This grad rarely smiled until dental work built his confidence; now dentistry is in his future
Lionel Pérez-Santiago is smiling a lot more these days, and not only because he was among the Matilda Torres High’s inaugural graduating class.
And, it’s not because he changed his mind about heading to Cal Poly Pomona in the fall and instead will stay closer by attending Madera Community College Center.
It’s because of his teeth!
“My teeth were just not very good,” said Pérez-Santiago, who graduated last Friday night with a 3.9 GPA. “I would just hide my smile. I would never smile in pictures or even in person.”
That changed in the eighth grade when he first went to a dentist and got braces. “They kept helping me and assured me that in no time my teeth would be fixed.”
Pérez-Santiago is so thankful that he wants to become a dentist and play a similar role in putting smiles on children who face the same situation he did at their age.
The dentists focused on fixing his teeth and making him feel better, he said.
“I started getting really confident, and I was able to smile in pictures,” said Pérez-Santiago. “It just made me fall in love with dentistry because it boosted my confidence.
“It just made me want to be like them.”
Pérez-Santiago – who works in the fields so that his parents “won’t have to worry about paying for my school” – had planned on attending Cal Poly Pomona but decided that staying closer to home at Madera Community College would save money.
“They always told me to stay in school,” he said about his parents, Pedro Pérez Santiago and Francisca Santiago, both Zapotecs from Oaxaca, México.
“They’ve taken me to the fields to see how their life is without education,” said Pérez-Santiago, the oldest of three children. “Even when I told them I wanted to go to Cal Poly Pomona, about four hours away, they still supported my choice.”
Pérez-Santiago loved being in the first graduating class at Matilda Torres High.
“It was just a nice experience because although our graduating class was small, I think that made it better because it was easier to connect with other students,” he said. “It was a nice community.”
His mother, Francisca, is happy her son will go to college and not go work in the fields like her.
“Like I always tell him, it is very difficult to work in the fields because you have no education,” she said in Spanish. “Plus, you can’t go look for another job.”
She said her son has always focused on school, and sets a good example for his younger brother and sister.
Many firsts for “Toro Nation”
As expected, the inaugural graduation ceremony for the school had many firsts as about 5,000 showed up to witness history.
Principal Sabrina Rodríquez, who opened the school when the pandemic hit, rattled off a list of accomplishments, from athletics to music to academics at “Toro Nation.”
“Once a Toro, always a Toro regardless of what life throws at you,” said Rodríquez. “Horns up!”
George Torres, widower of the school namesake who died eight years ago, told the graduates they make him proud “just to know what you’ve accomplished.”
His wife, he said, “took pride in all of her kids. Even many years after she retired, she was always running late shopping because she’d end up meeting with a student and she’d want to check and see how things were going.”
Senior class president Ashley Rico Díaz announced that the class gift will be a topiary.
Student speaker Ashley Cendejas stressed what the graduates have built in four years.
“As the first graduating class, our energy built standards and traditions that will run through the veins of this school for years to come,” said Cendejas.
“The frustration, laughter, tears and valuable life lessons fueling the perseverance that guides you to reach your goals is the same energy that got you here,” she said. “That energy is never destroyed.”
José Eduardo Rodríguez, a student who delivered his speech completely in Spanish, said it was difficult to start freshman year with classes on Zoom and having only images and names to associate with fellow students.
“But we overcame that,” he said. “Even though we began as strangers, we ended up as a family that represents all the qualities of the Toro, especially that of being resilient.”
Graduate Alyssa Dhillon, who is headed to UCLA, was recognized for having the highest GPA: 4.58.
At a glance
Matilda Torres High / June 9, 2023
Madera Memorial Stadium
Graduates: 335
Valedictorians: 45
Latino enrollment: 92.3%
Highlight: There were plenty of highlights, mainly because there were many firsts due to the fact this was the first graduating class of the northeast Madera school. But, key was the recognition of George Torres, the husband of the late Madera High counselor Matilda Torres for whom the school the named..
Quote: Principal Sabrina Rodríquez: “As our first class, you have set the bar for excellence academically, athletically, and socially. Your classes help create traditions for generations to come, including the drafting of our school mission and vision statements.”
