Student Spotlight: HRVHS’ Jazmin Contreras overcomes challenges along path to graduation

Her accomplishments are many: She started speech and debate as a freshman and this spring placed first at the state speech and debate tournament this year with a speech on Brazilian butt lifts; she was lead singer of Banda Diamante, playing gigs both in and out of town, as an eighth grader; she has been in numerous school musicals, including two leads in this winter’s musical “Theory of Relativity;” and will end her high school career with a cumulative GPA of 3.85, taking advanced and honors classes.

In addition to her full ride scholarship, she received two local scholarships, the Hood River County Education Foundation Earl C. Koberg Scholarship and Susan Kay McCarthy Scholarship, and two more from the Pride Foundation in Portland.

But what’s remarkable about her story is that there was a time when she wasn’t sure she’d graduate at all. “I was at a point where I was two seconds away from dropping out,” she said. “A 4.0 kid at risk for not graduating.”

Born in Kennewick, Wash., Contreras was raised in Pasco and moved to Hood River with her family in 2011 — during the Great Recession. “My parents are undocumented,” she said. “And we needed to move. We had friends here, and they said there’s a lot of jobs. So we moved here.”

They lived in Odell until about two years ago, when they moved to Hood River. Halfway through her freshman year of high school, things began to go downhill.

“My dad got arrested by ICE,” she said. “All of that legal stuff was still happening through the pandemic.”

Because of COVID and the government shutdown, her father was able to be at home — but the eminent threat of deportation hung over them all. “They kept extending the date by two or three months. It was suspenseful and we were obviously terrified,” she said. “At that point, we were living in Odell in farm workers housing. The last day of my freshman year, I walk into my house and my parents are like, ‘So we have to move, and we have to move fast.’ We were told we had to move because of the whole legal situation with my dad.

“So we had to uproot our entire life in the span of three weeks. And we did. That’s how we ended up moving to Hood River,” Contreras said.

Rent was expensive, so she began working to help support her family — she worked all summer, only taking a break to be part of the musical “Newsies,” though three days before it closed, she’d started a new job.

She was also helping her parents with the legal ramifications of her father’s arrest.

“It was really hard — even before then, it was hard because I was working two jobs,” Contreras said. “I would pick cherries from 3-9 a.m.-ish, and then from 11 to 3, I would go do housecleaning at a B&B, and then from there, I had an online internship with Six Rivers Dispute Resolution Center. So in the midst of all this chaos, my grandfather passes.”

The enormity of her situation had caught up with her, and she became extremely depressed. “I was having to be really responsible, helping my parents with bills — when you’re a first-generation kid, you do the transactions, you get the taxes done. I do everything,” she said. “That was the year I kind of backed off from everything — a point in time where I was like, I could just drop out. My junior year finished and I’d done the bare minimum — I went from honors AP classes to doing the bare minimum.”

Contreras thought about getting her GED and going to college early, but stuck it out. “Going to therapy and the gym helped me get on track,” she said. “Meditation, weightlifting and therapy — I decided to stay in school.”

Coming to school in the fall of 2021 for her senior year, she knew she was a different person, but decided to “hit the ground running. I took four AP classes and I get a 4.0 that first trimester.” She tried to be active in speech and debate, but there weren’t many opportunities due to COVID, and now she was walking into a new team with a new coach.

“I’m the only minority on the team and I genuinely don’t feel comfortable,” she said. She decided to audition for “Theory of Relativity” and was double cast as a lead.

“That was rough,” she said. “I was taking four AP classes, working at Doppio on the weekends and doing the show.” It was also difficult because, due to COVID outbreaks, the cast wasn’t sure the musical would even get off the ground.

“Somehow, we pulled that show together — people were going down like flies with COVID, and we had a bunch of new kids who had never been on a production with Krum (Rachel Harry, theater teacher),” she said. “And having to adapt to a new trimester schedule as well.”

But pull it off they did, “and the show was great,” she said. “Everything started calming down after that.”

Contreras decided to go back into speech and debate, even though there weren’t any in-person tournaments aside from the state competition at Western Oregon University in Monmouth. Even though she would have all of two weeks to prepare. And all of the events she would normally pick were already full.

Kaelen Kenna, the only other senior on the team, gave Contreras her Radio spot. “She’s the radio queen on our team, quite literally the radio God — she’s been super successful since her freshman year. I said, ‘Are you sure you don’t want to compete your senior year?’ and she said, ‘Yes, I’m sure, you can have it.’” Not having anything prepared, Contreras took two of her Writing 121/122 essays and made them into speeches.

“My Informative (speech), I didn’t get to memorize, so I was the only kid reading off the paper. It was very humbling,” she said. “But I shined in Radio. The only other time I had done Radio, I sucked so bad that I got last in the junior division as a sophomore.”

And her speech — yes, on Brazilian butt lifts — won her first place. The win was an unexpected one; she thought that she’d be lucky to make semi-finals. It was so unexpected, getting to the finals, that she almost missed it — she had been taking a team photo and had to race three blocks to the meeting place, not to mention having trouble finding the room. Her laptop also wasn’t functioning, as the WOU outlets had blown.

Contreras made it on time — out of breath from all the running around to locate the venue. “I did my speech, and that felt great,” she said. “Just getting here is already an accomplishment, already in the top seven in the state, getting here. But there’s no way (I thought) I’m going to get anything over third.”

Since they read the names of winners in backwards order, she knew that she had, in fact, made it to third place. “And I’m like, ‘Okay, I guess this is happening, top three, cool.’ And then they announce me for first place. You’re telling me that I won in Radio of all things, talking about Brazilian butt lifts?”

It was an emotional win, made even better when she realized the team as a whole has won the 5A Championship.

“It felt like a fever dream,” she said.

Looking forward to college, Contreras plans to major in chemistry; she will also participate in speech and debate.

“I want to do pharmaceutical research in chemistry in the future, and I’ll need at least a masters for the level I want to be at,” she said. “Basically, you invent new medications, do all the research and the cool lab-y things and that’s what I want to do. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve enjoyed creating things.”

Her parents’ health issues — diabetes for her mom, a cancer scare with her dad — has inspired her path. “I feel I would do well in that environment,” she said. “I feel like I could have some positive impact in that field to help other people in our shoes.”

In her free time, she likes to sing (she taught herself how to play the guitar and ukulele) and post videos to social media. She also enjoys painting and describes herself as a math nerd.

One takeaway from her experience, she said, is that she’s learned that you don’t have to be perfect to succeed.

“One thing I dislike about education here at this high school is that it’s so intense in every single way — everyone is trying to be better and smarter, and a lot of us don’t take time to focus on ourselves or have fun,” she said. “That’s something I learned through my years here: It’s okay to not be perfect, to not have a 4.0; I’m fine. I’m going to a good school with a full ride.”

She’s also had grapple with what it means to be a minority in a mostly white school district. She began in the AVID program in seventh grade at Wy’east but found it didn’t work for her. “It’s meant for cookie cutter students and that’s not what I wanted to be,” she said.

“Being a first-generation student, but participating in primarily white spaces, I had to learn to balance both worlds,” Contreras said. “It was hard because I lost my identity as a Latina at times.”