Speaker encourages Sunburst cadets to look ahead

Story and photos by Staff Sgt. Crystal Housman
California National Guard Public Affairs

March 2, 2022

LOS ALAMITOS, Calif. – In 2005, Victor Rios walked into a bank, asked for a home loan and met some resistance. Maybe it was because he was young. Perhaps it was his clothes or his diction. Or maybe it was his last name and the color of his skin.

"I don’t know, but they judged me that day, and it felt bad," Rios said while talking to cadets at Sunburst Youth Challenge Academy, Feb. 15, on Joint Forces Training Base, Los Alamitos.

It took a moment, but Rios recognized an all-too-familiar pattern.

"I was like, 'Okay, I know what’s going on here,'" he told the cadets.

In that moment, Rios reached for a sheet of paper – parchment paper, to be exact – which he received the day before from the University of California at Berkeley and decreed him a doctor of philosophy.

"I pulled out my piece of paper, and that’s the difference between me and you – a piece of paper," Rios told the cadets.

Rios slid his Ph.D. across the loan officer's desk. He chased it with an employment document from the University of San Francisco showing his starting salary as a professor.

Moments later, he was prequalified for a loan and on his way to buy a house.

Rios drew parallels between his life and the audience of 16-18 year old teens who are living and going to school at Sunburst to catch up on high school credits.

"I’m not supposed to be here today," Rios told them. "I'm supposed to be in a six foot by nine foot prison cell."

"I’m supposed to be dead, six feet under, with the uncle I had to bury, the best friend I had to bury, and a bunch of other people younger than you or your age that I had to bury," he continued.

"I’m not supposed to be here because from a young age I told myself, ‘man, school’s not for me,'" Rios said.

One bad experience with a third grade teacher turned him off to academics. He was capable, but he didn't care.

When fifth grade classmates found out he didn't have a father, Rios was lambasted and called a bastard.

By eighth grade, he'd had enough and dropped out.

Tired of school and of living in the best dilapidated apartment his single mother could provide, Rios dropped out to get a job and contribute to the household. He was done with the plywood-covered windows, the cockroaches, long-tailed rats and the orange extension cord powering their apartment from a neighbor's outlet.

“I shut down from school from third grade to eleventh grade," Rios said. "No grades at all. It didn’t matter. Just low grades."

Asking if anyone in the crowd could relate, hands shot into the air.

"What about the father thing," he asked. Again, hands went in the air.

While his peers kept up on their studies, Rios started pushing a lawnmower for a dollar an hour, making about $10 a day. The money was good, but not good enough. He started hustling on the streets to earn a better wage.

"I’m not proud of it, but I want to be honest with you," he told the cadets. "I ended up in juvie three times for stealing cars, grand theft auto."

"I was fatalistic. I didn’t think I would make it to my 18th birthday, so I didn’t care. I’d go to jail, juvie, prison. I didn’t care," he said.

Everything changed the moment bullets were flying at him.

"I’m with my best friend. We get into a fight with some guys. They shoot at us, and my best friend passes away," he told the students.

Rios said he and his friend were with some girls on the wrong side of town when a group of guys approached.

His friend wanted to leave.

"I said 'nah, we ain’t leaving. We have to stay here and throw down, because if we leave they’re going to say we’re cowards.'"

"My homeboy, his heart was telling him to go but his homie was telling him to stay," Rios said. "In life you have to listen to your heart and not your homies."

Rios, now a three-time juvenile offender who witnessed his best friend's murder, turned to the only person he could think of… an old teacher.

"I went to one person who told me she would be there for me. That was my teacher, Ms. Russ," Rios said. "My mom was too busy surviving. I couldn't rely on her."

Rios went back to visit his old school and found his teacher in the hallway.

"She opened her arms up. She gave me a hug and said, 'Victor I’m here for you. If you’re ready to change your life around, I’m here for you, but you have to do the work,'" he said.

Looking around the audience and then pointing to Sunburst's teachers, cadre, mentors and board members, Rios drew another parallel.

"This program, these people here that surround you, this community around you, giving you that care, love, cariño, they’ll be here for you, but you gotta do the work," he told the cadets referencing a Spanish word for affection.

With the help of his teacher, Rios got back on track.

"I started going back to school even though I had left all of ninth grade and part of 10th grade," Rios said.

To catch up on credits, he went to zero period before school, lunchtime extra credit classes, and night school at a local community college.

The effort paid off.

"I’m proud to tell you that I graduated from high school on time and with my class," he told the students, who are working through a year's worth of high school credits during their five and half months at Sunburst.

"That’s gonna be you," he said.

After graduation, his teacher didn't relent. Unsatisfied with Rios' plan to find a $15 an hour career turning wrenches, she asked him what type of house and car he wanted, and how many kids he thought he'd have.

She wrote down how much a mortgage costs.

To live the life he said he wanted, Rios needed a college degree.

"She gave me a 10-year plan for the first time in my life," he said. "I went from surviving day to day to 10 years from now when I’m 27 this is where I’m going to be."

He challenged the students to look ahead.

"When you’re 26 or 27 years old, where are you going to be? What are you going to be living like? What’s going to be your career," he asked them. "It’s okay to plan for the future."

He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Human Development with an emphasis in adolescent development from California State University at Hayward.

"I passed those classes; I graduated," he told them, but one degree wasn't enough. "I said, 'after all I’ve been through in life, I want to get the highest degree possible.'"

Five years later, he became Dr. Victor Rios, and found himself at the bank.

"He was talking about going to get a loan for his house. He was talking about it, and said how he put out a piece of paper," said Cadet Ritchie Nuñez, a squad leader with the academy's Class 29 Chargers Platoon. "He said the difference between me and you is just a piece of paper."

"It just dawned on me," said Nuñez, 16, from Compton. "I was thinking more of, like, I can do that."

For Rios, that piece of paper turned into a key to a house, a trip to his mother's apartment and a knock on the door.

"I’m nervous, my leg is shaking, and I pull the key out of my pocket," Rios told the students. "I said, ‘Mom, sorry you had to wait 30 years for this, so here’s the key to a proper place to live.'"

"Your hard work and your smart work, getting your degrees, preparing for a future, thinking about where you’re going to be at 26, 27 years old, is not just for you," Rios said. "It’s for your loved ones, it’s for your community, it’s to make this world a better place. When you believe in yourself you accomplish the unbelievable."

For Nuñez, the message resonated.

"If he can do it, I can do it," Nuñez said. "It sounds corny, but I feel like I could. Just hearing someone say it. If they could do it, I could do it."

Nuñez and the rest of Class 29 arrived to Sunburst in early January and are nearly two months into their cadet journey.

Sunburst is a voluntary tuition-free residential high school credit recovery program for California teens. It is run in partnership between Cal Guard and the Orange County Department of Education. It is one of three National Guard Youth Challenge Programs in the state and 40 across the country.