Angel Villeraldo

Angel Villeraldo spent his childhood living in the City of East Los Angeles—a tight-knit,
majority-Mexican community. Having grown up in East LA his entire life, he didn’t think much of its
cultural richness until his freshman year of high school when he started attending Garfield High
School.

In a 9th Grade Latinx Studies/Ethnic Studies class with Mr. Garcia, Angel gained more context about his
community and his high school—learning that it was the site for award-winning films “Stand and
Deliver” and “Walk Out.” Through these films, he learned about the various activists—students and
educators—who created meaningful change within his school community, a place once known for
gang violence and poor educational outcomes. This sparked something within him: a sense of pride
within the East LA community and a dream of being able to contribute to its legacy.

Reflecting on his time in high school, he thinks fondly about his guidance counselors—especially Ms.
Lopez, someone who put a lot of effort into facilitating a college-going culture throughout the school
through her work at the college center. Working hard throughout high school, Angel was set to be
salutatorian of his graduating class and he knew that attending a 4-year-college was within his reach.
However, he had a dream of attending Stanford—it’s this reason that he initially sought extracurricular
college advising programs and joined the Circle Match community.

In January of his junior year of high school, Angel joined Garfield High School’s inaugural Circle Match
cohort. Through the program, he was paired with two advisors—Angelica Garcia and Ozzy
Cabrales—who were current college students and Garfield High School Alumni. Earlier in high school,
Angel remembered seeing Angelica and Ozzy advocate for college access during a presentation at
Garfield and he found a lot of inspiration through their continued interest in college access despite
being current students at UC Berkeley and Yale, respectively.

Through his advisors’ concentrated support, Angel found out that some universities offer fly-in
programs that offered students like him the opportunity to visit college campuses in parts of the
country that he’d never been to. Through applying to programs like these, Angel was able to visit the
Northeast to see Swarthmore and Olin College and the Midwest, where he visited Case Western and
Washington University in St. Louis. All of these opportunities were of no cost to him, and they gave him
the confidence to know that he was a competitive applicant to some of the most selective universities
in the county.

On the Friday leading into Winter Break, Angel remembers sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for his
Mom to come back from work. At 4:30 pm Stanford decisions were set to be released. Frantically
refreshing the application portal, he dreamed of being admitted to the school that he’d worked so
hard to be accepted to.

Then, he saw it: confetti. He’d gotten into Stanford; he screamed, hugging his mom and showing the
computer screen to his younger sister. Sharing the news with his advisors—Angelica and Ozzy—they
were just as proud.

At Stanford, Angel shares that he’s grown a lot and has matured a lot, but his goals of being able to
provide for his own family and eventually have a family of his own haven’t changed much; it’s just his
career path that has changed, pursuing mechanical engineering instead of his initial intended major
which was aerospace engineering. He’s also continued his goal of contributing to the legacy of the East
LA community, serving as a Circle Match advisor where he hopes to have a similar impact on students
from his community as Angelica and Ozzy had on him.

As an advisor, Angel remarks that his favorite part about the Circle Match community is how tight-knit
it is. He looks forward to hometowns—an event every May where students and their advisors meet and
discuss the context in which they’ve grown up. He’s found that every year he returns to the idea that
though he and his students may have different lived experiences, growing up in the East LA community
unites them and has given them a lens for which they can understand one another.

After college, Angel plans on continuing to give back to the East LA community. Finding personal
fulfillment by helping others and doing what is right, he wants to continue making a difference in his
community by mentoring more students. He hopes to share with them the importance of not just
taking advantage of the resources available to them from their high school community but also
venturing out to find resources and community outside of their immediate surroundings. However,
once all is said and done, it’s important that they come back to serve their own community, just like
Angel.