Michelle Choi

From his earliest days of education as a bear cub at McKibbin Elementary in Whittier, CA to the blue and gold colors of East Whittier Middle School, to playing his high school fight song “Sons of Westwood,” Anthony Sanchez’s UCLA career was simply meant to be. While he may not have been bruin born or bruin bred, he most certainly would be bruin ’til the day he’s dead.

Interestingly enough for the future Bruin leader, UCLA was not Sanchez’s first choice; however, he fell hard and fast for the university after orientation, after attending the rigorous and bond-creating band camp before the start of his first year, and from that very first football game on. “My decision to join the UCLA Bruin Marching Band was a life-changing choice that allowed me to feel like a True Bruin from the moment I stepped onto the IM Field for my first day of band camp,” he said.

From there on, Sanchez quickly immersed himself in the campus, opportunities, and community–and the rest was history. In addition to the Bruin Marching Band, Sanchez found a home (and employment) as a Community Service Officer within the UC Police Department, something few Bruins could say they had experienced. Originally looking for a job to lighten the financial burden of his schooling and cost of living on his family, he soon realized that the service he provided to the community through his job as a CSO contributed much more than money in the bank.

“I immediately took what would have normally been a difficult transition into employment and created a positive outlook on it by knowing that I would be helping make Bruins feel safer,” he shared with pride. Eventually, Sanchez’s hard work as a CSO paid off, and he became a Residence Hall Supervisor for the UCPD, becoming involved in the evening van, escort, and dormitory escort services that were held at night, making students feel a little safer on campus.

Sanchez also contributed to the fight song that pumped-up students and passerby with UCLA spirit during walks to class with tri-weekly practices on the intramural field, and at times during intense rivalry games in the pouring rain. As a band member, his involvement and service to his fellow band members and the community at large was boundless: he served on recruitment crew, equipment crew, and rank leader staff and further joined the national honorary band service fraternity Kappa Kappa Psi as Director of Service.

Fittingly, Sanchez’s deeply-held passion for service came from his unique upbringing, which instilled in him an early sense of compassion. From a family of five with two deaf parents, Sanchez’s first language was American Sign. Despite being deaf,  throughout his activities in choir, band, and theater during junior high and high school, his parents were at every show. “The unending support my parents gave me, despite not being able to hear the music I was producing, led me to immerse myself in their culture to show an equal support for them and the deaf community,” said Sanchez.

And this immersion was made apparent in nearly every activity he was involved in on campus, from interpreting for his family and deaf family friends at church and hospitals, to signing with his brothers and sisters in Kappa Kappa Psi–the National Honorary Band Service Fraternity–at district events, to working for the City Attorney’s office, to engaging with UCLA’s ASL programs, to simply signing along to his music on the way to class. Not only did his knowledge of ASL influenced his involvement on campus and his aspirations, but shaped him into a respectful, open-minded and service-oriented individual that he had become as a graduating senior.

 “People have asked me growing up, is it hard having deaf parents or if I wish they weren’t deaf, and while it is a challenge at times, I wouldn’t change it. It’s definitely shaped me, given me a ton of character and respect for others and it makes my family unique and I love that aspect of my parents,” he said, remarking that given the fact that his parents met in college through a deaf program, he would not have been born if it were otherwise.

“Basically from that first game, I bled blue and gold and decided to get involved as much as possible and that’s why I took on four or five activities, and over the time, I’ve come to enjoy my classes, have had fantastic professors along the way, a phenomenal friend group that I can’t imagine what college would’ve been like without, and I took the time out to enjoy campus,” Sanchez reflected.

A graduating psychobiology student, he planned to pursue a career in medicine, specifically hoping to become a doctor available to and working closely with the deaf community. But no matter where he ended up and what career he found himself in in the near future, Sanchez said, “I’m not going anywhere. This is like my home. UCLA’s always going to have a special place in my heart.” With tremendous service and a love for the bruin community and the world beyond, Anthony Sanchez undoubtedly had the heart of the True Bruin.

 

Third grade Rebecca Sadwick eagerly listened as her teacher initiated a debate over Al Gore and George W. Bush for the 2000 presidential elections. While her classmates played on the jungle gym, Sadwick’s ears perked up and she began her early and passionate captivation with politics. This interest paired well with her family’s Jewish upbringing and the important concept of Tikkun olam, or repairing the world, establishing Sadwick’s life-long aspiration to become involved in creating educational policy–vast dreams that were devastatingly threatened by a car accident when she was 14-years-old.

Born predisposed to fibromyalgia, a pain and fatigue-causing disorder, the trauma from the accident triggered the symptoms that had and would follow her for the rest of her life, and that had shaped her everyday life since. With chronic, at times acute pain, sitting through classes became a difficult activity and Sadwick struggled with teachers and peers who did not understand her condition before diagnosis, and understood her condition as a defining disability after diagnosis.

As she transitioned from sports to debate, student government, and academics, she tried to compensate her feelings of insecurity due to  the belief that she could not do everything she dreamed to, and focused her efforts on university. At a Jewish leadership conference at age 16, Sadwick felt a strong physical connection to the UCLA campus. She remembered “walking up the steps to the main reading room [in Powell Library] and going, ‘can you imagine studying here?’” With a powerful determination to do just that, Sadwick turned her dreams into a realtiy, enrolling at UCLA for her first year of college.

 A trying freshman year, however, tested her spirits once again, sending her into a painful downward spiral. After a five day spell without having left her room, eating glutenous foods which unknowingly intensified her pain, she called her parents with plans to transfer to community college closer to home and related the news to friends. The response changed her life.

“My friend Cole was the first one in our group of friends to respond after I first said I was leaving, with a gentle yet resolute, ‘No, you’re not.’ Then our friend Justina asked, ‘How can we help you? What do you need?’ As our friends began replying, it became clear that they were determined to help me stay at UCLA, where I was the happiest I had ever been in my life.” Her friends, in the smallest gestures from taking notes for classes she missed to bringing her food, along with the help of the Office of Students with Disabilities, professors, and advisors, made the remainder of her freshman year possible while empowering her and strengthening her resolve to overcome anything.

And with this newfound strength, Sadwick took on UCLA by storm. She was involved in Project Literacy, inspired further by one-on-one tutoring sessions with students living in education disparity just 15 miles away. Additionally, working in the Undergraduate Students Association Council’s President’s office in her freshman year exposed her to student politics and government, as well as the creation of policy. Later, her participation in the esteemed Quarter in Washington program, through the Center for American Politics and Public Policy (CAPP) narrowed her focus to a local as opposed to federal level as a mean to directly impact meaningful change. Influential courses taught by incredible professors such as Professors Patricia Gandara, Gary Orfield, Kathleen Bawn, John Villasenor, and Jorja Leap shaped her aspirations and catalyzed her personal research on the achievement gap in America and how it could be addressed with reforms.

Outside of academia and education-based-service, Sadwick gave back to the one place that had given her so much: De Neve Dogwood 2, the floor where she had been inspired by close friends and mentors to beat her illness and take on the world. She served as a Resident Assistant (RA) for the floor during her senior year, bringing her experiences as a resident full circle.

As a graduating senior, Sadwick’s goals reflected the lessons she had learned and the inspiring, determined woman she had become at UCLA. “I would love to work in policy but not necessarily in politics. So, [in] public affairs in a firm or corporation on educational inequality, child welfare and poverty and the intersection of the three to focus on research, policy implementation, and helping devise more educated strategies on how to better end the cycle of poverty through more equitable education,” shared Sadwick.

Her plans for the future included contributing to the formation of a universal preschool system in the United States, and to the body of knowledge on the most effective teaching strategies to benefit both teachers and students. Leaving UCLA to see these dreams come to reality, she shared that she would, more than anything,miss the community that has shown her the love, kindness, inspiration, work ethic, care and passion that defined the “beautiful bubble” she has grown within on campus.