Editorial: Success combines personal determination, community support

The story of Catherine Sanchez's rise from high school dropout to 30-year-old neurobiology student at Stanford University would be inspirational enough if it involved only the young Hoffman Estates woman.

Teenager flees abusive home environment with her boyfriend. Starts trying to make her own way and finds herself blocked by the lack of a high school diploma. Takes GED exam at McHenry Community College and remembers how much she loved learning. Enrolls in classes at Harper Community College and gets herself accepted to a rigorous scientific program at one of the nation's premier universities.

Horatio Alger would be proud.

But Sanchez's story - told Monday by Daily Herald staff writer Erin Hegarty - is notable not just for her own personal resourcefulness and determination but also for encouragement and institutional flexibility along the way without which achieving her goal might have been impossible.

After scoring in the top 1 percent of students taking the high school equivalency exam, Sanchez sought to enroll in classes at Harper but found herself torn between keeping her job at McDonald's or going to school. Enter an accommodating and visionary professor with perhaps a life-changing promise.

"He said, 'If you want to stick with it, we'll make it work," Sanchez said. "And that gave me the confidence to keep trying."

She told Hegarty that that teacher's flexibility and concern were repeated by all her professors, who - impressed by her hard work - continued to nurture and encourage her. Even so, her personal difficulties were not small. She suffered health problems possibly related to her abusive childhood. She and her husband of six years found they made too much money to get aid for her to transfer to a four-year institution and too little to afford the tuition.

But she persevered, and her husband pushed her to dream big. She applied at Stanford and, to her surprise, was accepted and given a full-ride scholarship. Community institutions continued to provide support. The Rotary Club of Schaumburg/Hoffman Estates is helping pay some of her costs. The Barrington Breakfast Rotary Club donated airline miles that will enable her to fly home from California on breaks.

Sanchez is living proof that determination and hard work can overcome formidable social and personal obstacles. But her story also demonstrates the important role that a strong institutional support network - in her case, GED testing at MCC, flexible professors at Harper, assistance from local Rotaries - plays in helping a determined young person achieve ambitious goals.

Sanchez says she wants to study the human brain and the role mental illness plays in many social problems. Just think. Under certain circumstances, she could have faced a lifetime of being held up by the social safety net; now she may be helping to find ways to make that net stronger for others - or even less necessary. What an inspiring outcome for all individuals with high goals and for the friends, family, communities and institutions that help them succeed.