Student overcomes deaths of parents, succeeds
at school
 Photo by Amanda Flood, Special to the Arizona Daily Star Acosta's tennis teammates helped him to adjust to his new home and new life in Tucson. |
By Marie Benton
Special to The Arizona Daily Star
The death of a parent is always hard, but to lose both parents at a young age is especially difficult.
Francisco Andres Acosta, 17, has dealt with the deaths of both parents and the hardships that followed. But instead of using their deaths as an excuse for failure, he used them as a reason to succeed.
When Acosta was only 9 and living with his family in Mexico, he lost his father. Four years later, his mother passed away.
With no close relatives in Mexico, Acosta moved to Tucson to live with his older sister and her family. In late October of his freshman year and knowing very little English, he enrolled at Pueblo High School.
Leonora Velasquez, a school counselor, said Acosta dealt with the changes stoically during his first year at Pueblo. He carefully chose friends and activities that would help him learn how to grow.
"Since his arrival here and throughout his immigration process, he was prohibited from reentering Mexico," Velasquez said. "Francisco was unable to return to visit family, friends or even to proceed through his grieving process by attending some of the family functions and mourning rituals. Francisco's poise through this time was awesome."
Acosta was placed in English as a Second Language classes.
Within a year, he made the transition from classes taught in Spanish to classes taught in English.
Since then, Acosta has matured into an exceptional artist and an equally competitive varsity tennis player.
Before enrolling at Pueblo, Acosta said he had "never touched a tennis racquet."
But tennis was a sport he quickly came to love, and Acosta said he owes much of his success to the school and his teammates.
"The tennis team helped me out a lot, just by me being able to speak (English) with them and practicing with them," he said.
Acosta improves his skills at tennis camps and clinics.
He is taking advanced placement art and works with all types of media, such as color pencils, ink, clay and oil paints.
In his free time, he passes his knowledge on to others by tutoring elementary pupils.
Ultimately, Acosta hopes to become an architect. If he receives enough scholarship funding, he plans to attend Pima Community College and then transfer to the University of Arizona. Otherwise, he might enlist in the Navy and attend school with help from the government.
Either way, his dream of becoming an architect isn't a matter of money, but a matter of time.
Marie Benton is a senior at Sahuarita High School.
Karla Barraza is a senior at Palo Verde High School.