Darlene Garcia

Darlene Garcia may be the first student advocate hired to work with California’s library literacy programs, but she didn’t step foot in a library until she was 29.

Garcia dropped out of school at 15 to help support her family, and she thought that “only people who could read or who were very educated went into libraries.”

What brought Garcia to the library was a desire to research volunteer opportunities after years of dead end jobs.

“I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I thought, ‘I’ll just go volunteer,’ but I didn’t know where to start. I figured if I went to the library, they would know,” Garcia says.

One of the positions the librarian suggested required writing, and Garcia quickly declined, claiming poor spelling. The librarian gave her an information card for Write to Read, an adult literacy program in Fremont. It took Garcia three months to work up the courage to call.

She enrolled in the program, and as her reading and writing improved, Garcia says she found herself becoming more confident. She now volunteers at her granddaughter’s school. At the state level, she’s on the advisory board for the California Literacy newsletter. Nationally, she serves on Voice for Adult Literacy United for Education’s (VALUE) board and on the student advisory board for the National Institute for Literacy.

Garcia’s life changed in other ways. She says she used to vote for whomever friends and family told her to vote for; now she reads about candidates and initiatives herself, and makes her own voting decisions. And, four years after becoming an adult literacy student, Garcia became California’s first student advocate.

“I wouldn’t speak up before,” she says, “but now I know that what I have to say is important.”