A slip of paper, a piece of plastic: it seems almost arbitrary to think that is all that separates “documented” from “undocumented” Californians. But nearly anyone from the latter group could tell you that although our differences may seem slight, not having that piece of paper changes everything. It isn’t just a legal issue; it carries with it a profoundly real psychological impact – the feeling of belonging, of legitimacy, of building toward a future of living in the light.

Puente works toward bringing people into the light in several ways: with citizenship, renewal of green cards, U visas for crime victims, and DACA applications (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a permit for young people who were brought to the U.S. as children).

Now Puente is preparing to help undocumented South Coast residents attain a special driver’s license under a new California law that takes effect January 1, 2015. State officials are expecting a crush of applications, and Puente is working with the California DMV to help locals get their papers in order to streamline the process. Puente will host an information night with a DMV representative on the evening of Tuesday, August 19, to share details about the new rules.

Puente will not only get people the information they need, but will help prepare people to take their written driving tests, says Ben Ranz, Community Outreach Coordinator.

“My biggest concern is literacy levels and test-taking skills,” says Ranz. “For folks who haven’t made it out of the third grade, multiple-choice can be a strange thing. That’s the preparation I want to focus on.”

This fall marks a joyful milestone for many young people in Pescadero: the two-year anniversary of receiving a DACA permit. Now Puente is helping 19 young people renew their permits, which expire in October. And three other youth are applying to DACA for the first time.

That piece of paper helped a lot, says Lorena Calvillo, who is 19 and drives to her classes at San Francisco State University. She is in her second year and is studying to be a civil engineer.

Lorena Calvillo

“Things are brighter now. You’re not so afraid of everything. You kind of feel equal,” says Calvillo. She paused to add: “Before, I wondered why was I going to school if I couldn’t even be a citizen.”

These past two years have changed many lives, says Rita Mancera, Program Director for Puente.

“They feel free. They know they have the right to work now. We saw academic performance improve. And the ones who are in college are on track for pursuing their majors.”

While DACA does not offer a path to citizenship, it can create transformative opportunities. In a recent study of DACA recipients, a majority of those surveyed were able to get a new job, open their first bank account and obtain a driver’s license.

In Pescadero, DACA helped youth get Social Security cards. Those who are old enough to drive got their driver’s license, and those who are not have a California ID.

One of Puente’s most familiar young faces, Laura Rodriguez, is Puente’s summer camp coordinator. She has earned a wage over the years doing various jobs, but this year she is doing it with a work permit. She was recently approved for a special, blanket visa that will allow her to stay in the U.S. indefinitely and to apply for a green card.

Laura Rodriguez, with her Puente colleagues

After hearing her story, Puente put Rodriguez’s mother in touch with an outside attorney who took care of her visa application.

“If it weren’t for Puente, I don’t know where I would be right now. Life is tough and it only gets tougher,” says Rodriguez, 19. “But now I know this is just the beginning.”

There was a time, not so long ago, when Rodriguez feared highway patrol officers and checkpoints, because someone could discover she had no driver’s license and take her car away. Now she drives without fear – which is especially helpful in her commute to community college, where she is studying to become a computer engineer.

It was an ordinary, sunny Tuesday morning. By 8 a.m., most people on the South Coast were well into their daily summer routines – work, errands, childcare.

But for 17 lucky youngsters, the day was anything but ordinary. By 8 a.m., the campers in Puente’s YMCA Day Camp program were already dribbling basketballs as fog threaded though the redwoods at Camp Jones Gulch in La Honda. They were already well on their way to a day of nonstop fun, part of a two-week session with their favorite counselors and activities, soaking up the best of summer.

After that, they walked to the Sustainable Living Garden and spent an hour with organic crops, chickens and fruit trees.

“We made art out of stuff in nature – like rocks and sticks. And then we watered cherry trees, but the trees don’t have cherries yet,” said Jay Alsadir, 8.

The group trooped cheerfully to the arts and crafts hut and was soon busy drawing self-portraits in purple, yellow, green, blue and many other colors. Then they affixed stickers to a big wooden frame that would display all of their beautiful art together – a fitting metaphor for this peaceable group of campers, among the youngest at Camp Jones Gulch, who all come from South Coast families.

Puente is in its eighth year of partnering with the YMCA on a Day Camp program that brings local kids into the woods for fun-filled one or two-week sessions, five times per summer. In just two weeks, campers will experience everything summer has to offer: swimming, team sports, horseback riding, zip lining, hiking, nature hikes, archery, climbing, boating – and of course, the requisite campfire songs and marshmallows.

Many day campers come from families that would not be able to afford camp for their children, said Rita Mancera, Program Director for Puente.

”The Puente-Jones Gulch partnership gives local children the opportunity to experience day camp.”

To make it financially possible, Puente hires several local youth counselors, aged 16 to 18. They looked to be having almost as much fun as the kids. Counselor Isela Marin leaned looked over at Rosa Carmona’s drawing of herself as a dancer in a purple dress. “I love dancing,” the 9-year-old explained.

“Do you want to draw ballet slippers?” Marin asked, smiling.

Parents who can afford the $25 weekly camp fee often give a little extra to subsidize those who can’t. The small fee helps Puente take care of both transportation and logistics, making it worry-free.

“Parents can go to work and know their kids are safe and they’re in good hands,” said Mancera.

The Camp Jones Gulch campers range in age from 5 to 13 years. Many sibling pairs attend together, such as Mairol Hernandez, 10, and her little sister Perla, 5. In Mairol’s opinion, the best part of summer camp is being outside. “I really enjoy not being in the house,” she said.

Both sisters were intent on a sticker collage when Perla decided to experiment with putting some stickers on her face instead. Before long, her cheeks and forehead were covered with flowers and stars. No one stopped her – this is summer camp, after all.

This summer also marks the second year of Puente to Pie, an innovative garden and farm-based bilingual immersion program for children ages 2 and 3. Together with partners at Pie Ranch, teachers were able to introduce children to barnyard and farm wonders as well as to Spanish words and phrases.

Puente also partnered with the La Honda-Pescadero Unified School District to help staff Kick Off to Kinder and Panther Camp. Panther Camp is a summer program for Kindergarten-8^th grade students to support academic achievement, provide academic interventions and enrichment activities for South Coast youth. Kickoff to Kindergarten is a Kindergarten Readiness program for children entering Kindergarten in August 2011.

Larry Trujillo walks into the Puente office, and it’s like the sun has come out. “Hola, Puenteritos!” he calls over to a huddle of Puente youth. “Larry!” They pop their heads up and grin with enthusiasm.

DJ Larry

It’s hard to discern the bigger surprise: that a retired professor could excite such a happy response from teenagers, or that Trujillo is a retired professor. Clad in skate shoes, jeans, and a loose Hawaiian button-down, he looks more like his alter ego, DJ Larry.

“I’m basically the town DJ. More kids know me by that than any other name. They’re surprised when I’m referred to as Dr. Larry Trujillo,” he says with a smile.

Trujillo has indeed DJ’ed just about every event in town, from quinceañeras and bar mitzvahs to the opening day of the Pescadero Farmer’s Market. His easy, charismatic manner – more a friend than an authority figure – is part of his charm and a key to his success with his target demographic: students.

Trujillo moved to Pescadero in the 1980s and along with his lifelong partner Dr. Velia Garcia, a fellow educator and former Puente board member who passed away in 2012, have focused a great deal of their efforts in the community to transforming the lives of struggling students in the local schools. Today, Trujillo is a board member and a sustaining donor of Puente.

For years, Garcia and Trujillo worked hand-in-hand to increase the number of Pescadero students, particularly Latinos, who went on to college after graduation. In the ‘90s, Garcia, the former chair of Latina/Latino Studies at San Francisco State University, brought the Step to College Program to the area. Trujillo, a lecturer in Community Studies at University of California Santa Cruz, had the idea to bring college-age mentors to Pescadero High.

Larry with Dolores Huerta

“We started with seniors, but then we realized that not everyone was getting to the 12th grade. So we started dipping back – all the way to elementary school,” recalls Trujillo.

At its height, the program brought 60 tutor/mentors and classroom aides to Pescadero every week. And they saw results: once students got to know real college students, especially Latinos, they became more likely to apply to college themselves.

“Some of the kids had never known there was a university 30 miles away,” says Trujillo.

When Trujillo retired, the mentoring program was discontinued. But he revived it last year in partnership with Puente Academic Director Suzanne Abel. Puente and the local school district are now affiliated with Classroom Connection, a UCSC Merrill College academic course that provides the college mentor/tutors who volunteer in the Pescadero schools with a broad understanding of educational issues facing California.

“Suzanne and I both think this could be a model. The school system in California is broken, and marshalling the energies of Latino college-age mentors will result in more Latino and rural high school students applying to college,” says Trujillo.

“Larry is so brilliant and so generous,” said Kerry Lobel, Executive Director of Puente. “The partnership he has helped create with UCSC and SF State is profound. He’s trying to do something very different with a whole generation of young people. That’s something we don’t often see in education.”

Trujillo has been preaching the benefits of service-learning, which gives students the opportunity to immerse themselves in real-life work situations that benefit their communities, long before it got to be in vogue on most campuses. Trujillo himself is the perfect role model, having personally befriended, and touched the lives of, generations of young people on the South Coast.

And he is still friends with them today. Jorge Guzman, Puente Director of Prevention Services, says Trujillo has known him since he was a boy in elementary school. Trujillo was the “cool” guy Guzman looked up to.

“He mentored and trusted me with his equipment and would let me help him DJ the school dances. To see that someone trusted me with their special equipment…  words cannot describe how I felt then and how I feel now as I look back on it,” says Guzman.

Eventually, Trujillo connected Guzman with a UCSC mentor. “I was able to daydream about what a college life would be and how I could also go to college. Never did I imagine myself pursing a college degree, let alone graduate school. He was pivotal in changing that,” adds Guzman, who attended Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont.

Trujillo continues to use his perch on the Puente Board of Directors to help young people bridge the difficult transition to adulthood. He donates money to the Youth Bridges Scholarship Program, visits the Puente offices most every week, and personally takes Puente youth on fun summer field trips to places like the Santa Cruz Boardwalk.

“Sometimes they need an adult to just kind of hang,” he says.

Trujillo’s favorite annual event is high school graduation – watching all those young people, many of whom he has known since infancy, receive their diplomas. And most years, a majority of graduates are former Puente youth.

“There’s no place you can give where your money will go more directly to serve the community than Puente,” says Trujillo.

Then he gets to DJ the graduation pool party.

To donate to Puente, please visit https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/puente.