‘My parents’ worries became my own’
Amid COVID-19 hardships, teens work double duty
It was never a question that Stephanie Contreras-Reyes would take the most rigorous AP classes her high school offers. It was never a question that she would juggle these classes with a slate of impressive extracurriculars and weekly volunteering at two hospitals. It was never a question that she would apply to California’s top colleges, including Stanford.
And when her dad lost his factory job in March at the onset of the pandemic, it was never a question that the 17-year-old would do whatever was needed to keep her family afloat.
Her parents do not speak English, so she researched how to sign up her family for food and rental assistance at various community organizations. She held garage sales on the weekends, selling blouses and shoes from her South Los Angeles home and dropping off catalogs for Tupperware — which she helps her mom sell — to family friends.
But it wasn’t enough. So she told her parents that she wanted to take on shifts at the embroidery factory where her mom worked.
“Tell your boss I’m ready, I can do this,” Stephanie, the eldest of four children, said to her mom at the dinner table. The next week, mother and daughter stood side-by-side at the industrial sewing machines, lining up snapback hats that would soon be stitched with the logos of local sports teams.
Stephanie’s AP U.S. history teacher, Heidi Mejia, will tell you that her student is remarkable. She’s at the top of her class,
the first in her family to get this far in school. She is also among an increasing number of teenagers who have started working or taken on more work to help their financially struggling families during the pandemic, often carrying overwhelming loads that can bring on anxiety attacks, bouts of depression and failing grades, their school counselors say.
“My parents’ worries became my own,” Stephanie said.
Mejia said that this semester, about five students each period reach out daily to say that they’ll be missing class because they are working. “And those are just the students that are comfortable letting me know what’s happening,” she said.
Teenagers supporting families
Rachel Varty, Stephanie’s
college counselor at Orthopaedic Hospital Medical Magnet High School, said students as young as 14 have been requesting work permits.
A quarter of San Francisco International High School’s 64 seniors are working 20 to 40 hours a week, said head counselor Oksana Florescu — more than double the usual number of working seniors. She meets with these students over Zoom to coach them on how to persuade their bosses to give them school-friendly schedules.
“I give them talking points: ‘This is my last year of school; I’m trying to help my family,’ ” Florescu said.
Some students launched into work at the very start of the pandemic.
After her mother lost her full-time restaurant job last March, Isis Mejia-Duarte, a senior at Woodrow
Wilson Senior High School in El Sereno, began helping her mom deliver Amazon Fresh and InstaCart groceries.
They could make deliveries more quickly as a team, ultimately fulfilling more orders and making more money. And Isis didn’t feel comfortable with her mom delivering packages in downtown L.A. alone at night.
“I love my mom and don’t want to see her suffer,” Isis said. “I’m happy to help in the little ways I can.” She also was taking eight online classes and cooking and cleaning for her family. And she was still earning straight A’s.
Then, in December, Isis, her mom and her grandmother fell ill with COVID19. Isis applied to college from her sickbed, sometimes staying up until 5 a.m. to finish her sketchbook and portfolio for CalArts in
Valencia, her dream school.
Despite their lingering fatigue, the pressure to generate income was immense following three weeks of sickness. So after testing negative for the coronavirus, Isis and her mom returned to the crowded Amazon warehouse in mid-January.
They waited in line for two hours for a tall stack of packages and loaded the goods into Isis’ aunt’s Nissan Rogue. Mother and daughter dashed to elevators and up countless flights of stairs, carrying bags of groceries and cases of bottled water. After a while, Isis’ mom hit a wall, so Isis picked up the slack. She was drenched in sweat and dizzy with exhaustion by the time they were done.
Luis Leon, Isis’ classmate at Woodrow Wilson High School, began taking orders at a McDonald’s drive-through in August after both of his parents were temporarily laid off. Luis’ $400 monthly paycheck puts food on the table and keeps the lights on. Work is an escape from the drudgery of lockdown, and he enjoys interacting with customers, though he does worry about catching the virus.
Luis describes himself as an average student in normal times, a happy-golucky type with boundless energy. But working 20 to 30 hours a week has taken a toll. Between his job and watching his two younger siblings, it’s hard to muster the motivation for academics, especially after a long work shift. He often feels drowsy and sad. In December, he was failing most of his classes.
“If I’m being honest,” Luis said, “sometimes I wish I could just relax and be a teen.”
One recent evening, Luis reached his limit. Finals were due — he had stayed up until 3 a.m. the night before writing a paper — and so were his college applications. As he stared at his computer screen with its numerous open tabs, he felt himself shut down. “My brain fried,” he said. He had a splitting headache and a fever. The next morning, he was unable to take his English final and asked for an extension.
Luis was relieved when L.A. Unified School District announced just before the holidays that students would have until the end of January to bring up their failing grades. And he was able to turn in his college applications.
“My friends have asked if I will drop out,” said
Luis, who wants to study business and become a real estate agent. “But I can’t. I don’t want my parents to see me that way. I’ll be their first son to finish high school. I want to go to college and make them proud.”
Of all the horrendous moments from Jan. 6 that we witnessed during former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial — Sen. Mitt Romney being redirected to safety by U.S. Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman, former Vice President Mike Pence and his family evacuating a room near the Senate chamber where they’d been hiding, Rep. Jamie Raskin fighting tears as he recalled his daughter and son-in-law hiding under his desk, hours after they’d buried Raskin’s son — my mind keeps returning to one.
Rep. Susan Wild, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, was one of the lawmakers trapped in the House gallery as rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol building. On Day 2 of the trial, impeachment manager
Eric Swalwell introduced as evidence a photo of
Wild hiding on the ground below a row of seats, being comforted by Colorado Rep. Jason Crow.
Wild was on CNN on the night of Feb. 10, a few hours after seeing that photo, she said, for the first time.
“I’m pretty sure that picture was taken just after I got off the phone with my children, my adult children,” Wild told CNN host Chris Cuomo. “We had FaceTimed up in the gallery. And I remember after I hung up with them, feeling an extraordinary sense of panic and feeling as though my heart was beating outside my chest.”
She talked about weighing an excruciating set of options before that FaceTime call: Contact her kids, knowing it would terrify them to hear her in danger, or not contact her kids, and possibly never speak to them again.
Cuomo showed a tweet from Wild’s son, Clay Wild, which he sent at 1:51 p.m. on Jan. 6.
“My mom @RepSusanWild just called to say she loves us very much,” Clay Wild tweeted. “She sounds strong. Shots have been fired inside the Capitol and lots of screaming in background. Please, I’m begging, to anyone responsible, just help cool this chaos.”
More times than I can count, I have imagined getting a panicked text or call from one of my kids, trapped inside a classroom with a gunman on the loose. I don’t know a parent who hasn’t imagined that, every time another school shooting makes headlines.
Valentine’s Day marked
the three-year anniversary of a gunman with an AR-15 rifle bursting into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing 17 people and wounding 17 more.
It’s a day that forever shattered those 34 families, and sent waves of dread through the hearts of countless more.
I imagined for the first time my kids receiving such a call. I imagined Susan Wild’s kids’ terror and helplessness as they received their mom’s. I imagined myself in Wild’s shoes, knowing I’d also be
weighing which option would spare my children more anguish.
“It’s very, very difficult as a parent to ever think you have caused your children any distress,” Wild told Cuomo, “even beyond your own control.”
Each of us is experiencing this historic, horrific set of events — the insurrection, the impeachment — through our own lens. Some are tuning it out — though fewer than might be if a pandemic weren’t trapping so many of us inside our homes. Some are writing it off as political
theater. Some are writing it off as a lost cause.
And some are watching to better understand America in this moment. Politics in this moment. Humanity in this moment. What’s at stake in this moment. I count myself in this group.
I saw a mother’s anguish. I saw violence at the heart of that anguish. I felt a familiar dread rise up in my throat, but with a terrible, new twist.
I wonder what the senators tasked with judging a former president’s role in all of this saw. I wonder what, if anything, a majority
of them will decide is a bridge too far — a path that takes us too far from our values, too far from our promise, too far from our potential, too far from our humanity.
We’ll watch, and we’ll see.
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