Red Bank High School valedictorian Leslie Tomas plays with her year-old son, Iker Perez, at their home.Leslie Tomas spoke no English when she started kindergarten. The daughter of Guatemalan immigrants says only Spanish was ever spoken in their home because her parents didn't know English either.
In class, her tears would flow.
"I would cry from the frustration," she recalls. "As I grew up, I understood more words with the help of English as a Second Language and because a teenage neighbor began teaching me English after school in first grade."
Tomas, who once couldn't understand a word her teacher said, graduated last week as valedictorian of Red Bank High School.
Not only was she top scholar, she got there scoring As in honors and Advanced Placement courses. Add to that the fact that she is also a teen mother, having given birth to a son during her junior year in high school.
"Leslie is not just a smart girl, she is a hard worker," says Sarah Penagos, senior guidance counselor at Red Bank High. "She is unwilling to allow excuses. She doesn't hide behind struggles, she overcomes them."
Penagos says Tomas never let her grades drop and managed to make all As in AP English while homebound with her newborn.
"She was out at least six weeks after delivering her baby and not once did she get behind," the counselor says. "She never complained, no negativity. That's Leslie - just quietly and diligently going about excellence."
Tomas says she was born in the United States, but her parents are illegal immigrants from Guatemala. She is the first in her family who will go to college and is planning to major in engineering at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. While she expects to receive the HOPE Scholarship - which pays up to $1,750 per semester for freshmen and sophomores on full-time enrollment - she'll pay the tuition balance by working her own way through college.
The teen explains that her parents - Emarilda Lopez and Edilzar Tomas - had to quit school after sixth grade because there was a charge for any schooling higher than that in their Guatemalan town. Their families couldn't afford the fee.
"Because they did not have a good education, they didn't want me to work, just focus on my schooling. Education is very important to them," she says.
Her mother has always been a stay-at-home mom, raising their four children while dad worked, so Lopez cares for her new grandson while Tomas is in class. The teen says she and her baby's father have discussed marriage, but she prefers to wait until she has graduated from college. Taking classes, caring for a toddler and working to help pay for college is enough to juggle for now.
She also says she is closely watching how immigration reforms play out in this presidential election.
"It is important to me because I have a big family here (20 aunts, uncles and cousins), and I don't want them to go back and us not see each other again," she says. "I believe, as the daughter of immigrants, we should all have the liberty and opportunity to be here for a better education and job."
Contact Susan Pierce at spierce@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6284.