Alex stands at the school gate daily, greeting entering students with both authority and gentleness. “Good morning, Mr. Alex,” children chirp, or “Good morning, Security.” He smiles as he offers high-fives or fist bumps, scanning the parade of incoming students for unwashed faces, forgotten backpacks, and more importantly, signs of distress or anger.
Providing security for a school with over 1,000 children isn’t easy. Problems range from escaping first graders to food fights in the cafeteria or fist fights at recess. His task, Alex says, “is to be everywhere and see everything.”
As a school security guard, Alex has come full circle.
Born in Fresno, he moved to Michoacán, Mexico as an infant. He returned to the U.S. at age 6, speaking no English and thrust into a school system for which he was unprepared. A year later, he began working alongside his father in the fields outside of Fresno, pruning grapes, helping with irrigation, and picking crops. He remembers riding on the tractor with his dad, a cloud of hot dust in their wake.
When not in the fields, he helped his mother clean a doctor’s office. School was low on his list of priorities. Floundering in ESL classes, constantly exhausted, and branded as a troublemaker, he had already been told by teachers he wouldn’t amount to anything.
Alex’s father died when he was 12 years old. Feeling the weight of the family’s need, he set his grief aside, lied about his age, and spent the summer hoeing and picking cotton, earning his own paycheck rather than helping meet his parents’ quota. Field days began before dawn and ended at noon when temperatures rose above 100°. Rushing home to shower and eat, he then joined his mom at her cleaning job. At the end of the summer, he bought back-to-school clothing for his younger siblings and himself. “Those were the first nice clothes I ever had,” he remembers.
“I’d never had name brand clothing before.”
In high school, he added football to his already overwhelming schedule. By this time his job at the doctor’s office included taking people’s blood pressure, running insurance paperwork, and even driving the doctor’s Mercedes to the bank to make deposits, all after a morning of picking cotton.
“I hated the summer because I knew how much work I would have to do. The only thing I hated more was having to go to summer school, because I knew I wouldn’t make any money.”
Alex dreamed of a brighter future. A trip to San Diego had shown him a larger world, and he wanted to leave Fresno.
He added AVID and AP classes to his academic load. He applied to several colleges, but pinned his hopes on San Diego State.
It was the only one to which he was not accepted. Alex was crushed.
His AVID teacher pulled him aside and reminded him that it wasn’t the end of the world, that he wasn’t going to spend his life working at Tomatec, the local tomato packing plant. “You’re meant to prove people wrong,” he was told.
Still disillusioned, Alex headed down to San Diego, with $250 in his pocket and a self-imposed deadline of one month to get established. He pounded the pavement, handing out resumes to restaurants and taquerias. He had one goal in mind: to never go without, ever again.
Soon he found himself working as a special education aide for emotionally disturbed children. “At first, that job kicked my butt every day. They were hard kids. Everything was new to me. I couldn’t predict their behaviors. I was so young, and I hadn’t learned to turn my own life experience outward yet.”
His next job was in a residential facility. “I worked with suicidal kids, kids in detox, kids with addictions.” It was here Alex realized that he had not only a gift but a desire to work with children in need. “I look for kids that are hurting. I recognize the holes in kids.”
Alex currently brings that gift to the school where he now works, as well as to his second job teaching life skills to foster children. He’s willing to put in 16-hour days, knowing that he makes a better future not only for himself, but for others. His experiences give him an almost eerie insight into who needs an extra smile, who is on a ledge, who bristles with anger. He is strong and fast enough to break up fights, but can soften his voice for a distraught child, reminding them, “Take it day by day. Push through.”
Alex downplays the impact he has, seeing his job more as quality assurance. “If we can avoid situations, I did my job for the day. I go home happy.” To the children he meets, however, he is much more. He is security.
