NO ONE SAID HIGH SCHOOL WAS EASY.

From the social challenges to the expectations, every student in the class of 2017 has struggled for their achievements. But some students faced adversity well beyond their young years, hardships that would be tough for even seasoned adults to navigate. They had to learn to fit into a world that didn’t always accept or understand them. These are the students who could have fallen through the cracks, thrown in the towel or simply walked away from a life that seemed to take more than it gave. Instead, when the world pushed them, they fought back, refusing to succumb to the strife. Their grace in the dark times made them into unlikely role models who demonstrate what it means to never give up.

A Broadway Star

Eduardo Castrejon took in his kid sister when she was 12.

He was 27 at the time, and in hindsight, he didn’t know quite what he was getting himself into. His sister, Lizette Sandoval, is a good kid. If anything, she keeps her brother out of trouble. But Castrejon, a bartender, says he had no idea how much it would cost to raise a child.

Lizette, now 18, is graduating from Molina High School as an honor student. And she plans to attend Marymount Manhattan College, a private liberal arts school in New York City.

Musical theater is her passion. She pictures herself performing on Broadway and “winning my first Tony.”

Lizette’s brother could see from the time his sister was a toddler that she possesses an artist’s mind. He remembers bringing home “Phantom of the

Opera,” and in emotional moments of the songs, baby Lizette’s eyes would well up with tears.

“From then on, I knew she would be a drama queen,” he says.

Eduardo, the oldest of four siblings, is an artist, too. He is a dancer with the Dallas Black Dance Theatre and has been studying music since middle school.

They mostly raised themselves. Their mom’s education stopped after third grade in Mexico because she had to work.

“My mom didn’t understand the importance of having an involved parent because she never had an involved parent,” Eduardo says.

Eduardo steered Lizette toward the Sidney Lanier Exploratory Arts Academy, which she entered in third grade. She then attended the music academy at Greiner Middle School, where she learned to sing and play guitarrón in the mariachi band.

Lizette auditioned in dance at Booker T. Washington High School, but she wasn’t accepted.

So she instead chose Molina for its wide range of arts offerings, and her brother bought a house nearby, moving them from an apartment in Uptown. At Molina, Lizette’s done it all: Mariachi, drill team, show choir, theater and more. She played Ariel in the spring play, “The Little Mermaid.”

Eduardo works at an upscale Dallas restaurant, and Lizette has never had to have a job. She recently started working at a Ross store in northern Dallas, and it takes her an hour on two DART buses and a train to get there.

“If that ever got in the way of this, I would quit,” she says. “School is the most important thing.”

Eduardo calls his sister, “incredibly

A DRUM-LINE DOYEN

Paul Mata Jr. thought band was for nerds.

“Turns out, I’m a pretty big nerd,” he says.

The 18-year-old taught himself to play guitar in middle school, but he never considered band until a recruiter from Sunset High School called the summer after eighth grade and asked him to join.

He took up the snare drum and per- fected it by playing in the mirror from 4-10 p.m., six hours a day, every day.

Paul is headed to one of the best band schools around — Prairie View A&M University — in the fall. He’s only the second Sunset student to make the PVU drum line.

Learning those perfect, sharp drum strokes of his could take Mata a long way. But getting here hasn’t been easy.

Mata started smoking marijuana during his sophomore year. There were other drugs too — Xanax, LSD, painkillers. He started getting into fights and failing his classes.

He kept his nose clean long enough to march during football season and then things fell apart.

He got caught with weed and told his organized,” and he tells her, “to strive to be an independent female, an independent Latina, because sometimes our society teaches otherwise.”

She chose to play the massive guitarrón because it’s typically played by men. She sees herself as a leader, and she wanted to make a statement about female mariachis.

“Everything you do is to make you a better person,” she says. “Everything I’m doing, sometimes it hurts, but it will make me stronger and help me get to where I want to be.” mom, “I’m not going to stop.”

Although she plans to visit this summer, before school starts, Lizette has never been to New York. She earned the $1,000 Stevie Ray Vaughan scholarship from Greiner. And Marymount is giving her an additional $6,000. She’s eligible for financial aid, and she’s applying for more scholarships every day.

But Marymount is not cheap. It costs almost $53,000 a year, including tuition, fees, books and room and board.

She is determined to make it work, though. There are few doubts that she will.

“She’s the hardest working kid I’ve never met,” Eduardo says.

For his whole life, young Paul has always been honest, his mother, Gloria Treviño, says.

He started sneaking out of the house. He once walked 4 or 5 miles to buy drugs.

“I was a careless person,” he says.

Then one day while sitting in class, he was feeling hopeless. He decided to kill himself, and he choked himself out right there.

He was rushed to the emergency room by ambulance.

“I felt alone,” he says. “But I really wasn’t alone.”

Paul’s grandmother happened to be volunteering at Sunset that day, and band director Remetria Smith drove her to the hospital.

Through all of Paul’s trouble, Smith has been there for him.

She checks his grades. She pops into his classes unannounced. She calls his parents.

“It’s not just Paul,” Treviño says. “She does that for every student. The connection that she makes with each student is amazing.”

Following the suicide attempt, Paul was diagnosed with clinical depression. He stopped doing drugs. He got caught up in school through the Reconnect program, and he refocused on his passion.

On May 27, he’ll be one of two Sunset percussionists competing at the UIL state competition. The other is his best friend since kindergarten, Gabriel Lopez.

Paul Mata Jr. is charismatic. He loves to teach music, often learning pieces months in advance so that he can help his classmates.

His mother says he’d never be here if not for that one teacher.

“Ms. Smith guided him like a parent,” she says. “She’s always gone above and beyond. I’m so grateful.”

A Concert Pianist

Kenoly Kadia can play anything. Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Beethoven, Mozart, Lizst.

But there’s one he can’t stand.

“I hate Bach. I mean, I like Bach, but I hate playing it,” he says. “He’s one of those composers that his songs sound easy in the ear, but he’s really hard to play.”

Kenoly, an 18-year-old senior at Carter High School, was still weighing scholarship offers from the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Memphis when we met him in March. A gifted student, he also was accepted to Rice University. And he was a varsity soccer player.

He is one of the most sought-after high school pianists in the nation, according to the Fine Arts Chamber Players, where Kenoly has received free private lessons, from instructor John Tatum, since eighth grade.

It’s a wonder that Kenoly even made it to adulthood.

As a child in Camaroon, he suffered kwashiorkor, the deadly form of malnutrition that causes children to have distended bellies, among other symptoms.

“It was really bad,” Kenoly says. “They told me I’m not supposed to be here now. I used to throw up, and I couldn’t eat for several days.”

The disease, if treated too late, can cause permanent mental disabilities.

But Kenoly’s parents, Julius and Jaqueline, both teachers, fled their homeland when their youngest son was 6. They moved to the Italian region of Veneto, where he first learned piano.

“Music itself gave me hope,” he says.

Kenoly’s two older brothers graduated from Carter as well. The middle brother is now studying at UT, and Kenoly is leaning toward that school too.

Today, their parents work at a nursing home at least six days a week.

“They work incredibly hard,” Kenoly says.

But they came here for a better life, and they’ve found it.

Kenoly had to learn Bach for his college auditions, the ones that resulted in $16,000 and $80,000 scholarship offers. Everyone tells him he’s an extremely gifted musician. But he says it’s because of teachers like Mr. Tatum.

“Every piano lesson that I have with him, I learn something every time,” he says. “He doesn’t make the piano lesson boring. That’s why people say I’m good. It’s because of him. He makes it more interesting.”

Although he says he wants to be an oncologist, Kenoly does plan to major in piano performance.

By

Gary Gluckman didn’t set out to aid the epidemic of food waste in America when he opened Grocery Clearance Center in 1993.

“I didn’t have any epiphany about it, but it’s definitely an added bonus,” he says.

“It wasn’t the intent, but I feel good about it now.”

Grocery Clearance Center, on Cockrell Hill at Kiest, is a licensed grocery salvage store. They buy and resell food that is out-of-date or nearing the expiration date.

Americans waste some 72 billion pounds of perfectly good food every year, according to the nonprofit Feeding America. As much as 20 percent of waste in Dallas’ McCommas Bluff Landfill comes from wasted food. That’s while more than 850,000 people in North Texas, including 350,000 children, experience food insecurity every day. Plus all of that wasted food creates wasted energy when it’s transported from farms and factories at a cost of billions of dollars a year, all to be thrown in the landfills.

Manufacturers do their part to contribute to this problem by stamping products with “sell by” dates. The USDA says “sell by” dates refer to peak flavor quality and not to when food is no longer safe to eat.

France last year made it illegal for grocers to throw away edible food. So major grocery retailers there have begun selling salvage groceries as a matter of course.

Opposite page: Gary Gluckman, who opened Grocery Clearance Center in 1993, emerges from the store’s walk-in cooler while a young customer pops into the frame.

Top: A selection of the groceries available.

At

• Reading/Writing Workshop

• Interactive/Hands-on Math

• Spanish, PE, & Recess Daily

• STEM Lab, Art, Music, & Library Time

• After School Care & Enrichment Programs

• KiDVENTURE’S Camp Kessler Summer Program

Salvage groceries had been predicted several years ago to become a trend in America, too. So far, not much has come of that prediction.

But Grocery Clearance Center is ahead of the curve.

Gluckman emigrated from South Africa in the early ’90s, and he went to work for a salvage retailer in Houston. Having come for the American dream, he brought the idea to Oak Cliff, opening his original store on South Tyler. The store moved to Cockrell Hill Road in 2007.

Trucks pull up bringing groceries from major retail chains — they’re not allowed to say which ones — every day. Much of it is high-end or trendy stuff, such as kefir yogurt drinks, organic snacks or gluten-free cake mixes that sell at a fraction of the retail price. But you never know what you might find there.

It’s like the T.J. Maxx of grocery stores.

Gluckman added a walk-in cooler a couple of years ago, and it’s stocked with produce, usually organic, plus cheeses, milks, butter, deli meats, eggs and whatever else has arrived. The store posts new stock to its social media channels several times a week.

There are people who take the bus or walk to the Grocery Clearance Center, and there is one customer who arrives in a Bentley, Gluckman says.

“We have caterers who shop here,” he says. “Doctors, lawyers, the cross-section of customers is amazing. The one thing they all have in common is they’re smart.”

Gluckman has been in business long enough that he now gets to meet the grandchildren of his early customers. There are some who come once or even twice a day, as inventory constantly changes. Loyal customers abound.

Sharon Gilbert does all of the hiring for the store, which has about 20 employees. She’s worked there 14 years.

“Nobody ever quits, which is wonderful,” she says.

Gluckman says he trains employees to do the job and think for themselves, to take ownership.

“We try to do the right thing all the time,” he says. “We don’t take customer loyalty lightly.”

City

After a year-long lawsuit over the Kessler steps, property owners and the City of Dallas have reached a settlement that allows them to be rebuilt. Neighbors rediscovered the pedestrian passage between Edgefield and Canterbury Court a few years ago, and they planned to restore the steps, but adjacent property owners resisted. The property owners claimed the city had no right to reconstruct the steps and filed the lawsuit in December 2015.

The Rees-Jones Foundation, the W.W. Caruth Jr. Foundation at the Communities Foundation of Texas and the Dallas Foundation announced grants totaling $13.4 million to mitigate southern Dallas’ loose dog problem. The funds will go toward education and awareness efforts in addition to 46,000 spay and neuter surgeries.

Development

Redevelopment could be in the works for the 4.5 acres on Zang Boulevard at Beckley Avenue that include El Corazon de Tejas restaurant. Alabama-based Orange Development LLC requested to replat the tract of land bounded by Davis, Zang, Beckley and Seventh, a sign that redevelopment plans likely are in the works. The properties are zoned community retail and can be replaced with buildings as high as four stories. A demolition permit was filed for the restaurant building, but owner John Cuellar has said there are no immediate plans for redevelopment, and the restaurant is still open.

The $135-million deck park in Oak Cliff continues to develop, but the construction of the 5.5-acre park over Interstate-35 depends on whether the City of Dallas can fund the project. The Regional Transportation Council offered to contribute $45 million to the project, so the park would cost the city $95 million. That’s still a long shot, considering Dallas could face bankruptcy as a result of the collapsing police and fire pension fund.

The furniture rehab shop and interior design studio Patina Bleu reopened on Tyler at West Seventh after operating on an appointment-only basis since 2012. Interior designer and founder Greg Barker spent five years saving money to renovate the warehouse space.

By BRENT MCDOUGAL

Paradise found