Saratoga News

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Trujillo turns her life around with move to Saratoga

By Michele Tjin

On the road of life, there can be detours and dead ends. Lynnea Trujillo was once headed on a path with no clearly marked destination. But she has since steered her life onto another route that will guarantee her an education and a future.

By most standards, the Saratoga High School senior didn't have the happiest childhood. Her father, a longshoreman, was absent from family life and didn't keep up with child support payments, while her mother was a drug user on welfare. Lynnea and her two siblings were later put in the care of child protective services in San Diego County. Other than perhaps joining the army, Lynnea didn't dare to think she had a future. Her lifeline was her aunt and uncle in Saratoga.

"I wanted to change," said Lynnea, 17. "I wanted to have better opportunities. It would take a lot of hard work, and I thought I could do it."

In middle school, Lynnea made the decision to move to Saratoga to live with her aunt and uncle, joining her older sister Lyssa, who had already made the move north. Lynnea's twin brother, Colwyn, chose not to join his sisters.

"They needed somebody, and we were willing," said Lynnea's aunt Mary Paraskevopoulos. "It was a difficult decision to make. We prayed about it and made the decision for the girls' best interest."

But the transition to a new environment wasn't easy on Lynnea, who had a lot of self-doubt. In middle school, she carried the weariness of a 30-year-old instead of the effervescence of a teenager, she said. Her slang vocabulary from Southern California sounded foreign to her peers in Saratoga. She had little trust for adults, talked back to teachers and didn't make life easy on her new foster parents. School was not one of her priorities.

"Two years ago, we had given up completely on academics," said her uncle, Demetris Paraskevopoulos. "Both my wife and I are very strong proponents of education, but we decided there were so many challenges, and you have to choose your battles. We had to work with Lynnea on other objectives, like making it in life and surviving."

Slowly but surely Lynnea's attitude toward academics took a major turn for the better. At the end of her sophomore year, she began to consider college as a possibility, and she gives Paul Diaz, a former boyfriend, credit for her attitude adjustment.

"He was a good influence on me," Lynnea said. "He was talking about college, and I thought, 'Maybe I can go to college. I might have a future.' "

Diaz doesn't remember exactly when that transformation took place, but he is proud of Lynnea's change in thinking.

"We would talk about my future, and at the time, I wanted to go into business and sell things," said Diaz, who just finished his first year of college. "I had a plan for myself. Lynnea didn't have a plan and that may have triggered and motivated her to start thinking."

But it wouldn't be enough just to think differently about her future. Lynnea and her family faced another hurdle in her junior year. Doctors diagnosed her with Graves disease, a serious thyroid disorder that explained her fidgety behavior. To save her life, doctors prescribed a treatment of radioactive iodine. During the treatment, her meals were handed to her with plastic gloves, and her trash had to be stored for two weeks before it could be thrown out.

She was kept in seclusion. Boredom rated high, and meals consisted of shredded wheat and Jell-O. It may have been a bland existence during those lonely days, but the experience added fuel to her determination to change.

"Knowing that I might die made it so much easier to appreciate what I have," she said. "I'm here now. I'm not going to waste away."

The second half of Lynnea's high school career was marked by a great change. She traded her Ds for As and Bs, and school guidance counselors took notice of her significant gain. They nominated her to receive a Turnaround Scholarship from the Los Gatos Kiwanis Club. She accepted the award this spring.

Lynnea knows that her life story makes her very different from other students at school, and her experiences have made her into an old soul of sorts. She is often the voice of reason among her friends.

"I can really read people," she said. "I can understand and see things most people my age can't."

While Lynnea was once a depressed child who took little joy in her achievements, her outlook is now much brighter. She is an avid reader and tireless fiction writer. She enjoys pondering trick questions in physics with her uncle. Best of all, she will attend San Jose State University in the fall with plans to study forensic science and criminology. She feels she has a responsibility to catch the bad guys, and it's her way to give back to the community, she said.

These days, she no longer sasses to teachers.

"I found an easier way to get my point across," she said. "I can be more mature and well thought-out without being confrontational."

Lynnea's positive perspective can also be attributed to her upcoming summer. In July, she'll turn 18 and graduate from the foster care system. Simple things that other 18-year-olds in Saratoga take for granted will be a reality. Once she is emancipated, she will be able to get her driver's license, stay over at a friend's house if she wants to and travel outside of the state. Currently, the family must bring all requests for any long-distance trip to Lynnea's social worker in San Diego a month prior to the trip, and the San Diego Superior Court must approve the request.

"There are no impromptu trips that we go on," Lynnea said.

While her living situation with her relatives was not without its share of growing pains, Lynnea said it's the best thing that could have happened to her, and her supporters agree. Her aunt and uncle resonate with pride when they consider how far Lynnea has come.

"In the past, she was very mischievous, and she could outsmart adults. She would make up stories, and they would believe," said her uncle. "On the other side, she is a brave person, as a child and a young person. She is willing to change. It has been very difficult for her and very difficult for us. But she has progressed tremendously."