JCHS valedictorian chased her dream 4,000 miles

Vanessa Cruz learned the hard way that dreams are just an ache in your chest until you work and sacrifice to make them real. And really big dreams, like the American Dream, require more from some than others.

Her parents came to the United States chasing their own aches for a better life, her mother from Honduras and her father from Mexico. They met in Georgia and Vanessa was born in an Augusta hospital. But just as their fingers began to close around what they most wanted, economic challenges forced them apart. When Vanessa was 2-years-old, her mother took her back to her family in Central America while her father remained in Jefferson County. He planned to work and earn enough to set them up and bring them back to their new home.

For 10 years, Vanessa and her mom built a life in Honduras, always with their eyes on returning to the states.

When Vanessa was 6, her mother tried twice to pass through Guatemala and Mexico, but both times she was caught and sent back.

In Honduras Vanessa did well in school. She was bright, worked hard and won prizes for being at the top of her class. She was often complimented on her intelligence, but as she grew older, she could see that regardless of how hard she might work, there were only so many paths she might follow there.

“I knew that in Honduras there were no opportunities at all,” Vanessa said. “I have four uncles and an auntee there and just one of them had a job and he has just recently been told he could no longer work. There’s barely an education. There is a lot of poverty. I knew people who worked a week for $50. My mom knew if we went back to the States I could get a better education and even go to college. It would make things possible. We were just looking for a better life.”

When Vanessa was 12, they decided to try again.

“There’s a train that passes through Mexico, through the desert,” Vanessa said. “People actually jump onto it. There are many people who die trying. There are many crimes, people trafficking drugs. I didn’t want my mama to risk her life like that.”

Vanessa thought that herself having citizenship in all three countries might in some way help make the journey easier for her mother. It didn't. The first time they tried, they were stopped on a bus not far from Mexico’s southern border by immigration agents. They were locked up for two months and sent back.

That’s when they decided they needed help.

“We call them coyotes,” Vanessa said. “There are these people who know where immigration will be and won’t be and you can pay them to help you.”

It took all of her mother’s and father’s savings, but they were driven from the Mexican border to a small town and taken into a home with the man’s mother.

“We did not know them at all. They were not good people,” Vanessa said. “We wanted to make the trip as fast as possible, but they were taking their time. What was going to be a day turned into a week and they were taking money from our bags. It was all my parents were able to save.”

A Mexican policewoman eventually caught on to what was happening, learned that the coyote was demanding more and more money from Vanessa’s father, and helped them get to her dad’s family in Querétaro, Mexico. They stayed with them for a month and a half.

“I started school there because I didn’t want to miss out on anything,” Vanessa said. “It was pretty small. There was barely any technology, but there were a lot of sweet people there. I quickly became friends with the administrator of the school, and he told me if I stayed, he could make contacts for me. He said he could make something of me in that country.

“I told him thank you, but that was not our goal. We were going to the United States. We were trying to be with my dad.”

Several weeks later, Vanessa met her father for the first time since she was in diapers. Not long after, she entered Jefferson County Middle School as a seventh grader. She spoke almost no English.

“I barely understood anything. Maybe just a few words,” Vanessa said. “I was really lonely. I remember looking at people and trying to guess what they were saying. I wished I was just like them, just to understand. I felt like they thought I was not smart, that I was slow for not speaking English. That made me feel really bad. I didn’t have any friends. There was no one to talk to but my mom and my dad. I was really lonely.”

The school assigned another Spanish-speaking student to help her translate, but that did not work out well, she said.

“We were not friends and did not really talk,” she said.

Teachers were always asking if she was OK, but she just shrugged in response. She wasn’t OK.

“Back in Honduras I was used to receiving compliments on how smart I was and the bright future that was waiting for me,” she said. “Here I didn’t understand anything.”

After the terrifying journey, Vanessa wondered why her mother suffered so much and risked so much more to get her to this place where she could not even communicate with the people around her.

“I felt like I came to fail here,” Vanessa said. “I didn’t understand anything. I had failing grades where in Honduras I was winning prizes. I used to sit by myself. If a teacher asked me something I just shrugged. I couldn’t answer. I questioned a lot, what I came here for. I felt there was no point in trying when I couldn’t even understand a sentence.”

Her desire to learn evaporated. Vanessa said that she was full of anger and disappointment and shame.

“Those feelings continued intensifying until I reached a breaking point," she said. “I understood that if I wanted to become someone in life, I needed to make more of an effort, I needed to make my opportunities and that meant teaching myself English.”

Vanessa started studying English on her own and the school set her up with digital learning software that teaches the language systemically, connecting meaning while building decoding skills. She started watching more English-speaking television shows. She had her mother get her a Spanish-English dictionary.

By eighth grade she had started to get the hang of things. It was 2019 and then the COVID pandemic hit, forcing schools and students across the world to redefine what education looked like.

Her ninth-grade year she and her classmates started returning to class.

“When school started being normal (after that initial year of COVID), that’s when I started to think that maybe I’m as good as everyone else,” Vanessa said.

Jefferson County High School agriculture teacher and Future Farmers of America (FFA) Advisor Sandy Cook said she remembers Vanessa coming into her room, quiet, shy, but clearly academically gifted.

“That was in the dark days of COVID and there were only like five kids in a class,” Cook said. “She has such a quiet nature, but she’s so mature and highly self-motivated. She doesn’t have someone at home nagging her about her grades or attendance, but she is on top of everything.”

When Vanessa approached her about joining FFA, Cook said she welcomed her into the student organization.

“She signed up for our Four-Man Forestry CDE (career development event) and poured herself into it,” Cook said. “She was at every meeting, every practice. She wanted to practice on days before we went out on holidays. She really bought into it.”

Vanessa said that the school’s FFA program provided her so much more than an after-school club.

“Before FFA my life was just going from school to my house to school,” she said. “I started getting to know more people. I had opportunities to talk more.”

Cook was so helpful and inviting, she said. It was a place where she found a voice she had forgotten she had. The leadership training, she thought, was particularly engaging.

“At meetings and such she was always looking for the other quiet and shy people,” Cook said. “She would slip to the back to sit with someone who was off by themselves. She looked to other people to draw them in, asking people who had not said anything in a while what they thought of this or that.”

She became an officer in the organization and this year serves as vice president.

“She stuck with those CDEs for four years,” Cook said. “The four-man team made it to state this year, they were region champs. Our forestry field day team made it to state all three years she competed and she and her partners saw a lot of success in their events. She has made a big impact on our officers and competitive teams.”

Even more impactful than that, Cook said that Vanessa has played a major role in bringing more of the school’s Hispanic student body into the FFA program.

“She was always looking to bring more people from class into the after-school gatherings,” Cook said. “I think Vanessa is the most resilient person I know. She has overcome all of these obstacles that were out of her control. She didn’t just overcome them, she mastered them.”

Cook and several other Hispanic students were with Vanessa at lunch earlier this Spring when the school announced its top honor graduates.

When they called her name as the school’s 2024 valedictorian, Vanessa said she first thought they had made a mistake. It took her a week to accept that it was true.

“I feel like it demonstrates I can achieve more if I really want to,” Vanessa said. “Everything I went through, it changed the way I work. When I choose to do something, I want to do it the best I can. If I actually want something, I’m going to fight for it.”

When she thinks back on the journey, those terrifying days with the coyote, the heartbreaking loneliness when she first returned, more than anything, she believes that journey has taught her more about herself than anything else.

“A lot of people really want to be in the United States. They are all just trying to reach the American dream,” Vanessa said. “For me, that’s to have a better life, where you can work, where you are not constantly worried about not having enough money to pay your bills, a place where you can live, safely, with your family. So many people I met were just trying to reach that dream. I feel like people here don’t really understand. You have to act for it. Opportunities are there, but you have to take them.”

This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: JCHS valedictorian Vanessa Cruz chased her dream 4,000 miles