Margarita Vera grew up in the inner city in Compton, Calif. In high school, she overheard a teacher tell a friend who dreamed of being an airplane pilot that there was no way he could be a pilot. Not a boy from the ghetto in Compton.

So when the dream to be a journalist arrived in Margarita’s imagination, she didn’t believe it could ever happen. Not for a girl from Compton.

Margarita tried one quarter of community college and dropped out after an English professor read her well-written paper and accused her of plagiarizing it. Margarita got married and had four children. She and her husband, born in Mexico and living in Compton, worked into a middle-class life. But they also drifted into too much alcohol, and when their marriage disintegrated, Margarita fled California with the four children, homeless and bereft, and found her way to St. Margaret’s Shelter in Spokane in June 2000 where I first met her in a writing workshop. She wrote like a dream.

One day in another workshop, Margarita met Darla Copeland Grose, an assistant prosecutor for the city of Spokane. Margarita told her that she dreamed one day of getting a college degree in journalism, but she knew it was impossible, because by the time she finished she would be 40.

Copeland Grose told her, “You’ll be 40 with or without a degree.” Margarita said, “Wow. That’s right.”

She enrolled in Spokane Falls Community College. One quarter led to another, and she earned her associate’s degree. She then enrolled at Eastern Washington University. She remained sober day-by-day, as did her husband, and they reconciled and bought a house on Spokane’s North Side. His mobile truck repair business is thriving, as are their children, now ages 11 to 16.

The family is solidly middle-class again, but Margarita never forgot her struggles.

Her EWU journalism professor, Bill Stimson, remembers the day in class when students interviewed each other about places they once lived. Margarita’s said “How about a car with my family?”

Stimson said, “She was always willing to bring those kinds of experiences to classroom discussions, and it certainly helped college students learn about the wider world.”

Margarita spent a month this summer in Spain studying the language. She grew up with Mexican immigrant parents who encouraged her strong work ethic and planted the language she’s now fluent in. Margarita walked around in Spain, as if in a dream. The girl from Compton once thought she’d never travel farther than Pasadena.

A week ago, Margarita took her last exam in her last journalism class, Media Law and Ethics. She now has her bachelor’s degree in journalism.

Over coffee and tea Wednesday, Margarita and I savored her success story. Some days, Margarita told me, she felt overwhelmed and frightened. She listened to the words internalized from long ago. You can’t be a journalist. Not a girl from the ghetto in Compton. She shook the emotional paralysis by forcing her “feet to report to the carpet” as she puts it.

I’ve been telling Margarita’s story to people all week. They get goose bumps. And Copeland Grose reached for her hankie.

Margarita will turn 40 next year. She chose to become a 40-year-old woman with a degree in journalism, rather than a 40-year-old woman without one. “I reached for the moon,” she said. “I got there. Am I proud? Yeah.”

Many folks are proud of you today, Margarita. Your husband and children. Those of us who met you at St. Margaret’s, your professors at SFCC and EWU who might never have known of your struggles had you not used them as teaching moments.

Congratulations, and break out those hankies.