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.