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Speaker 1: Jaime Mercado spoke no English whatsoever when he arrived in California at age 11. He dropped out of high school to help support his family, but low-paying jobs were a dead end. He found the motivation and opportunities he needed in adult education.

Jaime Mercado: My dad is from Arizona, but my mother is from Guadalajara, and the families are going back and forth. So we actually came here in 1955 when I was 11 years old, and spoke no English whatsoever, and was raised in San Ysidro. I went through the school, the elementary school there, and some of the Sweetwater schools. My dad had one of the-- he was a laborer, and he found it difficult to keep abreast of the financial conditions of the family.

And so at some point in time, being 18 years old, I felt an obligation to sort of help out the family, and I dropped out of school. I was out washing dishes. I was washing cars. I was working in the fields, and found that that kind of work was not helping me and certainly not helping the family in any way.

And I saw absolutely no future. It seemed very, very dark for me, and I thought the only way out is to go back to school and get an education. So I went back to adult school.

My goals were-- actually, I didn't have any goals. All I knew is that I was desperate to get out of the situation which I was in, and I had the good fortune of meeting Mr. Burke Mills, who was the English teacher at that time in the adult school, in Mar Vista Adult School. And he was the one that motivated me, that encouraged me, that provided me the environment that I needed to first, believe in myself, and secondly, to actualize my potential.

And one of the things that he had said to me, and I still remember, he said, you will do anything you want to do if you work at it. You have the ability to do that, and I will help you in any way I can. And he did.

I was so motivated by his words and by his actions, that I finished the 11th and 12th grade in six months. It was something that I had to do because somebody else believed in me. He had a way, and he still has a way, of bringing out from within you that which propels you after he's gone and after he's no longer on you to continue in your path of success.

Burke Mills: Jaime sort of was a drop out from high school. He was having trouble with high school. And I was just talking to him one day. I had a special program, like civics and literature and all that, where the guys can come in and get their credits.

And Jaime just was a plugger. Did very well. And he lifted himself out of the status of just being one of the boys into, I'm going to go someplace.

Jaime Mercado: Teaching was the farthest thing from my mind, but when I felt that he had had such an impact in my life, I thought, this is one of the things I want to do with my life. I want to-- I want to go into teaching and hand create an impact on some of the kids' lives as he created in mine. I started in education in the Head Start program, and I found it as rewarding as I thought it would be. Then I became, obviously, a teacher, and I was a teacher at Southwest Junior High School, by the way, where I was a student.

I went back to Southwest Junior High School as an assistant principal, and then oddly enough, I went back to Mar Vista High School where I dropped out of and became the principal. And I still had three teachers who had been my teachers at the time when I was a student there. And one of them who was also teaching there was Mr. Mills.

Burke Mills: And he had maneuvered all the way through this life from being a homeboy, or a boy about some caliber of the area, and not being the student, more or less, just being somebody who wanders around but finally gets it all together and comes back and says-- and is living proof that anybody, if they want to put their own empire to work and do something, achieve something, you can do it through adult education.

Rudy Kastelic: To see him succeed is a charge for me. That's my natural charge.

Jaime Mercado: I have no particular super skills. As someone would say, well, but you did it because-- you do it because you have an interest. You do it because you put the work into it, and you persevere. And if I did it, anybody else can do it. And people continue to do it.