy. Besides, she probably couldn’t ask for much else. She started the job in 1994 and got married to Martin Gutierrez a year later. What else could life offer?
But Charlotte Jimenez, the director of the center, wasn’t satisfied. She told Gutierrez that she could be more than an office manager. And after a while, Gutierrez believed her. She went to Aims Community College in 1997 and got a two-year degree in 1999. She had a son, Jesse, waited for him to get a little older, then attended the University of Northern Colorado in 2003.
It was tough. She followed Jimenez to Dream Team, the organization run by the Greeley/Evans School District 6 that encourages low-income kids with no family history of college degrees get one of their own. They help kids, in other words, just like her.
“That’s why I really believe in the program,” Gutierrez said.
But that was a full time job, and working full-time, plus going to school full-time, plus being a full-time mom, left her and her family little time for anything else.
Still, it wasn’t the fields.
“But it was insane,” she said and laughed.
She got her degree in May last year.
The carnival is one way she involves her kids. The funds from it go to the Dream Team. Most of them sell sodas, food and also help the younger kids on the bouncy floats.
“But it’s also a way they can give back to the community,” she said. “It gets them out. It helps give them a sense of pride and purpose.”
Life was going well. And yet hard times refused to leave her be. Just three months after she got her degree, after her family had worked so hard, Martin was killed in a car crash, and she was alone.
She had to give up her dream of being a case worker, give up the traveling and the long hours, so she could be there for her children. Her family lives in Texas, and that’s where she’ll head as soon as the carnival is over.
After all, dreams are always there. She hopes to go to the University of Texas and work there while she goes to school. She wants a doctorate. She wants to be an advisor for students like her. She wants to show them that a better life does exist. She wants to show them that a life, no matter how set it seems, can be uprooted for the better.
“You don’t believe it until someone shows it to you,” she said. “But I know now that you should never give up.”
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