Mariela Lopez and Barbara Guzman were Pescadero teens with college dreams when they started work with the Puente Youth Leadership Development and Employment Program seven years ago. Now they are conquering heroes, returning with university diplomas that will springboard them into graduate schools and fulfilling careers.

Their lives are already very different from their parents’ lives, as well as those of their siblings and many of their hometown friends. They are walking a new path, one with different expectations. And if that sounds scary and exhilarating, it is.

Lopez and Guzman – along with their high school compatriot, Luis Mendez – are the first Puente youth to graduate from a 4-year college since Puente created its leadership program. Their accomplishments reflect an extraordinary resilience and strength of character. They also represent the culmination of Puente’s youth programming goals, which endorse a college education from the word go.

“I went to college because of Puente. I had no idea how an application was done,” says Lopez. “Rachel at Puente helped me apply to different schools and talked with me about the different advantages and disadvantages.”

Lopez and Guzman have a lot in common. Both are 22, and grew up in Pescadero in low-income families. Both women enrolled in Puente’s youth program at 14 or 15, gaining skills through different summer jobs with Puente and saving their paychecks for college. Both chose to attend Cal State Monterey Bay, from which they both graduated this past winter. Neither woman ever questioned that she would make it to college, even though they were both first in their families to matriculate to a 4-year university.  And both will pursue advanced degrees – Lopez in social work, Guzman in law.

But they are also very different. When Guzman was growing up, her father, a Mexico-born carpenter and maintenance specialist at YMCA Camp Jones Gulch, pushed her to pursue a higher education. “He always talked about going to school and being educated. He talked about how important it is to pursue a better life through the benefits of education,” she says. He didn’t blink when she told him she wanted to go to a 4-year college, despite the fact that the family didn’t have the money to send her there.

Guzman’s father couldn’t help her fill out her admission forms, apply for scholarships, or figure out the tangle of bureaucracy and logistics involved in setting herself up in a new town, on a new campus, at a new school. At 18, Guzman had to look outside her family for some help. But he took days off work to drive her to Monterey Bay on occasions like her placement tests. He waited for her and drove her home again. Those car trips meant a lot, and so did his support.

“I’ve always thought of myself as a very ambitions person, and very dedicated,” says Guzman. “He’s been the one motivating me, encouraging me.”

For her part, Lopez grew up with a father who had very strict ideas about how his daughter should behave and what she ought to aspire to. He rarely allowed her to leave the house to socialize at night. He would not permit her to join the high school women’s soccer team, because he did not believe it fit with how women should behave. So when Lopez got up the nerve to tell him that she wanted to go to college – to leave home for four years and live on campus – he was confused, and then angry.

“He was saying, ‘Why do you need to go to college if you have a good job at Puente?’ I had to explain what college means here in America, and what it meant to me. It was hard to explain to him, because he is very traditional, and going against him is seen as disrespectful in our culture,” recalls Lopez, who becomes emotional at the memory of the confrontation.

But she pushed. She told her parents, who worked at a flower nursery and spoke little English, that she was old enough to make her own decisions. And on the day she moved into her new dorm room at Cal State, both parents were there to help. “I knew my dad was still upset, but he came and that was huge for me,” says Lopez. “When they left me, I cried. My siblings cried. And he cried as well. Even though he didn’t say it, I knew in the long run I was going to make him happy and proud.”

Lopez and her family on graduation day

Today, Puente helps acclimate young people to the expectation of college at an early age. Classroom Connection, a Puente/LHPUSD partnership  brings bilingual UC Santa Cruz students into elementary and middle school classrooms as teacher’s aides, knowing that they represent something to aspire to. In later years, Puente youth regularly tour local college campuses as part of Puente’s effort to help them see themselves in college and beyond. And Puente holds Career Night at the local high school, where Latino/a professionals talk to students and their parents about college and their careers.

Both young women experienced a major culture shock when they left Pescadero High, with a graduating class of 18 peers, and entered a school with 1,500 students in their year. They had never been around so many people. Yet they also had to learn to be alone for the first time, away from their families. They learned how to cook their own meals, manage their workloads and navigate a new town. They both had student jobs on campus to supplement their room and board.

Both Lopez and Guzman made it all the way through college without having to take out any student loans. They successfully applied for financial aid and merit-based scholarships – in many cases, with letters of reference from Puente. And Puente’s own college scholarship programs, sponsored by individual donors as well as the Institute for Mexicans Abroad, helped cover books and other school supplies.

In time, Guzman outgrew the Monterey campus. She wanted to transfer to another school, but never did. Today she says she regrets not applying to her first choice school, Stanford University. “I was intimidated at the time – that so that’s where I’m going to go now,” she says. She is living near her mother in Fresno this summer, preparing for the LSAT so that she can apply to Stanford and other law schools this fall.

Guzman and her family on graduation day.

Lopez now lives in Redwood City with her boyfriend. She is spending the summer working with Puente. She recently got into her first choice masters program: the School of Social Work at San Jose State University.

“When they told me, I was just sobbing, I was so happy,” she says. “They told me they had 500 applicants and the class is only going to be 80 students.”

No matter where her life takes her from now on, Lopez will always remember her graduation from CSU Monterey Bay as one of the happiest and most emotional days of her life. Her family was there, and they were so proud of her. Her father especially. “The first person I hugged after my graduation ceremony was over, was him,” she says.

When it comes to farmers’ markets, there’s fresh… and then there’s Pescadero Grown!, where the bounty of produce is so colorful, so ripe, so juicy and flavorful, it feels like stepping into a movie. “It’s Hollywood fresh. When you buy it the same day it’s picked, that’s really fresh,” laughs Kerry Lobel, Executive Director of Puente.

The farmers’ market will be ready for its close-up when it opens this Thursday from 3-7 p.m. at the Pescadero Country Store, 251 Stage Road, and every Thursday thereafter until October 29. Puente is celebrating the market’s fifth anniversary with a rock n’ roll performance by Kevy Nova, who is known to bring hula-hoops for kids who dance to his electric guitar. The market’s most popular farmers will return, including Fly Girl Farm, Blue House Farm, Farmageddon, State Street Honey, Markegard Family Grass-Fed, and Left Coast Grassfed, with delectable food and beautiful flowers harvested within 20 miles of Stage Road.

“Right now you’ll see a lot of lettuce greens and root vegetables. Lots of strawberries. Strawberries are kicking right now – they’re awesome,” says Charlea Binford, Puente’s enthusiastic farmers’ market manager. In a few weeks, the dahlias and bouquet flowers will come. In a month, padrón peppers will appear. Mid-summer pleasures include melons, zucchinis, and cucumber. Not to mention tomatoes at their peak.

“Oh my god, dry farmed tomatoes from Fly Girl Farm – when you bite into them, it’s super sweet. People rave about them,” says Binford.

Airielle Love from Fly Firl Farms welcomes shoppers to the 2013 market

Every week the family-friendly market will include free bike repairs, and fun children’s activities, like a visit from the Half Moon Bay Library to make buttons. On Thursday, Puente will raffle off a Nexus tablet worth $250. There will be some special surprises, as well.

Pescadero Grown has never just been a place to buy good food. It is a crossroads, a public square that brings all parts of the South Coast community together – white and Latino, young and old. At the end of the summer, everyone celebrates Day of the Dead, a Mexican tradition that has ties to All Saints Day and harvest celebrations. Binford teaches ESL at Puente, and this year she will introduce a “language exchange” – a way for English- and Spanish-speaking adults to practice conversing in each other’s languages over a picnic table. Some of the vocabulary will probably revolve around fruits and vegetables, which will be perfect.

“My whole goal is to engage and energize the community and to get healthy food into people’s hands,” Binford says.

For years, Puente programs have connected parents and young people with healthy food and taught them how to cook with it. Pescadero Grown is an extension of those efforts. It exists in large part to support local farmers, and thus the local economy – while helping low-income shoppers, purchase local food at prices they can afford. Many of them are farm workers themselves.

Today, Puente is making affordable food a reality. Last year, 51 adults used Puente’s Pescadero Tokens programto double their purchasing power; shoppers walk in with a $10 bill and get $20 in tokens to spend at the market. “That’s 3 times the amount we ever had. And this year our goal is 75,” says Binford. “I think we’re going to have even more this year. It’s exciting!”

Puente also uses its wooden tokens to double shoppers’ money through WIC and CalFresh. Those programs require documentation, whereas Puente’s own Pescadero Tokens program does not. (Puente donors make the program possible).

Binford has made it her personal mission to spread word of mouth about the program, announcing it repeatedly in her ESL class and going so far last year as to perform a ‘skit’ about it at ESL graduation with the help of Puente staff and this year she passed out Blue House strawberries (three bites to one strawberry- they were so big) while signing kids’ parents up for the token program at Dia de los Ninos.

Binford also farms part-time. She is on close terms with many farm workers – connections she parlays into persuading them to come enjoy the farmers’ market and to sign up for discounts. “At the end of the day people are buying Charlea, and she’s very sell-able,” says Ben Ranz, a Puente colleague.

This year’s market will not just be crunchy, juicy, tangy and savory, but also fishy and sweet. Stuckeys Sustainable will be back from time to time throughout the season, according to Binford. The company buys fish and shellfish directly off the fishing boats at Pillar Point Harbor, which means their market menu will include scallops, tuna, salmon, rock cod and oysters.

One newcomer is launching her own side business at the farmers’ market: 25-year-old Ellie Schoelen, a 5^thgrade schoolteacher at Pescadero Elementary, who will be selling homemade cupcakes and pastries under the name Cinderellie’s Sweet Treats.

Schoelen’s confectionary creations are a sensation among her young students, who earn “brownie points” (toward actual brownies) when they act well-behaved in public. As a newcomer to Pescadero, Schoelen joined the local PTA – and she always brings baked goods to the meetings. After sampling one of her decadent cupcakes, Puente Deputy Executive Director Rita Mancera suggested she sell them at the farmers’ market. (Last year’s pastry vendor had other commitments).

Schoelen takes her baking inspirations from recipes on Pinterest, but she adds her own twist and loves to experiment. “I just try new creations. I like stuffing my cupcakes now. I have made them with cookie dough; I’ve made them with Oreo truffles in the middle. I want to take mint Oreos and make a mint chocolate chip cupcake,” she says. “I also make banana bread and cinnamon rolls.”

Like other fans of Pescadero Grown, Schoelen knows it’s not just about good food. It’s a community junction – a place to run into her students, their parents, and to make new friends.

“I was nervous about being new to town, but now I’m jumping in,” she says. “I’m going to be a part of everything.”

Pescadero Grown opens this Thursday from 3-7 p.m. at the Pescadero Country Store, 251 Stage Road. For details, visit www.pescaderogrown.org.