 "Photo: Contributed Photo")
Many people won’t even walk across the room to turn on the T.V.. Yet, Xiomara Medrano, an 18-year-old freshman at the Dale Mabry Campus, walked across an entire country.
For more than two months, Medrano and her mother traveled over 1,000 miles by foot from Sonsonate, El Salvador to Tampa. They trekked across a desert with extreme climate conditions that varied from intense heat to bitter cold.
With only a backpack of food and a gallon of water, the pair began their journey in search of a better life.
“Sometimes we took the train, but most of the time we walked… we kept on going no matter what,” said Medrano.
When they ran out of clean water, Medrano and her mother stayed hydrated by drinking from puddles of dirty rain water.
The pair arrived in Tampa, during December of 2004, when Medrano was 14. For the first few months Medrano and her mom lived together, but when her mom fell on hard times the teen was left to care for herself.
Medrano’s day literally consisted of school, work, homework, and nothing else. “I would wake up at 5 a.m. and go to sleep at 2 a.m.,” she said.
For two years, Medrano supported herself by working various jobs like waitressing, while renting a room from strangers. Because Medrano did not have legal status, it was often hard for her to maintain employment. The stress inevitably became too much for the brave 16-year-old to bear; one day during class, Medrano had a breakdown and began sobbing.
“It wasn’t just hard paying the bills, but I felt alone,” said Medrano.
When high school guidance counselors discovered her situation they put her in touch with a social worker, Kathy Wiggins, whom Medrano calls her “angel.”
With Wiggins' help, Medrano was put in contact with Gulf Coast Legal Services, an organization that assists minor immigrants in obtaining legal status, to avoid deportation.
Wiggins vividly remembers the day that Medrano was granted legal immigration status. “As we were walking out of the courtroom, we just hugged and cried because her whole life had just changed within five minutes,” said Wiggins.
”This meant she could go to college, get a legal job and go for goals that any senior in high school would want,” said Wiggins. “Suddenly she had a chance," she said.
Today, Medrano lives in a women’s shelter and works as an office assistant for Disabled Student Services on the Dale Mabry campus.
Linda Freeman, coordinator for Disabled Students Services and Medrano’s supervisor describes her as a real “go-getter."
“She has a great willingness to learn,” said Freeman. “She jumps in and does her very best at whatever I ask her to do,” she said.
After Medrano finishes her core classes, she plans to enroll in HCC’s ultrasound program, with the desire to become an ultrasound obstetrician technician; an aspiration she’s had since witnessing the birth of her baby brother.
“Fight for what you want, and don’t give up, 'cause you never know what’s going to happen," said Medrano.
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