Stories

“As I chose my class schedule for my last semester of UCLA Law School, I couldn’t help but reflect on all of my experiences over the years and those who have helped me get to where I am today. The If Given A Chance Award provided me with support for 8 years, during the most financially challenging years of my life. Being a first-generation college student with a parent that is unable to assist me financially forced me to do two things: take on part-time jobs and seek outside funding in order to cover costs that financial aid will not. It is difficult to be at an institution where financial hardships are faced by only a few students and where many are privileged in the sense that the only stresses they face are academic. If Given A Chance helped lessen my stresses, and I thank both the Board and the many donors for all they have done to assist me over the years.”

The road has been long. Angeles graduated from Vintage High School in 2000 and from UC Berkeley in 2004. She obtained two Bachelor’s degrees in Political Science and Chicana/o Studies. She spent a year studying in Barcelona, two summers doing labor organizing and research, and a summer at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy at Princeton University. She graduated from Berkeley in 2004 and her father passed away seven months later, during her first semester of law school. She withdrew from school, returned to Napa and worked for the Education as a Second Language Program at the Napa Valley College while assisting her mother financially. She returned to law school as a member of both the Public Interest Law and Policy Program and Critical Race Studies Programs and became Co-Chair of the La Raza Law Students Association as well as the Pacific Region Coordinator for the National Latina/o Law Student’s Association.

Angeles volunteered to assist a homeless Hurricane Katrina Victim for a semester helping her obtain almost $80,000 more in aid, and recently completed a Clerkship with the Public Defender’s Office of Los Angeles County. Her goal was to eventually make her way back up to the Bay Area since, with her mother’s diagnosis of breast cancer, she realized how important it is for her to go back home. Her immediate post-law school plans were to work for the Public Defender’s Office and to eventually serve the criminal defense and education needs of both detained, and recently released youth through representation and advocacy. In 2013, she was appointed Deputy Alternate Public Defender in Los Angeles representing youth in the juvenile justice system and still serves in that role.