Life has never been easy for Kathleen Armenta.
But, instead of dwelling on the hardships she has endured — fear of parents being deported, working odd jobs to help support her family, and a home invasion — she has drawn strength from them and persevered.
The Cholla High Magnet School student threw herself into school and has led an active academic life through it all, earning enough scholarship money to attend Bowdoin College, a liberal arts school in Maine, with the goal of becoming an immigration or civil rights attorney.
Most recently, Armenta was one of two Tucson recipients of a $20,000 scholarship from the Dell Scholars Program, which will help fund grad school.
The Dell Scholars Program selects high school seniors who have overcome significant obstacles to pursue their college education. Almost half of the 400 selected for the scholarships are part of the Advancement Via Individual Determination or AVID program, which helps students prepare for college.
She will be the first in her family to graduate high school and attend college.
Armenta’s troubles started before she was even born.
While still in her mother’s womb, her parents hired someone to get them across the border. They wanted their baby to be born in the U.S. so she would have more opportunities than their town afforded.
“They had given all their money and trust to a coyote and they were abandoned,” Armenta said. “They were abandoned for seven days without money and water, they survived the burning desert.”
Once here, the family struggled to make ends meet.
As long as Armenta can remember, she has gotten up at 5 a.m. to help her parents with whatever odd job they had. She remembers selling pastries and candies at swap meets and flea markets, cleaning houses with her mom and going along with her father as he found old cars to fix up and sell.
“As I was growing up, I was learning English as well, so I always had to be by their side translating,” Armenta recalled. “It was really hard because my parents are immigrants. We’d have to be hiding from Border Patrol or they couldn’t have a job because they didn’t have social security numbers.”
They lived in a one room house, using a bucket with plywood as a table. The floor served as chairs.
Once the family had a little more money, they moved into a trailer, where Armenta lived for most of her life.
That’s where an incident she will never forget took place. Intruders came into Armenta’s home, taking all of the savings the family had.
Soon after, the family was able to obtain a visa specifically for victims of criminal activity so they could legally stay and work in the United States. Recently, they received their green cards.
The ordeal sparked a curiosity in Armenta. She wanted to learn more about the legal system, so when she got to high school she became a teen attorney at the Pima County Teen Court, joined clubs and kept active.
She also serves as a mentor for middle school students at the Lapan College Club — a local organization that helps students find resources to get into college — that Armenta joined as a sixth-grader herself, earning 10 scholarships.
“So excited for Kathleen,” said Lucy Kin, executive director of the Lapan College Club. “This is a young lady that is going places and that we should see in a national leadership position in a few short years.”
Armenta will start college in August and is going to major in governmental legal studies.
“I really want to help others,” Armenta said. “I want to become an immigration attorney or a civil rights attorney so I can help people who were in my family’s situation. That’s been my dream, to help others.”
