MICHELLE “POLLO” PASILLAS IS LIKE A MATH TEXTBOOK —

ALWAYS ANOTHER PROBLEM TO SOLVE.

Luckily, the engineer-minded transfer student from Mexico is always up for a challenge.

Pasillas’ dream is to play in the NFL.

He was raised near Monterrey, Mexico, by his mother, stepfather and grandfather. Pasillas’ grandfather spent a significant amount of time in California, and then taught Pasillas and the rest of the family to play American football.

Pasillas planned to live with his uncle in California for high school so he could play football in hopes of earning a scholarship for college and a chance to be noticed by the NFL. Then his uncle lost his job in the financial crisis of 2007-2008, which put a sudden halt to the plan.

YOU TAKE CARE OF business.

YOU TAKE CARE OF others

LET US TAKE CARE OF you.

You give a hundred percent to everything you do At Lakewood Women’s Center, we share your high standards. You’ll see this reflected in the quality healthcare we provide and the upscale, yet comfortable, environment we’ve created.

Our skilled physicians, Dr. Jennifer Denning and Dr. Julie Goodwin, are passionate about helping women feel their healthiest at every age and stage. Whether you come to us for wellness visits, pregnancy care, or other health concerns, we’ll take the time to get to know you. Then we’ll provide care that’s personal, professional, and focused on what matters most to you.

To make an appointment, please visit lakewoodwomenshealth.com or call 214-624-9674

6301 Gaston Avenue Suite 370 Dallas, TX 75214

23 YEARS

ADVOCATEMAG.COM/ADVERTISE

Pasillas continued with schooling in Mexico, learning as much English as he could while he waited for another opportunity.

He had been offered a scholarship to play football for the University of Monterrey in Mexico, but he doesn’t want to simply go to college; he wants to play in the NFL.

Finally, a family friend agreed to let Pasillas stay with her in East Dallas.

“My mom saw the opportunity and said, ‘Go ahead, if you really want to play football. You’re not going to be able to play football in Mexico,’ ” Pasillas says.

So Pasillas received a student visa and moved to Dallas, but his American dream quickly turned into a nightmare, because his host home was rife with drugs and other illegal activity.

“I will never try any drugs because of the situation in Mexico with the drug cartel,” Pasillas says. “I thought it would be safer here, and then I see this. There are people in my country dying for this.”

He got out of the home as soon as he could, instead sleeping at friends’ houses, at school, or occasionally on the streets.

“I don’t want to get caught in the wrong place with the wrong people,” he explains.

In the system change, Pasillas lost several key credits, and his A-average GPA transferred as a B-average GPA, even though he took advanced classes in Mexico. “I was doing calculus as a sophomore,” he says, “but they don’t give me that credit because it’s from Mexico.”

At first, Dallas ISD wasn’t sure what year to consider him, so they started him as a freshman, which allowed him to play for the football team. He proved himself on the field quickly and made the varsity team within a couple of weeks.

After a few months the school figured out Pasillas had so many credits that he was considered a fifth-year senior. Unfortunately, that meant he could no longer play football.

Pasillas was crushed.

“The whole point of all this struggle was to play football,” he says.

So instead, he threw himself into academics, making college acceptance his top priority with the hope of walking on to the football team. “When I get to college, a 3.2 isn’t going to be good enough. [Colleges] are going to see the same thing — a Mexican kid with bad English,” he says.

Although Pasillas was struggling with English, his strengths are math and science, so he joined the Science, Technology, Engineering Math (STEM) academy at Woodrow.

“I talked with Ms. Sanchez, and she speaks Spanish because she’s from Puerto Rico, and she looked at my transcripts and said, ‘You’re smart,’ ” Pasillas says. “It was like, thank God someone understands me!”

Sanchez advised Pasillas to enroll in AP chemistry and introduction to engineering. He had already learned most of the material that his classes covered, and his teachers began to take note of his excellence. He also joined the robotics team.

“I was in my environment because numbers stay the same,” Pasillas says.

The mindset that gets him through his math and science classes is the same one that propels him through high school.

“You have to solve the problem,” Pasillas says. “I don’t really know what’s going to happen to me; I just know that I’m going to be successful.”

He hopes to eventually go to Texas Tech to play football and major in engineering.

Pasillas’ grandfather passed away two years ago, but before he did, he taught Pasillas a valuable lesson that he clings to whenever he gets frustrated.

“My grandfather always told me, ‘Work hard or go home,’ ” Pasillas says. “I can’t go home, so I just have to keep working hard.”

Growing up, it didn’t bother him that his family is different. Everything seemed normal to him until grade school, when it began to affect his social life.

One day he told a longtime friend about his two moms; the divulgence abruptly ended their friendship, Kozarevich says.

“To me, that was a slap in the face, because I didn’t know what was wrong with that,” he says. “And it didn’t stop there.”

Then the bullying started.

Bullies homed in on his love of dance, which he discovered in kindergarten. He took to it because he loved to move, he explains.

He continued to dance in grade school, and when the other students found out, they began calling him names.

“They started calling me gay, and to me that wasn’t a bad thing, but they kept trying to hurt me,” Kozarevich says.