One spring day in 2006, Eder Gaona-Macedo picked up a crumpled envelope that had been lying for three days in the hallway of his rundown Westside apartment. It was his acceptance letter to UCLA.
He was in disbelief. A high school counselor initially told Gaona-Macedo he could not go to college, because he lacked legal status. A Mexican immigrant who came to California when he was just four years old, Gaona-Macedo did not know he was undocumented until a decade later when he went through an immigration checkpoint on Milpas Street. “I realized I had to live two lives,” he said. “One at home, fearful, and one at school.”
But he eventually found role models at Future Leaders of America, which was founded in Oxnard and Santa Barbara to empower Latino youth. It will celebrate its 35th anniversary in January. At his first Future Leaders camp, Gaona-Macedo learned to be assertive and polished his public-speaking skills. “I found my voice,” he said. “It was mind-blowing.” They were also “one of the first people I told I was undocumented,” he recalled. “They said, ‘You can still go to college. You can still do anything you want to do. It’s going to be a little harder.’ That was really life-changing.”