Davis High director sees himself in students

YAKIMA, WASH. -- Carmelo Ramos was alone when he illegally crossed the border one hot August night.

His only companion as he trekked through hills and valleys along the Tijuana-San Ysidro border was a 1,000 Mexican peso bill that his mother gave him before embarking on his perilous adventure.

"She told me, 'this money is in case you get caught, so that you can make it back home,'" recalls Ramos.

Somehow, Ramos managed to elude Border Patrol guards. His journey ended in Yakima in 1978 when he was 15.

Now 45 years old and a naturalized citizen, Ramos is Davis High School's retention and recruitment counselor. He also heads the Migrant Program, in which he is in charge of counseling mostly immigrant students who have the same problems he faced when he was a teen in Cowiche in the late 1970s -- little or no English skills, the challenge of adapting to a strange new world, peer pressure from mainstream students and even from other more assimilated Latinos.

This Friday, as 22 students from Davis and 13 from Eisenhower receive scholarships from the Hispanic Academic Achievers Program during a gala event at the Yakima Convention Center, some will credit Ramos for encouraging them to push themselves harder in their studies.

*****

All along he has remained among Davis' most popular counselors, with students usually showing up at his cubicle all day asking for advice or help.

An education veteran who has worked most of his adult life for some of the Valley's school systems, Ramos knows the ins and outs of the academic red tape, which he says he works to use to a student's advantage.

Sometimes students from low-income families go to him for a Google or document search that will help them with their scholarship search.

"Many of us are here for a paycheck. Others are here to serve," he says. "When you see that out of 100 students that came in, one
of them graduates, it is
a victory."

A cheerful, mild-mannered man who wears a mustache and switches from English to Spanish in his conversations, Ramos says he's been kept humble by that 1,000 peso bill his mother, Maricarmen, gave him 31 years ago.

He always carries the greenish bill folded in four parts in his worn leather wallet, The money was printed in durable paper in 1977 during then-Mexican president Jose López Portillo's six-year tenure, when the exchange rate was 12 pesos for every dollar (those were the "old" peso types that were worth much more than today's peso).

"After 30 years, I have not needed it," he says, looking at the bill. "It's part of my story. A memory."

Ramos has many fond memories of Florencia, his hometown in the Mexican state of Zacatecas. During the late 1970s, his parents had moved to the Yakima Valley as migrant workers -- he followed them soon thereafter.

Ramos was 15 when he started attending Tieton Middle School. He knew no English and the only subject he could do well was mathematics.

Like most other immigrant students, he had to learn English at school with other migrant students. During his nights, Ramos would translate words into Spanish to learn what they meant.

Though he was an exemplary student, according to his teachers, Ramos had one problem: he was undocumented. He could not attend college.

"While classmates were going empty-handed, discussing the next party, he was trudging home with five or six textbooks," wrote Anne Bounds, one of Ramos' teachers, according to a 1986 Herald-Republic story.

Ramos graduated from high school with a 3.52 GPA, a varsity letter in track, a membership in the National Honor Society and $600 in scholarship money to attend Yakima Valley Community College, according to the Herald's story. He also was one of the school's 10 most outstanding students.

"This student accomplished all this while working in a second language, while having to work in the fields and while serving as older brother to seven younger sisters," wrote Bounds, in a letter to then U.S. Rep. Sid Morrison, R-Wash.

*****

Ramos and countless other students like him were able to go to college as a result of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

Shortly after graduating Heritage College, he became a teacher's assistant at his old school, Highland, where he got a job working with migrant students.

Though he has worked in education for almost three decades, Ramos says he still looks forward to going to work every day. He says his thoughts are always with helping students, such as Lourdes Reyna, a Davis senior who will be receiving a HAAP award this Friday.

Reyna, who was born in the Mexican state of Michoacán, arrived in Yakima when she was 4 with her mother. Now 18 years old, she says she's worked in the fields for as long as she can remember, helping her mother care for her baby sister, who they placed in a fruit bin while both toiled in the orchards.

Like Ramos, Reyna has been a good student most of her academic life. But she had to return to Mexico for a visa in 2006 because she was undocumented.

The move was a setback for her, she says. Reyna lost an entire school year before making it back in 2007, Ramos says.

Still, Reyna says that like Ramos did decades before, she shunned parties and instead joined an after school program where she studied relentlessly. Now, not only will she get a HAAP scholarship for Eastern Washington University, but she also has 50 college credits she earned through Running Start, a joint program offered by Davis and YVCC.

"If it wasn't for him (Ramos) I wouldn't have what I have now," Reyna says. "Davis is lucky to have him."

*Joseph Treviño is the editor of El Sol de Yakima, a Spanish-language publication.

Here are the students receiving HAAP Awards this Friday.

Davis High School

Brizeida Aragón

María Espinoza

José Gaona

Daramí García

Andrés Garza

Octavio Gómez

Edgardo Landa

Jaqueline Manjarrez

Sandra Martínez

Ilse Montes de Oca

Pedro Pacheco

Jose. C. Pizano

Héctor Reyes

Jessica Rivas

Jennifer Rodríguez

Rosario Hoxihin

Jessica Sachara

Jason Valenzuela

Jerad Valenzuela

Marili Vargas

Celina Venegas

Alfredo Villaseñor

Eisenhower High School

María G. Castañeda

María Cruz

Jacob García

Selene Guido

Marissa Hernández

José J. Martínez

Lydia Mora

Sabdi Palma

Vanessa Reyes

Lorena Rodríguez

Gabriela Ruiz

Marcruz Tellez

Érika Vargas

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