FELLSMERE — “I will be Dr. Zamora.” This confident declaration rang out from the stage at the Youth of the Year celebration held earlier this year by the Boys & Girls Clubs of Indian River County.
It came from Cristian Zamora, the son of Mexican immigrants who spent years working in the hot sun, picking fruit or mowing grass, to scrape a modest living in Florida.
“It was hard to see a life outside the one I was raised in,” Zamora said. But now he does.
Zamora, a senior at Sebastian River High School and member of the Fellsmere Boys & Girls Club, won the organization’s Youth of the Year prize.
That gives him a two-year scholarship to Indian River State College, a second scholarship to cover his textbooks, a $100 gift card and a Kindle tablet.
It’s a huge leg up for an 18-year-old who some time ago adopted the “mindset” that he would drive himself to attend college and become a physician.
Zamora said the key to that drive came in part from “hanging with the right people, the ones that wanted something in the future – college.”
“Thank God – and my parents – that I did turn out to be a good person,” he said. But “if you put a good kid with mean, rude, don’t-care-about-anything people, sooner or later they are going to be the same way.”
He had the will to succeed, for sure.
Just look at his recent packed schedule: He’s been a member of his school’s cross-country, track and lacrosse teams, the yearbook committee, a future business leader’s group, the Navy Junior Reserve Officer’s Training Corps, Our Lady of Guadalupe Church and more.
He works 15 hours a week at Treasure Coast Community Health Clinic, handling calls, scheduling appointments and learning about health care from the ground level.
Plus he goes to the Boys & Girls Club several times a week, helping the youth with homework, arts and crafts, and volunteering in the teen room.
For all of that, he didn’t know how to pull off the cost of a university education.
Now he’s got two years paid and a start on that schooling.
“I can start saving for what’s coming up,” he said. “All I needed was a pick-me-up.”
Angela Astrup, speaking for the Boys & Girls Clubs, said the organization looks at many facets when deciding who is best qualified as youth of the year: service to home and family, moral character, community service, school leadership and service, academic performance, service to the club and life goals.
“Cristian has excelled in each of these areas, and for someone so young, he has a clear vision of what he wants to accomplish,” she said. “We are here to help him realize his dreams.”
Cheyanne Brown, an 8th Grader at Gifford Middle School and member of the Vero Beach club, was the other nominee for the prize and, like Zamora, received a Kindle.
The locally selected Youth of the Year goes to the state competition, and five regional winners will each receive a $10,000 scholarship and compete at the national level, for an additional $50,000 scholarship.
Zamora said his parents left school in 8th grade to help put food on the table, taking menial jobs.
They’ve not been left out of the American Dream: His dad is working his way up in his construction job to crane operator and his mom does billing at the health center.
But he sees anther future for them and his two sisters, as well as for himself, which he laid out in his remarks at the celebration.
“My dream is to become a doctor,” he said. “I plan to attend college and medical school, open my own practice, and have my whole family work alongside me. Mom will be the receptionist, my dad will be the maintenance director, and my sisters will be the nurses. We could have our own family sitcom!
“I will be Dr. Zamora,” he said, “seeing my patients walk out the door with a smile of relief. I look forward to giving back to the community that has given so much to me.”
Zamora said it was eye-opening when, in the 10th grade, an older friend from Mexico packed up and headed off to university.
Until then, he said, “my friends certainly didn’t have college on their minds, and no one in my family ever attempted it.”
But his college-bound buddy got him thinking.
“He told me he stopped listening to critics and their low expectations and dared to dream big. He was doing great at school, and told me that if he could do it, I certainly could too. I thought of what my father has always told me: ‘If you want to reach a goal or a place of joy, you just need to see yourself in it.’
“I wanted more for myself and my future than what I was brought up in, and I became inspired to try.”
And he found an anchor at the Boys & Girls Club, where “it’s like coming home. Someone is rooting for you.”
There, he found help with homework, computers and then college and scholarship applications.
“I wasn’t at all prepared for what the club would eventually mean to me,” he said. “It’s not just a building; it’s a family.”
The three clubs in the local organization – in Vero Beach, Sebastian and Fellsmere – serve 1,500 children. Last summer, 600 kids attended all or part of the group’s 10-week summer camp.
Plans are afoot to expand the Vero Beach facility to an adjacent property to make room for more outdoor play space.
Staff Writer Mary Schenkel contributed to this report.