Laura Sanchez Lopez
Palo Verde High Magnet School
Don't talk to 18-year-old Laura Sanchez Lopez about the importance of working to achieve your dreams.
She knows all about work — from watching her mom, Maria Lopez, work in fast food for $5.10 an hour to support her three children after her husband abandoned the family.
Sanchez Lopez, the eldest, was in middle school and remembers those days: "It's impossible to live on that," she says of her mom's take-home pay.
Which is why the family left Los Angeles five years ago and moved to Tucson. Her mom got a job working in a supermarket deli department. Between that, food stamps and Laura's part-time job at Target, the family gets by.
But this year, Maria Lopez injured her hand on the job and was ineligible for workers' compensation. It fell to Sanchez Lopez to step in for her mom.
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She increased her hours to almost 40 weekly, while still maintaining her grades and school schedule.
Jennifer Nutt, the counselor at Palo Verde High Magnet School who nominated Laura as a Senior Class Achiever, described her as "a superb student because she works so hard."
"Education is of the utmost importance to her and her family," Nutt wrote in her nomination, adding that Sanchez Lopez and her siblings — a sister, 17, and a brother, 14 — "are three of the most dedicated students at Palo Verde."
In addition to taking as many advanced-placement classes as possible, Sanchez Lopez is student-body president and a member of DECA and Youth Empowered for Success Club. She also plays varsity tennis.
Her résumé combined with an excellent GPA is impressive enough to result in her acceptance by Cornell University. In fact, Cornell has awarded Laura the Frank Armstrong Award and a full-ride tuition waiver.
"She is so excited to go to college," Nutt said. "The only thing holding her back from her dream is the appropriate finances" for personal expenses like food and a place to live.
Her goal: to study business and economics and eventually become a lawyer.
"It has always been my dream to be the first in my family to achieve something," Sanchez Lopez says. And if she could sugar-coat that dream, she'd be off to college, free to concentrate on her studies "and not worry about where the money is going to come from to support my family."
Her father's leaving the family has taught Sanchez Lopez an important lesson. "I can lead," she says, and "I can rely on myself."
Sometimes she has been criticized by acquaintances for thinking only of herself because she puts her education first.
"But how can I take care of others if I don't take care of myself?" she asks. Photos by Jill Torrance / Arizona Daily Star