Local student's quest for scholarship money nets $15,000 for college

It's something that high school counselors repeat over and over to their college-bound students: There are lots of scholarship opportunities out there, you just have to find them.

Dundee-Crown High School graduate Matthew Atilano is one of those students who took the advice to heart - and saw his efforts pay off.

Atilano, 19, of Sleepy Hollow, obtained a combined $15,000 in scholarships from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he starts classes on Monday, and from the Hispanic Heritage Foundation, based in Washington, D.C.

"I started looking for scholarships my senior year, sometime in late fall," he said. "I was just going through Google. (At school) they gave us suggestions about different search engines, so I looked for Hispanic scholarships. I applied for about 12 to 15."

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign awarded him a "campus merit" scholarship of $7,000 over four years.

The big surprise, however, was earning $8,000 in scholarship money through the Hispanic Heritage Foundation, Atilano said.

"I found out sometime in May when they left a message. It had been six months since I applied, so I had lost track," he said of winning the regional gold award in the business category of the foundation's youth awards. He was awarded the $3,000 prize in June at a ceremony held at the University of Chicago. Later, when he was told he also won the business youth award at the national level - a $5,000 scholarship - he was just amazed, he said.

Atilano, whose father is Hispanic, said that even though he doesn't speak fluent Spanish, he has always identified with his Hispanic heritage. "I consider myself Hispanic. It's always been a part of me,'" he said.

He was a "super honor roll" student at Dundee-Crown, and plans to minor in Spanish at the University of Illinois and study abroad in a Spanish-speaking country, perhaps Spain or Costa Rica.

The Hispanic Heritage Foundation awards prizes in various categories - including arts and culture, business, education and sports - to youths in 12 regions in the United States. Winners get gold, silver and bronze awards within each region, and national winners are selected among the gold regional winners. Atilano said he chose the business category because one day he wants to be a business owner.

The national winners were selected, in part, on the speeches they gave at the regional ceremonies, Atilano said. In his speech, he had talked about the influence his grandfather, Ray Atilano Sr., had on his upbringing.

Atilano's grandfather, who lives in downstate DePue, said that although he never earned a college degree, he and his wife "must have done something right" because both their sons graduated from college and went onto successful careers.

Seventy-nine-year-old Atilano Sr., whose parents were from Mexico, said he is especially proud that his grandson got the Hispanic Heritage Foundation scholarship.

"I think every individual, boy or girl, should remember where they come from," he said. "They should remember what it's all about."