Beverly Hills Cadet's Immigrant Story Goes Viral

BEVERLY HILLS, CA — The essence of the American Dream was recently distilled into a series of beautifully composed photos: a college graduate and part-time Beverly Hills police cadet walks through the fields where her family picked vegetables, dressed in a cap and gown.

Jennifer Rocha, a 21-year-old who just graduated from the University of California, San Diego, credits her parents’ hard work for her success.

“The whole reason I wanted to go back to the fields with my parents is because I wouldn’t have the degree and the diploma if it wasn’t for them,” Rocha recently told NPR. “They sacrificed their backs, their sweat, their early mornings, late afternoons, working cold winters, hot summers just to give me and my sister an education.”

Since the photoshoot with photographer Branden Rodriguez, Rocha has spoken to NPR, People Magazine, Good Morning America, USA Today, The Today Show, and several other national outlets as her story went completely viral. Other children of immigrant farmworkers have reached out to her, telling her how much her story hit home with them.

Rocha began working with her parents in the Coachella farm fields when she was just a junior in high school. She told NPR that her parents, Angelica Maria and Jose Juan Rocha, worked in the fields when they were children in Mexico, and dreamt of obtaining professional careers when they arrived in the United States. But without much money, they had no choice but to work the fields.

But they wanted better for their children, so they took Rocha and her siblings to the fields to impart upon them the value of higher education.

“As a high schooler, my parents told me that the only way I was going to be able to understand how important it was to pursue a higher education was to work as a migrant field worker,” Rocha wrote in a Facebook post. “My parents came from Michoacan, Mexico and were not fortunate enough to live their dreams of pursuing a higher education and obtaining the dream career they desired.”

Rocha started working in the fields overnight, right after a long day of school and cross country practice. “When I started working in the fields, I would get off from school, straight to cross country practice, run miles and miles and then get picked up by my dad to go work in the fields overnight,” she wrote in her post.

“We would plant strawberries, get off at around 2-3 a.m. and wake up at 5 a.m. to get ready, or else I would miss the city bus. I admired the workers because they kept working despite backaches while flies, mosquitos, and bugs kept roaming their faces, getting into their eyes. Nobody thinks about nor sees what happens behind a vegetable you grab at the grocery store. But behind it is someone who breaks their backs every day working in the fields.”

Even after she left for college, Rocha continued to work in the fields on weekends and breaks. She also worked for the school’s university police department, and part-time as a cadet for the Beverly Hills Police Department. Her parents couldn’t afford to pay for a dorm, so she commuted to class, and worked two jobs. Her shifts sometimes ended at 4 or 5 a.m., and she would nap in her car for around two and a half hours before starting an 8 a.m. class.

“Many times I wanted to give up, but my parents and their pieces of advice and support were the reason I kept going,” she wrote. “Coming from a field worker background has motivated me to work as my parents took my sisters and I to the fields in order to understand how difficult labor is.”

But eventually, the years of hard work eventually paid off. Rocha graduated with a degree in sociology and law enforcement. She hopes to work in law enforcement and increase Latino representation among its ranks.

The Beverly Hills Police Department congratulated her in a recent Facebook post: