A lot of these kids are being pelted with all different challenges and people trying
to belittle them or question who they are as people.
Our kids only see what is right around them and what is around them is often not very
uplifting.
I'm kind of given this opportunity to help kids who have a choice to make in life.
Do they checkout and unplug like I did or do they push themselves to become the best
version of themselves?
When I was growing up, I didn't have, like, a role model who intervened and wasn't, like,
stern and wasn't like, "Hey, kid, wakeup, you got to clean up your act.
You need somebody to hold you accountable because when you're 16, it's difficult.
I think that success in any way shape or form in life is a product of opportunity
And in our economy, income has a lot to do with opportunity.
My parents, they were busy working in order to just kind of like make ends meet.
So a lot of the supervision wasn't there just because they had to work so much, which kind
of led me to do whatever I want because nobody was watching me and nobody knew whether I
was going to school or not.
I left El Salvador with my husband because at that time, in the '80s, you know, the civil war
started and we were in danger.
We came from a different society.
In order to make a living, we have to get jobs.
In order to get jobs, we have to leave the kids alone.
Most of the time, his mom was working.
Me, I was working.
We dedicate all our times, our love to him and it was really a hustle.
And we don't have nobody else in this country, nobody who could help us to educate him,
to guide him.
A lot of the negative influences around, like, skateboarding just kind of like accelerated
that downward spiral into all that negative, juvenile behavior, like, ditching class and
doing graffiti and hanging out with, like, bad kids, doing drugs.
So in 10th grade, like, I just decided to dropout from school.
I got a job working the graveyard shift in a grocery store.
The place ends up getting robbed at gunpoint and at that moment, like, I started to question
everything that I was doing up to that point.
There has to be something bigger.
There has to be something more fulfilling.
So I went to school.
I graduated from college.
That's what started my trajectory to kind of like reintegrate myself into society.
The way I found Stoked, it was a way for me to get back into something that was more fulfilling
than what I was currently doing because I was just feeling empty in a way.
So everybody has a board, right?
I'll give you one of the classic ones, yeah?
Ah, you like it huh?
Stoked is a mentoring organization built on the principles of action sports.
We take kids that are at-risk or have less opportunity and put them in situations that
will inform who they are as a person and empower them to succeed.
Skateboarding teaches you perseverance, determination, relentlessness.
It really makes you push against your own self because you know that it's going to lead
to accomplishment and success and with anything in life, you know, you're going to fail.
You're going to come to roadblocks.
You're going to face and meet challenges, but it's like that determination to just keep going.
You know the word FAIL stands for?
No, what?
What is that?
It stands for First Attempt In Learning.
Fail.
So whenever you fail, it's not that you're a failure.
That's different.
It just means that you're trying something that you didn't try before and it's just one
step to actually getting good at that.
Their stories vary, but you know, you're talking about people who come from broken homes, don't
have anything to eat.
I guess the one overarching theme is, you know, they're coming from deficient backgrounds.
Most of our kids are coming from single-parent families.
We have kids who are homeless.
We have kids who are living out of their van with their families of five, kids who have
lost their parents due to gang violence.
We have students who are involved in gangs, which is why they are here.
Stoked teached me how to be, like, confident and not, like, be scared to fall down.
They teached me how to, like, communicate with other people.
I get to express my feelings, I guess.
When I get on there, I feel like I'm free and I can do, like, anything I want.
I definitely see myself in the kids that I work with.
They just want a sense of belonging.
Looking back at my life, it's like I was missing a community when I was growing up and going
through a lot of the stuff I was going through.
It's crazy to see what happens when kids put two and two together, that I'm not just here
for fun.
This is actually empowering my life.
You don't have to be a saint.
You don't have to be perfect in order to help other people.
At the end of the day, it's just, like, when you're gone what's your legacy on another
person?
So I think at a minimum that everybody should be striving to, like, at least help just one
person or change or somebody's life because it only takes one.
I'm not trying to change 300 people's lives or everybody who I come into contact with,
but if it's just one, then I know that when I die that I left some sort of positive impact
on others.