Made of Hayward
Cal State East Bay students tip the scale toward college for local, underserved teens
Gabby Delgado was seven years old when a single event made her aware, for the first time, of the two challenges that would shape her life: She couldn’t speak English, and her family was at risk of being deported.
Her mother was away, attending the funeral of Gabby’s grandmother in Mexico, when she was prevented from returning to the United States because she didn’t have citizenship papers. Delgado’s father, a construction worker, couldn’t care for Gabby and her sister alone, so he sent them to stay with family in Southern California until the documentation could be sorted out.
It was there that Gabby’s aunt began taking her to preschool classes alongside her younger sister, just to quickly get her into some type of school. Over the course of a month’s time, as she learned alongside toddlers, her trouble with English became painstakingly clear.
“I didn’t even know the days of the week. That’s how bad it was,” Delgado recalls.