STILL I RISE

These graduating seniors embody poet Maya Angelou’s promise to find a way into a “daybreak that’s wondrously clear.”

BY RACHEL STONE

PHOTOS BY DANNY FULGENCIO

Teen mom

Carmen Flores wakes up at 6:20 on mornings when there’s soccer practice. The 17-year-old Sunset High School senior pulls everything together the night before, including a bag for her 2-year-old daughter, Amber, to take to the babysitter’s.

“It was hard to come to school and leave her,” Carmen says. “She still cries when I leave, but I have to, to have a better future for us.”

Carmen was a soccer standout, making the varsity squad as a freshman. But pregnancy and motherhood sidelined her sophomore and junior seasons; she returned to the field this year, when the team made it to district playoffs.

School was always Carmen’s thing. She likes math and wants to be a forensic accountant; she’s been offered several scholarships: $31,000 from

Southern Methodist University, $20,000 from the University of North Texas at Dallas, $20,000 from the University of Texas at Arlington.

She’s leaning toward UNT-D, but she has a fear of driving after a car accident a couple of years ago and has never gotten a license.

“How am I going to get there?” she says. “What am I going to do with Amber?”

Those are questions that she will figure out with the help of supportive parents.

The baby of her family, Carmen says she was most disappointed in herself when she found out she was going to become a mother at age 15.

She says she doesn’t care that much about going out and socializing. She went to homecoming last fall, and she’ll probably go to the prom in May. Her complaints about parenting are the same as most people’s.

“Getting to take a peaceful shower. I can’t do it,” she says. “I have to wake up with her. I can’t take naps.”

Now that her daughter is a toddler, she’s had to learn to be firm but calm in moments of chaos.

If anything, having a child so young has motivated Carmen to work even harder than before.

“Every day when I wake up, I feel unmotivated,” she says. “But then I think about my future, and I think about how I am going to provide for my daughter.”

Our lady, Fatima

Fatima Mendoza’s sister grabbed her hand as their Ford Explorer careened and began to roll over.

Fatima, who was 7 at the time, closed her eyes and felt the hand slip away. When she opened them, she was lying on the side of the road in Mexico. She’d been ejected from the vehicle’s rear windshield, which had popped out. There wasn’t a scratch on her, and everyone else in her family escaped with scrapes and bruises.

“But in that moment, I thought, ‘Oh, my God. I’m all alone,’ ” she recalls. “I think God was helping me realize that my parents might not always be there. After that, I always had a feeling to cherish every moment with them.”

Fatima, now 18, graduates from Irma Lerma Rangel Young Women’s Leadership School in June, and sadly, her mother won’t be there.

Maria Mendoza was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in February 2017, and she died about two months later.

“She was very feisty, very stubborn. She knew what she wanted, and she wouldn’t budge,” Fatima says of her mother. “But she always made friends everywhere she went; she always talked to people on the bus.”

Close friendships and mentorships at Rangel have helped Fatima through her grief.

She traveled with her class to Cuba this past summer to work on an organic farm, pulling weeds, harvesting green beans and cutting palm leaves for thatched roofs. She overcame her fear of high speeds and zip-lined through a Cuban forest, an exhilarating experience.

Fatima already knows exactly what career she wants. She plans to become an animator and already has produced short clips as part of an animation class at Rangel.

“I love how tedious it is,” she says of the artistic discipline. “One expression can change the whole story.”

She has been accepted to the University of Texas at Dallas, California College of the Arts in San Francisco and Otis College of Design in Los Angeles. Scholarship announcements come in mid-April, after this magazine is printed.

At first her dad, Antolín, had pressured his bright youngest child to pursue a career in science or medicine. But Fatima wouldn’t budge, and eventually he relented.

Her sister, Maria, is now 27 and works for a refugee nonprofit in Dallas. Her brother, Antolín, is a 25-year-old engineer at an aerospace company in Grand Prairie, and he’s pledged to help his sister financially through college.

Dad is a cook in Hurst. They all live together in Oak Cliff.

“I love my family. To me they’re the ideal family. They’re not perfect, but they’re perfect to me,” Fatima says. “I’m thankful to God for that.”

Working man

Abraham Mendoza’s former teachers might not recognize him now.

The self-described “loudmouth” and “joker” had to cut his long, curly hair for a 40-hour a week job as a production worker at Oak Cliff-based Pecan Deluxe confectionary.

Abraham landed the job as part of the company’s partnership with Dallas Can Academy. Pecan Deluxe hired about 12 students from the school, paying $10.50 an hour and creating a shift just for them, from 2-10:30 p.m.

As dramatic as the haircut is, it’s the attitude adjustment that separates Abraham from his past as a second-time sophomore at a Dallas ISD high school, where he earned a lengthy disciplinary record for verbal confrontations with teachers.

Adamson High School, where Abraham applied for its automotive program, wouldn’t allow him to transfer.

His 26-year-old uncle finished high school at Dallas Can and now owns a roofing company. So Abraham enrolled there with just 12 of the 26 credits he needed to graduate, and something to prove.

“He’s one of my good ones,” says Abraham’s adviser Nidia Machuca. “He’s very focused on what he wants in life. He’s a very good kid.”

Abraham, who comes from a preaching family, is a Pentecostal music minister who plays drums and piano and sings. He dreams of working in the automotive industry and is proud of his selfdiscipline, always on time to school and work. He started a grunge band with his buddies and does MMA workouts in his spare time. He graduates in June.

“I appreciate the teachers who doubted me,” he says. “I’ve apologized to those teachers, and I’m proud of what I’ve done here.”

Smart puppy

Sydney Hernandez dropped out in ninth grade.

By that time, she couldn’t go a day without having a panic attack. Her muscles tensed. Her chest tightened. She lost feeling in her extremities. She became light-headed.

It ruined the whole day.

She tried to take online home school, but depression took hold, and she slept day and night.

Sydney was always a shy kid, but her world fell apart after two life-changing events. A psychological abuser was removed from her life after her mother found out about the abuse. And her brother shipped off for the Army National Guard.

She felt alone and afraid of everything.

“I didn’t want to be around people,” she says. “I was suicidal, and I just wanted to close myself off from the world.”

When homeschooling failed, she tried enrolling in Duncanville High School. But being at one of the nation’s largest high schools wasn’t ideal for her, and that was shortlived.

She went to live with an adult cousin in Oak Cliff who happens to be a mental health professional.

“Everything I did, I would apologize for it,” Sydney says.

“She told me, ‘Stop apologizing,’ and she was like, ‘You’re so defensive. Why are you so defensive?’ ”

Sydney started attending her cousin’s church, Turning Point, and she felt at home there.

“They didn’t know me as a depressed person. That was so liberating,” she says. “I wasn’t treated like this sad puppy. People started to respect me for me.”

Her cousin also suggested enrolling in Dallas Can Academy, a private high school that helps students who might otherwise drop out, to reach graduation.

“When she came to us as a freshman, she was very in her shell,” Dallas Can adviser Luis Salazar says. “She was very quiet and shy.”

Even though her mental health was on the upswing, Sydney says, she still doubted her own intelligence.

She was out of practice and had trouble with multiplication.

“Mr. Ruiz said, ‘You’re really smart. You just need to learn,’ ” she recalls. “He really believed in me. They just have teachers that spoke into my life.”

Now math and science are her strengths. She led her team to first place in the school-wide mathlete competition. And she scored highest in science and second highest in math on the STAAR test at her school.

Now a senior graduating in December, Sydney already has a Certified Nursing Assistant certification from Mountain View College through its partnership with Oak Cliff-based Dallas Can. She plans to earn an associates degree from Mountain View and then go on to study biomedical engineering, inspired by her love of math and science and for an older brother who has cerebral palsy.

The depression and anxiety didn’t just go away. But she says she willed herself to feel better.

“When I felt bad, I made myself go out and do something,” she says. “I know that doesn’t work for everyone, but I was like, ‘I’m done with this.’ ”

She quit caffeine after having become addicted to coffee as a child and drinking many cups a day for years. She now delights in chamomile tea with lemon. She works out. And she uses a weighted blanket to calm herself when she feels anxiety creeping up.

She hasn’t had a panic attack in a year.

Worship

By BRENT MCDOUGAL