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Mar 5, 2008 7:32 pm US/Pacific
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Gardeners Seed Scholarship Fund
Jefferson Award Winner: Catalino Tapia
(CBS 5)
It's a daily job for thousands of workers, many of them Mexican immigrants: gardening is one way they grow roots in the American dream.
The gardeners we met on the peninsula are doing a lot more than just keeping the trees and lawns green. They are fertilizing a fund that provides lots of "green" for low income students who want to go to college.
Catalino Tapia is the man who started that scholarship fund. He has been a gardner in California for more than twenty years, arriving from Mexico in 1964 with only six dollars in his pocket and very little formal education.
"I only went to sixth grade down in Mexico," Catalino says. "My little village didn't have anything beyond sixth grade and the nearest town where you could go to school was six, seven hours in a car. And we didn't have the money because my father passed away when I was eight."
But Catalino knew the value of education. He began saving for his own sons' college costs before they were born. One decided to open his own business. The other graduated from law school and that inspired Catalino to help families who couldn't afford college.
Catalino says, "Something came into my mind: our clients, the gardeners' clients.! We work for very wealthy people and I thought they could be a big role in this and that's how we started it."
Catalino's clients responded immediately. So did other gardeners, even though they had very little money to give.
"I'm so happy and I can sleep really well thinking that any dollar makes a difference and that difference is for good," says contributing gardener Raphael.
Since the Bay Area Gardner's Foundation began soliciting funds in 2002, donations have come from all over, even from children like eight-year-old Cole Constant, who gives a part of his allowance each month to Catalino.
"To me, this is not fourteen dollars," says Catalino. "It's fourteen million, because at such a young age and they already have that mind to help others, that's amazing."
The Gardeners' Foundation hasn't raised millions yet, but more than $150,000 have come in to help struggling students like San Francisco State's Claudia Lopez, the first in her family to go to college.
She says, "It's meant a lot more than just receiving an ordinary scholarship from just wealthy people, because every dollar means something to these gardeners. So I think I appreciate it a lot more knowing that they're putting all their effort and so am I. "
That effort is paying off by growing a whole new generation of college graduates. For that, this week's Jefferson Award in the Bay Area goes to Catalino Tapia.
(© MMVIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)