The four teens sitting on the concrete benches of the new Indio High School courtyard on a warm January afternoon don’t have much in common. Sure, they’re all in their late teens, live in the east valley and sport red school lanyards around their necks, but their futures will diverge as soon as they move the tassel on their graduation cap from left to right in just five months.
One plans to work as an FBI agent, another as an architect, another a computer engineer, and the fourth as a businesswoman. They’ll make different selection choices in colleges, majors and extracurricular activities come September, but before that, they’ll have to make one common decision – whether to leave the place they call home in pursuit of their goals.
Indio and Coachella are home to the youngest population in the Coachella Valley, with the U.S. Census estimating that more than 42,000 people–40 percent of Coachella and 30 percent of Indio–are under 18. And some worry that a lack of opportunity – both in colleges to choose from and jobs post graduation – in the area forces millennials and digital natives to leave home to follow their dreams.
Keeping the median age of a population low is vital to the economic health of areas such as the Coachella Valley, in which a preponderance of Baby Boomers are quickly aging out of the workforce. Joe Cortright, a Portland, Oregon economist and author of several reports about the migration of millennials, argues that attracting and keeping young adults is of major importance to cities.
“If principal cities are doing a better job of attracting people in their 20s, it has major ramifications for future city population and economic growth,” he said in a 2015 report.
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With two satellite campuses of four-year colleges and one two-year-college in the valley, there are options for being educated locally. But for students looking for a broader on-campus experience, they are often compelled to look outside the valley for their education, especially if they’re studying a specialty subject such as architecture. Jobs are another sticking point.
A study done in 2015 by the U.S. Census Bureau attests that young adults between 18 and 24 are the most likely age group to move, most commonly spurred on by the availability of jobs, housing or family obligations. Between 2007 and 2012, these young people made up about 24 percent of the total U.S. population but constituted more than 43 percent of all movers.
While Coachella Valley employment increased by 20 percent between 2000 and 2013, according to the California Employment Development Department, more than 67 percent of jobs are in retail, tourism, agriculture, education or healthcare.
In light of this, the concerns of these four Indio High School students surround more than just college applications and entrance essays. Over the next four years, they’ll have to untangle their familial and academic ties, and decide whether to leave their hometown behind for a short time or for good.
There’s no better motivation for 17-year-old Jennifer Rocha to go to college than Christmas break or summer vacation spent picking bell peppers in the fields with mom and dad.
During those weeks off from school, the Coachella teen gets a taste of her parents’ average day—waking up at 4 a.m., starting work at 6 a.m. and not stopping save for a few 10-minute breaks for nine hours.
“Thirty minutes in, my back was in pain,” Rocha said.. “I just wanted a break and to sit down but my dad was like, ‘Nope, you gotta go. This is what it will be like if you don’t go to college.’ “
It’s memories like this that keep her going at 1 a.m., when she’s up doing homework after a day at school, caring for her two little brothers and getting in a good workout at the gym.
“I sometimes think, I just want to go to sleep, I’m done with this,” she said, “but then I remember that I want to go to college. I have so many goals in life I want to achieve so it just keeps me pushing.”
Rocha is currently waiting anxiously on responses from several University of California campuses, but really has her heart set on UC Irvine’s criminology program, where she wants to study to become an FBI agent.
Her interest in the law stems from a substitute teacher she had in school last year who was also a federal agent.
“I want to help the world, because I see so many things going on … people need to feel secure here,” she said.
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Her parents want her to stay closer to home, maybe attending College of the Desert, but Rocha said the specificity of her desired major and the high stakes she’s shooting for push her further away.
“It’s typical Mexican parents,” she joked, “They’re so against me going, especially since I’m the last girl … but (my dad) knows it’s for my future and he wants me to get what I want in life. It’s brought arguments but we’ve managed to work them out.”
Moving about two hours away was a compromise with her parents, Rocha said, but she still expects her absence to hit her family hard, especially with her acting as de facto babysitter for her younger brothers when her parents work on the weekends.
Rocha wants to return home after college—she loves the valley and wants to be with her family. But depending on how the future unfurls, the distance might be more permanent, as the closest FBI field office is in Los Angeles.
Rocha said she hopes that the valley’s expansion might warrant another field office closer to home, but said she’d also consider work in some of the Coachella Valley law enforcement departments.
“I think I’ll be back,” she said. “I’ll be back to make this valley the best.”
For right now, however, she’s focusing on refreshing her email, checking the mailbox and hoping for an acceptance letter that would signal her next step.
It was hard for 18-year-old Eva Murillo to put down roots when she was young. Money was tight, and staying put in one house or one neighborhood wasn’t possible for many years.
“It was pretty rough,” Murillo said, voice breaking momentarily, “I had to get used to the fact that I was always going to be moving, so I wasn’t able to stabilize myself in one spot. But my mom always gave us love and that’s valuable … I didn’t have the financial part, but I did have the love and support of my mom and family.”
Since settling down in Indio, Murillo has become a leader in the high school’s student body, acting as the president of the California Scholarship Federation, vice president of Interact, a high school rotary branch, ambassador for The Ophelia Project, a female mentorship program, volunteer at the Martha’s Kitchen homeless shelter and intern for Sen. Jeff Stone’s Indio office.
“When we see someone needs help, we as a community come together to help them,” she said. “So giving back to the community is what I like to do.”
Murillo is currently deciding between California State Polytechnic University, Pomona and the University of Redlands, both of which have already accepted her. There, she wants to study management and business.
As an entrepreneur, Murillo hopes to be able to open a business in the Coachella Valley that benefits the community she loves so much, especially those who are homeless.
“I want to be a role model for those who are on the bottom so that they can see there’s a Hispanic, poor girl who ended up being a top 10 student,” she said. “No matter your background or how you’re raised, or what your gender is, you can always make it.”
The thought of leaving home to make this dream come true, however, Murillo gets teary thinking about her mom, Ana Murillo, who works as a housekeeper to support Eva and her two brothers.
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“My mom, she’s always been one to give back and is always the one to help others,” she said. “Every time she sees someone who doesn’t have anything, she’ll go out of her wat. Even if she doesn’t have money for her, she’ll give it away to other people. … My mother made me who I am today.”
Part of the appeal of the University of Redlands is how close it is to home, Murillo said.
“(Mom) wants me to come home every weekend and I’m like, ‘Ma, no!’ “ she said, laughing. “But I will try my best to come home.”
In Spanish, Ana Murillo said she’ll always support her daughter regardless of what she decides, but admitted that seeing her leave the house will be “very hard.”
“It’s up to her, whatever she wants is fine,” Ana Murillo said. “But I don’t want her to be like me and be in housekeeping. It’s very hard. I don’t want her to be in my position.”
Moving away from the home she’s finally found won’t be easy, but Murillo said she was shocked how infrequently she missed home on a recent overnight at the University of Redlands.
“That was just one day, though,” she said. “I wonder if that’s going to continue on.”
The Indio High School robotics team waits with bated breath as the robot programmed by 17-year-old Raymond Sarmiento uses its pincers to launch a yellow star through the air and over a 3-foot barrier before extending its metal hook to grip onto a PVC pipe, lifting the robot entirely off the ground.
It’s this extra elevation that tipped the scales and won the Indio teen’s robotics team at Indio High School second place at this year’s VEX Robotics Competition in January.
Sarmiento has been fascinated by computers’ inner workings for more than a decade now, ever since his father brought home a boxy HP Pavilion to use for email. At age 17, he’s now built his own computer from scratch, and repairs the computers of friends and family as a hobby.
“For some reason that really caught on with me,” Sarmiento said.
In the golden age of tech, he hopes to influence big change in the computer market, innovating processor architectures as a computer engineer after attending college at either one of his top two college choices—the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of California San Diego.
“’Everything that I see that’s new (in tech) makes me excited to work in the field to develop something that could impact the future.”
It’s because of these goals that he’s become involved not only in the Robotics Club but also in the Interact Club, and SkillsUSA. Not only do his numerous club affiliations increase his standing in the eyes of college admissions officers, but they also push him to improve his skills in leadership and communication.
“Ever since sophomore year, I just kind of forced myself to take the opportunity to be part of different clubs,” he said. “I believe that the choices I made to force myself to be in the clubs have really helped me get out there. I was really not much of a people person or whatever, but it’s improved my self-quality and built up leadership skills.”
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He looks forward to moving away from the Coachella Valley for those years in which he’ll test his independence, but is concerned that his choice of career will prevent him from returning to the valley anytime soon.
“The thinking process for me was actually fairly difficult because in computer engineering there aren’t many jobs out here,” he said. “I would have to move out of the valley to even find a position for that.”
Maybe in the future he could open his own hardware store or become a math teacher—calculus is his specialty—but for now, he doesn’t see an immediate future in the valley.
That saddens him. He’s close with his parents, who emigrated from the Philippines before he was born and now work hard at Spotlight 29 Casino and Sheer Elegance Beauty Salon in Indio to put him and his older brother through school. Moving will be tough, he said, but his parents have always pushed their children to make the most of themselves regardless of the obstacles.
“For both of them, especially for my dad, it’s been quite difficult,” Sarmiento said, “but he managed to get through all his education and come here to work in the U.S. for better opportunities. … They’d rather have us have better opportunities now and even go beyond what they have done.”
Since she was a child, 17-year-old Xitlali Casarrubias has been a specimen in right-brain/left-brain thinking.
The Indio teen loves to draw, but thinks math is her favorite class. She’s active in mock trial, but also a gifted member of the drama club.
Now, she’s waiting on acceptance letters from the architecture programs at University of California Los Angeles, University of California Berkeley and Harvard University, with which she just interviewed last week. Architecture, she said, allows her to “mush together” her love of art and math into something at which she knows she can excel.
“She’s been a straight-A student since she was little,” her father Sergio Casarrubias said. “I’ve seen her work so hard to get where she’s at.”
She draws on the knowledge that her parents struggled to come here from Mexico so that she and her younger brothers would have new opportunities for inspiration when she’s awake late at night doing schoolwork.
Casarrubias knows that college and being an architect will take her outside the Coachella Valley to more densely populated urban locations, which she sees as an “adventure,” despite her fond memories of “dying” in the hot summers and her close relationships with a number of longtime friends.
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“I’m really looking forward to it,” she said. “I’m nervous, I’m very nervous, don’t get me wrong, but I’m really looking forward to all the new experiences, new friends, new opportunities and everything it has to offer.”
Her father, Sergio Casarrubias, knows his daughter will thrive in the world outside the valley, but said he holds out hope that she could find a job out of college that’s close to family.
“It all depends on the positions,” he said. “I know this is a small little town; not a lot of positions are going to be open for architects. … It’s going to be sad to see her go but happy at the same time because I know it’s for the best.”
It’s this kind of sentiment that tempers his daughter’s excitement.
“It’s kind of the reality dawning on me,” she said. “Wow, I’m actually going to leave, this is actually going to happen. So it’s the reality of it that’s worrying me the most.”
Editor’s note: The Desert Sun will be following four Indio High School students as they navigate their final year of high school. Young, largely Latino and full of promise, growing up in the Eastern Coachella Valley brings with it a set of experiences and challenges unique to the rest of the valley.
Anna Rumer is a reporter covering the Eastern Coachella Valley for The Desert Sun. She can be reached at (760) 285-5490, anna.rumer@desertsun.com or on Twitter @AnnaRumer.