This valedictorian’s dreams are fueled by his agricultural worker parents’ hardscrabble life
His father would bicycle to work in the snow in South Carolina to a factory job.
When his mother got COVID and missed a month of work, he remembers eating nothing but garbanzo beans for a week or so “because that’s all there was.”.
He feared going to McLane High School because of the “ghetto” connotation, but now admits the central Fresno school is nothing like that.
This is what inspires Cristián Avendano Cabrera to escape a life of poverty and, in the process, help out his parents.
“He is the epitome of a successful young man who will give back much more than he will receive in life,” said Brad Castillo, his cross country coach.
Avendano graduated from McLane High on Tuesday night with a 4.32 GPA, and now heads to Fresno State to major in geomatics engineering. He will intern with CalTrans this summer.
“He’s an outstanding young man,” said principal Brian Wulf.
Avendano, who ran cross country and track all four years at McLane, was the school’s nominee for the B’nai B’rith Scholarship. He also won a Fresno Unified scholarship, and a $1,000 scholarship from the cross country team.
“I was about to break in tears,” he said about the cross country scholarship. “I’m actually able to buy things for myself, like a laptop that will be really resourceful in engineering.
Avendano, 18, is the middle child born to María del Rosario y Fabián Salas. His older sister is at Fresno City College, and the younger sister finished her freshman year at McLane.
His goal is not “to give my parents more expenses. I want to help them by alleviating some expenses for them.”
Avendano wanted to become an astronaut when he was 4 years old, but then his mind started to fixate on math.
“I wanted to become a math professor, especially on calculus or linear algebra,” he said. In middle school, he got into science and physics, “and that’s how I got engineering out of it.”
His parents, who left South Carolina for Fresno because they heard of the availability of agricultural jobs, still work in the fields. Their work drives him to do more.
“They keep telling me to keep working on my dreams, to not be like them,” said Avendano. “I don’t want my family in the future to go the same way that my parents have. I want to give them the life they gave me … hopefully I’ll be able to pay off a house or something and just allow them to enjoy the rest of their life.”
Avendano went to the fields when he was 15 to help out his parents.
“It was really tough work,” he said. “I would get thorns every day. My hands would be stiff. And when I’d come back from work, there would be dust all over my clothes.”
Avendano said thinking about that experience reminds him of what his parents endure.
“I broke down because that’s what they’ve been doing their entire life,” he said.
When his mother missed work at a plant nursery because of COVID, that meant one less paycheck to help with expenses.
“At times, I would have to resort to eating tiny garbanzo beans in cans,” said Avandano, “but I didn’t mind because I knew what they were suffering through.”
Cross country and track became more than an escape for him. He signed up thinking it was a good way to lose weight and discovered its benefits were more than physical.
“I see it as a way to connect with the community,” said Avendano, who was cross country team captain three years. “We actually have a purpose in running. We do them for family.
“We do them for anything that we have in our mind. We do it for comfort. We do it for a lot of reasons.”
Running, said Avendano, has mental benefits.
Another unexpected benefit was meeting Castillo, a former member of the Fresno City Council.
“I don’t know if he knows this, but to me he’s sort of like a second father,” said Avendano. “He’s really treated the cross country team and me really good; well, not even really good but wonderful. It has been a blessing to meet him.”
His mother, speaking in Spanish, expressed pride in her son’s success. Plus, she noted that success isn’t preordained.
“What I have instilled in all three of my children is that life is full of challenges every day and education is basic,” said Del Rosario. “Having money, having a career, having an education does not come from a good birth or from or having rich parents.
“It comes with effort and a lot of dedication. One can get from poor to wherever one wants if they meet the goals they really want.”
At a glance
McLane High / June 6, 2023
McLane High Stadium
Graduates: 349
Valedictorians: 32 (including 6 summa cum laude)
Latino enrollment: 73.82%
Highlight: One lowlight was a 45-minute delay in the start of the ceremony when some people waited more than an hour to get past security. Gates opened at 6 p.m. for the scheduled 7:30 p.m. ceremony, but people who showed up at 6:30 p.m. were still waiting an hour later. Principal Brian Wulf said the district didn’t hire enough security to handle the estimated crowd of almost 3,000. The highlight was the only graduation fireworks show among the seven comprehensive high schools in the district, due to the only ceremony held outdoors.
Quote: Trustee Beva Islas: “Graduates, I hope that your experience in these last four years underscores that you can achieve everything that you set your minds to. I wish I could promise you that the rest of your lives would be easy, but life often doesn’t get easier or more forgiving as we get older.”
