MABTON, Wash. — If Mabton High School senior Arturo Nuñez goes back to picking fruit and vegetables, it won't be because he has to.

Nuñez, who was working in asparagus fields before he turned 10 and whose siblings all dropped out of school, is headed to Washington State University this fall.

The 18-year-old, who will bring his 21-year-old fiancee and their two children to Pullman with him, wants to be an aerospace engineer.

"Since I was small, I wanted to fly planes," Nuñez said. "But now I think working on them would be better."

Lofty goal for a kid from Mabton whose parents are farm laborers.

But Nuñez has beaten longer odds.

His birth mother left when he was 3 or 4, then spent time in jail, then vanished from his life.

His father, Arturo Fuentes, is a dairy worker. His stepmother, Maria Fuentes, picks fruit and cuts asparagus. Neither of them went past sixth grade back in Mexico before moving here.

His older brother dropped out in the seventh grade, his sister had a baby and dropped out, too. His younger brother fought with teachers and dropped out in eighth grade.

Then, halfway through high school, Nuñez fathered a baby with a young woman staying at his family's house.

The woman, Blanca Arias, already had a 2-year-old of her own.

All of a sudden he was a high school student with two kids to care for. A good student with a 3.3 grade-point average, Nuñez could have dropped out like his siblings.

Instead, the two young boys, now 2 and 4, gave him more resolve than ever.

"Sometimes I feel like quitting and letting go," he said. "But I can't. I think about my boys. I can't do it. I don't want them to have to work in the fields."

That kind of determination is impressive and rare for someone Nuñez's age, said Mabton High School Principal Jay Tyus, who served as Nuñez's mentor in the Washington State Achievers Scholarship process.

"He's just got a really grounded way about him," Tyus said. "He is very driven. He is very consistent and steady."

So when he became a father, he accepted that responsibility and he stayed in school, and this year Nuñez was voted senior class vice president. And despite opposition from Arias, whom he plans to marry this summer, he also played football and soccer and wrestled.

"We worked it out," he said. "She dislikes it, though."

The young couple doesn't have to worry about that now. On Friday, Nuñez will graduate.

He has a construction job lined up for the summer that will keep him out of agriculture labor for the first time since childhood.

"I never want to go back," he said of farm labor.

Then he stopped and thought it over for a minute. He knows a better future is in his grasp, but he also knows he wants to maintain links to home and family.

"I'll probably still go back and work," he conceded. "Just because it's in me."

* Pat Muir can be reached at 577-7693 or pmuir@yakimaherald.com.