By the time he was a teenager, Ezekiel Juarez already knew what it was to experience anxiety attacks, stress and loneliness.
At age 12, he was the main caregiver to his mother, who suffered from diabetes complications, driving her to doctor’s appointments and giving her medication.
When she died in his arms, he was 14, confused and guilt-ridden.
“It was rough,” “Zeke” Juarez, now 19, recalled recently. “I dropped out of school for three years. I gave up on life.”
Yet, Juarez is not a dropout statistic.
Not only will he graduate from Colorado High School Charter this week, the mild- mannered student has earned a scholarship to Metropolitan State College of Denver.
He is among nine night-school students at the Lincoln Park neighborhood charter school who have battled personal challenges to earn a diploma and go to college.
It is the first time in the night school’s three-year history that all graduates will go on to higher education, said Ray Keith, an assistant director at the Denver Public Schools charter.
Of the night-school graduates, seven work full time, one is a parent and two are pregnant, school officials said.
Keith attributes the perfect graduation rate at the night school to a College Summit course students were required to take that taught them how to apply for college, fill out financial aid forms and write résumés.
A Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, College Summit focuses on helping low-income and minority students get into college.
Brandon Orr, the College Summit adviser at CHSC, said that for his students, college “is so huge because they’re coming to night school and they’re having a hard time as it is.”
Then “I throw out to them – ‘Well, what do you think about this (college)?”‘ Orr said.
Of the roughly 130 students enrolled at Colorado High School Charter, about 30 attend night school, said David Dominguez, language-arts instructor in the night school.
Students must complete courses in math, science, language arts, social studies and life skills to graduate, Domin guez said.
School officials say college will be challenging for the graduates and have already explained to the students that they may need remedial classes in their first year. Some may need five years to complete their degrees, Keith said.
What the students have on their side is stamina.
“The main thing to succeed in college is that you’re dedicated and you have self-discipline. Those are two qualities these students have,” Dominguez said.
Vicki Vang, an 18-year-old senior, said she spent most of her junior year at Ranum High School in Adams County skipping classes.
“My grade-point average was 1.8,” Vang admitted. “I messed up a whole lot. I think it was the stage where I was going out and I didn’t care about anything. I had friends who influenced me to do stuff … to ditch.”
Vang said the larger class sizes at Ranum left her feeling disconnected from the school.
“I felt like the teacher didn’t pay enough attention to me,” she said. “I needed help. When I needed help, I wanted the teacher to be there to help.”
As the end of her senior year approached, Vang said, she began feeling she had to make a change. She had been working nights as a fast-food server and a co-worker told her about CHSC night school. It appealed to her because, she admits, “I’m not an early bird.”
She then announced to her family she was setting new goals for herself.
“My main goal was to graduate on time, to improve my attendance,” she said. “I … totally changed my ways. I focused on school more.”
She has since raised her GPA to a 2.83 at CHSC and has been accepted to Community College of Denver. She is also waiting to see if she got accepted at Metro.
Stephen Bouwens, an 18-year-old senior in the night school, said he was failing three or four classes at Westminster High School and, like Vang, skipping school.
“I said, ‘I can’t do this forever,”‘ he said. “I told my adviser, ‘This isn’t going to work out for me.”‘
His girlfriend’s brother had been attending CHSC, so Bouwens enrolled at the end of his junior year. He said he plans to attend Community College of Denver, then transfer to Metro, where he has been accepted as a student. Bouwens, who tinkers with his go-cart three-wheeler, said he hopes to someday run his own auto business.
Juarez said he was motivated to return to school by one of his mother’s last wishes for him. “She told me, ‘Son, I want you to succeed in life,”‘ he said.
Juarez now wants to become a paramedic, a dream he’s had since watching her die.
“I’ve got a lot of guilt that I could have saved her,” he said. “I was young and I couldn’t do CPR.”
He also regrets she will not see him graduate Friday at the Tivoli Center on the Auraria campus.
“The thing that’s going to hurt me the most is not seeing my mom there,” Juarez said. “Man, I wish she was here.”
Staff writer Karen Rouse can be reached at 303-820-1684 or krouse@denverpost.com.
