April 7, 2023, GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. -- The obstacles that many Grand Rapids Community College students overcome are many. Sabrina Barrera knows this better than most.
Born and raised in Saginaw, her life there as a young girl included gun violence, police raids and all around her a steady presence of drugs and alcohol.
She moved to Grand Rapids right before she entered Ottawa Hills High School, and the change of scenery helped. She graduated in 2014 on the dean's list, with the principal's award and the recipient of a couple of scholarships.
She admits though that below the surface not everything was as it seemed.
“I dealt with severe depression and anxiety and coped by drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana,” she said.
Still, she headed off to GRCC after her high school graduation, hoping to continue a traditional path toward an associate degree.
Her second week on campus she overdosed, and when she went to the hospital to have her stomach pumped, she learned something else. She was pregnant.
“I didn’t realize it,” she said.
The news was a shock but also a wake-up call.
“I realized that God was saving my life through my child,” she said.
The challenge of being in school and being pregnant was too much to handle though, so Barrera dropped out of college.
In 2017, she got a second shot at GRCC but then her mother got really sick with kidney disease. She had to drop out again, but this time there were no regrets.
“I had to be there for my family and my daughter,” she said.
She also recalled a GRCC business professor, Matheta Righa, and the inspiration she had always taken from Righa’s stories in class.
“She would share with us her struggles and how she overcame them,” Barrera recalled. “That always encouraged me that what I was feeling was right.”
Despite that example of perseverance to draw up, and despite where she is now – doing well in school and on track to graduate – Barrera said the years between 2017 and today were hardly a straight line.
“Oh no,” she said with a wry smile.
She dropped out of GRCC again in the winter of 2018, overwhelmed by the responsibility of helping her parents and siblings who were experiencing homelessness. Then, as her parents were getting their lives together, Sabrina experienced another season of deep depression, and her drug and alcohol use returned.
“I remember wanting to end my life on countless occasions, crying in a dark room, all alone, praying,” she said.
Now it was her parents turn to support her. And they did.
“My father would drop everything to pour into me some nights for hours just so I would not give up,” she said.
That father, Robert Barrera, had also been both addicted to drugs and a dealer at one time. He’s now a gospel artist, performing as Bobby Bendito, and due to be featured on a religious newsmagazine show called “The 700 Club.”
Her mother, Sherry Barrera, after years of dialysis finally received a kidney transplant, while, in Sabrina’s words, “keeping our family together in the midst of her struggle.”
She added: “Seeing her never give up helped motivate me to finish.”
Indeed, she credits her parents’ resolve and their faith in her, plus a powerful conversion experience, for where she is today.
“On March 16, 2021, I encountered Jesus Christ, and I have never been the same,” she said. “I left my old life behind and became a single mother of three.”
Now Sabrina is taking her last class to graduate this month with her associate degree in Business Management and supervision and an additional class will earn her an entrepreneurship certificate.
“I will be the first in six generations of my immediate family to graduate college,” she said. “Everything always comes full circle when you have faith despite the obstacles and generational curses one may have to overcome.”
She also has a number of small businesses she is pursuing, including work as a freelance makeup artist, selling all-natural, hand-made, organic lip balms that have scriptures on them, a clothing line and helping her daughter start a kids’ accessory line.
She gives full credit to GRCC, including the Occupational Support Program and, in particular, that office’s Sarah Rose, for where she is today.
“Oh, my goodness how grateful I am to Sarah and her office,” she said with a broad smile. “She really cared about helping me succeed, no matter what. Her encouragement amazed me.”
For her part, Rose said the pleasure was all hers, adding that students like Sabrina are why her office exists.
“We worked with Sabrina to discuss career goals, plan her courses, support her through financial concerns and offered her paid childcare for two-three days a week while she took courses in her specific business degree,” Rose said.
Rose noted that what many people don’t realize is that about 75 percent of the GRCC student body attends part time and at least one out of 10 have a child under the age of 12. And, she added, some 30 percent of GRCC students are housing insecure.
“We have the opportunity to support students who are juggling all of the stressors of life,” she said. “And we often know about financial, childcare and employment resources that most students haven't been able to easily find yet.”
In addition to Rose and her team, numerous professors also helped her along the way, Sabrina said, and she gave a specific shout-out to accounting professor Kevin Stuart.
“I need to honor him,” she said. “He has always worked with me to accommodate my situation, being a single mom, and just the many obstacles I've endured near the finish line. I am truly thankful for his kindness and understanding.”
She also had words of praise for the Early Childhood Learning Laboratory’s preschool program.
“They have helped my journey more than they will ever know,” she said. “There would be days I had to wipe my tears just before dropping my children off. The care for my children that they took will forever be appreciated. I thank God for GRCC.”
This story was reported by Phil de Haan.
