Just Like Us: The True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America

The author goes to Roosevelt High School to spend the day with Yadira. The week before, Clara found out that she had won a Daniels Fund scholarship and could go to any college she is accepted to. Yadira realizes that she would have won too, if she had been eligible, as her grades were higher than those of Clara. To Yadira, “[i]t was like living through what might have been” (59). Yadira has been accepted into Colorado College, but she has to find the money. She has a partial scholarship that she was able to get with the help of Irene and Justino Chavez, who helped Yadira tell her story to a reporter from the Denver Post. The reporter advocated for the DREAM (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors) Act, which had been introduced by Senators Orrin Hatch and Richard Durbin and that would have allowed students of undocumented parents who graduate from a US high school to have a path to citizenship. However, Hatch faced opposition from conservatives from his own party.

A Denver Post reader named Cynthia Poundstone could not get Yadira’s story out of her mind, and she tried to raise the money for Yadira to attend her alma mater, Whittier College, in California.