Elizabeth Figueroa overcomes obstacles to excel at Gonzaga Prep

Sometimes Elizabeth Figueroa felt like she didn’t belong at Gonzaga Prep, even though she did well in all her classes and was a member of the debate team.

She’d look back at her childhood, which included several missed years of school and at times being homeless and sleeping on the floor of her father’s tailoring shop, and feel like she shouldn’t be there.

“It’s like I skipped a ton,” she said. “But I look at everything I did. I have potential, and people believe in me. Everything I did, it surprised me. I didn’t think it would be possible.”

Her parents moved to Spokane from California when she was 1 year old. She attended St. Aloysius Catholic School through the second grade and then attended Trinity Catholic School. Then she was pulled out of school to be homeschooled. “My dad wanted me to skip a grade and (my mom) refused,” she said.

But her parents struggled to make their business work and kept going in and out of homelessness. “It happened multiple times,” she said. “It was just a cycle. It was really scary as a kid.”

Meanwhile, she and her older sister and two younger brothers were not being homeschooled. “Financial burdens got in the way of actually teaching us,” she said. “We were cooped up for four to five years under the name of home school.”

When a friend started talking about going to high school, Figueroa started thinking. She didn’t want to continue a family cycle of poverty and struggle. “I really believe education will get me that power to change my life,” she said.

Her mother heard about Gonzaga Prep and pushed her daughter to attend. Figueroa was far behind where she needed to be. She didn’t even know how to multiply fractions. But she was willing to work hard to get to the school where she thought she needed to be.

“That summer before high school I was studying hard and trying to make up for what I lost,” she said.

She arrived as a quiet and shy freshman but ended up liking the school and the teachers. “I was really attracted to how much the teachers cared about the students,” she said. “I really saw how good people could be.”

Her parents divorced a couple of years ago, and Figueroa now lives with her mother and hasn’t spoken to her father since the divorce. “It’s much more stable,” she said.

Despite her lack of formal education for several years, Figueroa excelled when she arrived at Gonzaga Prep. She began signing up for Advanced Placement classes in her sophomore year. She found the workload challenging.

“When I first took AP World History it was a whole new ball game,” she said. “It was a shock in the beginning, but eventually you want to challenge yourself more.”

MacLean Andrews was Figueroa’s debate coach for three years beginning in her freshman year.

“She is, first, one of the nicest people I’ve ever met,” he said. “She came in really quiet, but she became a very passionate advocate. I think she’s able to see things from different perspectives.”

Andrews said Figueroa now is an accomplished public speaker and is passionate about her education.

“She has this quiet confidence about her that can take people by surprise,” Andrews said.

Figueroa received an Act Six scholarship that provides full tuition to Gonzaga University. She said she wants to study premedicine and become a doctor because she wants to make sure that everyone who needs health care gets it.

“I remember when I was injured, my parents couldn’t afford to take me,” she said.

Andrews said he encouraged her to apply for the scholarship, but she was hesitant because she thought other people were more worthy than she is.

“She ended up getting the scholarship,” he said. “I knew all along she probably would.”