Growing up in Costa Rica, the sounds of the nearby shore washed over my mornings, the smell of sea salt flooded my senses, and that warm ocean breeze greeted me with a smile.
But there is more to Costa Rica than just a beautiful place to call home. A growing education disparity also plagues the country. If you graduated from school there, you would likely stay in the country, living paycheck to paycheck—if you were lucky. The other reality was a country grappling with increasing drug problems. As a route for cocaine trafficking, the city streets were no longer controlled by tourists and residents, but by cartels and gangs. This was not the reality I knew when I was younger. But as I became older and wiser, I stopped seeing the red, white, and blue that adorned our flag. Instead, I saw what it was—a country that needed work.
My mother made the decision to leave everything behind and move to the United States when I was thirteen, in search of new opportunities. She wanted to put my brother and me in the best position to succeed. Our change was sudden: I arrived in the U.S. in the third quarter of my seventh-grade year, on a random March day. As I walked the halls of my new school, I could feel stares piercing my back. I knew I wouldn’t be seen as “one of them” on my first day. When I settled into my first class, the questions came flooding in like a tsunami.
“Did you live with monkeys?”
“Did you have TVs?”
“Did you have to swing from vines to get to class?”
“You’re from Puerto Rico, right?”
I didn’t mind the genuine curiosity, but the people who saw me as an easy target were a different story.
I was still adjusting, and making friends wasn’t my strong suit. Verbal insults soon turned physical as altercations occurred whenever I would retaliate instead of letting people disrespect me. My district school had a reputation for being problematic, and I quickly realized that after every other week of getting into fights, I wasn’t just defending my pride—I was defending my country.
My mom saw me come home upset every day because people kept thinking they could pick on me, simply because I couldn’t pronounce words like them due to my accent or because we didn’t have the same upbringing. She became so frustrated with the situation that she confided in a close friend who had a child my age. Her friend’s child attended a private school near our house, and my mother asked if they offered any financial aid. She saw the opportunities her friend’s child received and wanted the same for me and my brother. That’s when she discovered the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program and enrolled us at Christopher Columbus High School, an all-boys private school.
When I first heard the news that I’d have to wear a tie every day, I was a little annoyed. However, the biggest shock to a 14-year-old Sebastian was the fact that there were no girls.
“How am I supposed to talk to women?” I asked my mom. She brushed me off, knowing that this was the best opportunity I could get given our circumstances (and with my dashing good looks, it didn’t matter whether or not there were girls at my school).
I was excited to start at Columbus, as I’d heard great things about their football team, and I always idolized NFL players like Nick and Joey Bosa, who are alumni of the school. However, my greatest opportunity didn’t come on the football field. One day during practice, I was chatting with my good friend, who was in the school’s TV program, which was notoriously considered just for “nerdy kids.” He told me that if I joined, I could skip class. I was reluctant because I didn’t want to be associated with THAT crowd, but he enticed me with the whole “skipping class” part. I showed up to the club, Christopher Columbus News Network (CCNN) Live, with a smile on my face and a massive urge to take a nap in the middle of second period.
To my horror, he had lied to me. CCNN was not just a way to skip class; I actually had to work. The journalism teacher assigned me my first story: a golden retriever meet-up. As a freshman, I was getting all the feel-good stories. I had no problem with this, as my heart wasn’t really in the club—I was just trying to pass the time.
But after finishing the story, I felt an urge to ask for another assignment. Why did I feel this way? Was I starting to like journalism? Disgusted with myself as I felt the “nerdiness” creeping in, I asked my journalism teacher for another story. And another. And another.
Eventually, I realized I was pretty good with a camera and Premiere Pro. Delgado told me that these stories weren’t just for fun; we could actually submit them for awards. Throughout high school, I went on to produce more than 60 pieces and break almost every school record in a program that had been around since 2001. I became president of CCNN, received more Suncoast Student Emmy awards than any other student in CCNN history, took the club to nationals twice, and won back-to-back. Along the way, I got to interview stars like DJ Khaled, Kendrick Perkins, John Wall, mayors, congressmen, and senators. But my most impactful interview was with a father.
“How could this be?” I still ask myself years later. How could it be that, of all the widely known people I got to meet and interview, my most memorable was a father? Raymond Rodriguez-Torres was the father of a young girl named Bella. Bella had been diagnosed with childhood cancer at four years old and was given only a couple of months to live. Doctors told her she would never walk again. Yet, she walked again and lived to ten, defying the doctors’ expectations.
I got to tell Raymond’s story through a 30-minute documentary titled Live Like Bella: A Story of Faith, Hope, and Love, which debuted at the Miracle Mile Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida. The screening raised more than $6,000 for childhood cancer and was noticed by an Amazon Prime executive in attendance. The documentary is now available on Prime, with proceeds going to the “Live Like Bella” foundation.
At thirteen years old, as a recent immigrant from Costa Rica, if you had told me that just five years later, I would be directing an Amazon Prime documentary, I would’ve told you that you were crazy. This opportunity was granted to me by CCNN and the strong Columbus family. But I would have never been a Columbus Explorer if it weren’t for school choice and Florida Tax Credit Scholarship administered by Step Up For Students.
After graduating, I was invited to the 45th CBS Daytime News Emmys (the real one, not just students). I got to speak in front of hundreds of industry professionals who had been established in the field long before I was even born. They got to hear my voice, my story, and why I was on that stage. I make sure not to take any opportunity for granted and to make the most of the chance to have attended such a great school as Christopher Columbus High School.
If my mom had never made those choices or taken those leaps, I would never be half the man I am today.
