EVAN GRAHAM

For the North County Times

SAN MARCOS -- This fall, Claudia Arellano will do something that no one else in her family has done. She will attend a university.

"It's a pretty big deal, since I belong to a really big family," Arellano, 18, said modestly last week during an interview.

At least part of her accomplishment can be attributed to the Cox Kids Foundation, a program subsidized by Cox Communications and its employees.

Arellano, a recent graduate of San Marcos High School, is one of 23 recipients this year of the Cox Heroes Scholarship, given to graduating high school students based on financial need, community service and "personal perseverance."

"We look for students who can land on their feet," said Shelita Weinfield, government and community relations representative for Cox Communications.

"We had over 200 students apply, but we were very impressed with Claudia," Weinfield said. "She spoke a lot about her mother's impact on her life and how she wanted to give back by becoming the first in her family to attend a university. That was exactly the kind of attitude we were looking for."

Arellano said her mother, Modesta, 40, sacrificed a lot for the family. Arellano is the oldest of five children.

"She did everything she could to give us food, clothes and shelter, even if it meant spending less time with friends," or moving in with her in-laws, Arellano said.

"She could have forgotten about it all," Arellano said. "She could have gone back to Mexico to be with her parents, but she stayed because she wanted her children to have things she didn't have, like education."

As a tribute to her mother's sacrifice, Arellano aspired to break the family "tradition" and go to college.

But, she said, that aspiration wasn't easily accepted by her father Arnulso, 40.

Arellano said her family is governed by the Latino tradition of "machismo," wherein the father exerts absolute control over the family.

"He would go on power trips," she said. "He gave me a really hard time about it at first, but he's coming around now."

Arellano has tried to involve her father any way she can in her college plans, including taking him along to registration and orientation exercises "so he can see first-hand that college is worth it."

The community service that helped Arellano get her scholarship included her involvement with Imagine San Marcos, an umbrella program for establishing the Panorama Family and Teen Resource Center. With other teens in the group, Arellano held fund-raisers and lobbied at City Council meetings to make the center a reality.

The center is expected to open in September.

Even though there are many community programs in the area, Arellano specifically chose Imagine San Marcos because it is run by teen-agers, not adults.

"We actually have a say in what is going on, instead of just doing as we are told," she said.

She also has been involved with a group called Providing Leverage for Educational Achievement, a peer-mentor program, through her high school, and Sueño del Futuro, a children's abstinence education program through North County Health Services.

Arellano plans to use her $2,500 scholarship to pursue a psychology degree at the University of San Diego, a private, Catholic-run school.

She chose USD primarily for its student-teacher ratio, and with enrollment at roughly 7,000, she said she won't be "just another face in the crowd."

She said she chose psychology because she is "fascinated by the mind and the way it works," and because she wants to become a high school counselor. She eventually wants to get her doctorate in psychology.

"I want to help high school students get their lives together and do something with their lives like I did," she said.

Arellano is inspired by her counselor at San Marcos High, who she said has "opened my mind to different things" by encouraging her to become involved with AVID, or Advance Via Individual Determination. AVID students receive course credit for readying themselves for college.

Through AVID, Arellano toured various colleges and universities in the area and applied for various scholarships, including the Cox scholarship.

Aside from Cox Heroes, Arellano has received scholarships from the American Businesswoman's Association and BECA, a Latino scholarship fund.

9/3/01