For former dropout, a diploma to cherish

Published 6:10 pm Thursday, June 11, 2009

MARYSVILLE — Mona Robles almost didn’t make it.

Six years ago, she dropped out of middle school. No one expected much of her.

While her classmates studied algebra and Washington state history, she passed two years watching “SpongeBob SquarePants,” music videos and telenovelas. At night, she bused tables at her family’s restaurant, El Rinconcito.

At the start of what should have been her sophomore year, she walked alone into Marysville Mountain View High School and enrolled.

She wanted to make something of herself.

She nearly failed.

She lagged behind her classmates in credits and knowledge.

Last year she sat in the audience and watched as her brother seized his diploma, the first in a family of eight to graduate.

“When I saw my brother graduate, my aunt said, ‘So the next one is you, right?’ ” Mona recalled. “It had to be.”

This year, as many of her friends dropped out, she stayed in school. She needed to finish 15 classes during her last semester. Most students take six.

She cut back on her work at McDonald’s to have more time to study. She spent Saturdays with a mentor at Starbucks, making up homework, desperately trying to finish.

Three days before graduation, she was still turning in work.

But she did it.

On Tuesday, the 19-year-old slipped into a royal blue gown and marched to the front of a packed cafeteria.

She beamed as she shook her principal’s hand and grasped her diploma — finally her diploma.

When her classmates tossed their caps in the air, she threw only a triumphant fist. She vowed to save her cap, forever.

She ran into the arms of her mom and 20 siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins. She broke down.

Tears slid from her eyes, the lids smeared with sparkling shadow.

“I am so excited, because I thought she wasn’t going to make it,” said Mona’s mom, Imelda Robles, who never went to high school. “But she did. She made it. Thank God she made it. And now she’s ready to start a new direction, new plans. I tell her nothing is impossible if you try hard.”

Mona Robles isn’t a dropout. She’s a high school graduate.

And for the first time in a long time, she is really, truly proud.

She did it herself.

Kaitlin Manry: 425-339-3292, kmanry@heraldnet.com.