Students Rising Above

Nina Torres: Class of 2008

(CBS 5) "One trait I find common in many of us in the program is that we often feel that we have no one to turn to when time are hard; I know I have felt this very frequently in my life. But the care and kindness I feel from the students, mentors, and volunteers in this program is touching, and it has changed the attitudes that years of distrust have shaped in me. Everyone deserves care, even those of us who grew up believing that none would be given to us. Compassion, I have learned, can be returned."
-- Nina Torres, for the 2008 gala

The first time I really got to see Nina Torres at work, was at the Students Rising Above Fundraising Gala, where she'd been asked to say a few words. It was a big deal event at the Ritz Carleton, with white table cloths and more than 600 people attending. It's intimidating to speak before a crowd in that setting- especially for a teenager. Nina had written her paragraph to read, but at the rehearsal, we could see that it was too long.

Worried about how she might react, I quietly pulled her aside to tell her. "Oh, no problem", she said, and then just like that, she quickly editted out a couple of sentences. All done- no drama, no hurt feelings. "I'm used to doing this, for mock trial", she added. Her efficiency stunned me. She functioned like a professional.

Teacher, Michael Winsatt told me she was the first "English major" to walk through the doors of the highly regarded International Baccalaureate Program at Andrew Hill High School, which he heads. "She had a way of talking about literature and the history of ideas the way that a college undergraduate talks", he says, "and she was doing that in her freshman year!"

Writing and words are Nina's thing. Books were her great joy growing up. "I felt that anything was possible in a book", she says.

It was a much different story in her home, where life was so difficult.
Nina grew up with a single mom raising six children. When she was six, her mother suffered an injury that damaged her brain. Life was never the same after that. The kids pretty much raised each other. Nina ended up missing more than a year of school. "I was just at home, with my brother", she remembers, "and even when I was going to school, it wasn't consistent. I would move, I would go to school for a little while, and then I would drop out and not be at school. So my world was really small. I guess I was always waiting for someone to come home."

She would feed her brother whatever food there was and entertain him. "He was always wondering where our mother was, and I would make up stories. We would build forts out of sheets." She still worries like a parent, about her younger brother.

Nina's older sister eventually adopted her and gave her some stability. But last year, when her sister moved, Nina found herself with no place to stay, if she wanted to continue at Andrew Hill High in San Jose, in the rigorous International Baccalaureate program.

In a significant way, school had become Nina's home, and her teachers like family. In that difficult senior year, as you can see in her video story, Michael Winsatt finally told Nina he was informally adopting her, to give her the support she would need to graduate. "His message to me most of the time was that I just needed to hold on a little longer", says Nina. She worked part time to pay the rent, and got some help from Students Rising Above (SRA). It was a scary time, and money was a constant worry.

The fact that she got through it with almost perfect grades astonishes her teachers. "All of my colleagues have told me, when they find out about her personal life and they look at her academic achievement, I never would've been able to do that!" says Mr. Winsatt. "I'm just really in awe of all that she's accomplished. How can you not admire that? It's just phenomenal."

Nina got through it with the help of her friends, her teachers and some support from SRA. And from them, she learned a great lesson about trust. "I think it gives me more and more faith in other people," she says, "and its renewing my desire to trust in other people. I think that the kindness is out there all the time."