Student earns $10,000 scholarship

By JENNIE RODRÍGUEZ / Vida En El Valle
(Published Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 08:51AM)

STOCKTON -- When Alejandra Aguilar, 18, heard a family friend was diagnosed with breast cancer last year, something compelled her to help the young mother's family.

"I felt really bad. She was so young, and she had little kids," Aguilar recalled. "My sister and I thought, 'Well, the least we could do is clean their house.'"

Aguilar and her 17-year-old sister, Jacqueline, purchased cleaning supplies with their own money and cleaned the home of Michele Duclo, the mother of the family friend who was diagnosed with cancer.

"It was a blessing, because I was totally exhausted after two weeks back and forth from the hospital," said Duclo, who had neglected household chores to be by her daughter's bedside.

Now, the Aguilar sisters offer free cleaning services for cancer patients and their families through St. Joseph's Medical Center. They call their program Cleaning With Your Heart.

This fall, Aguilar will take another step toward her dream of working even closer with patients. Her volunteer work, among other qualifications, landed the 2008 Lincoln High School graduate the first José Hernández Reaching for the Stars Foundation renewable scholarship of $10,000, which she will use at the University of the Pacific this fall.

"It's too good to be true. I didn't think I would win," Aguilar said.

Aguilar, who took Advanced Placement and honors courses at Lincoln High, will major in bioengineering at Pacific and plans to go to medical school. "I just want to see another Latina in the medical field," she said.

The foundation is named after Stockton astronaut José Hernández, who grew up in Stockton with his family of migrant workers. Hernández, a Pacific graduate and NASA engineer, is a university trustee and often visits the Stockton area.

His foundation will help Aguilar realize her dream.

"That's part of the reason we chose her, because of her activities in the community," said Ángel Picón, the foundation's chairman. Coincidentally, Hernández co-invented the digital mammography imaging system used today to detect breast cancer among women during the time he worked at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory.

"José (Hernández) was more than happy to have her chosen," Picón said. "For her to have started that, being so young, is very honorable."

Aguilar was selected based on her grades, community involvement, engineering major and financial need. The scholarship is renewable for four years, Picón said. Aguilar was chosen from a pool of five students who submitted a letter of interest and who already had been accepted into the university.

The foundation is aiming to raise $20,000 this year to renew Aguilar's scholarship and to offer $10,000 to another Pacific engineering student next year.

Send e-mail to: jrodriguez@recordnet.com.