Commencement season is filled with stories of achievement, but one Southern California graduate’s journey to a doctorate is unlike most.
Jesse Marroquin Quinquileria survived homelessness, gang violence, being shot and even stabbed in the head. Now, he’s getting ready to accept his degree at California State University, Long Beach — a moment he never imagined.
“I feel very humbled,” he said. “My wife tells me all the time, ‘You earned that.'”
Marroquin spent years on the streets, growing up in gangs between South Los Angeles and Huntington Park, and at times being homeless.
“I got kicked out. I didn’t have a place to go. I didn’t have somebody to rely on,” he said.
The path nearly took his life. Violence lead to him being run over, stabbed in the head and shot at. A bullet is still lodged near his spine, serving as a painful reminder of his past.
But Marroquin said the turning point toward his future came after a felony case landed him in jail. His mother sold her own vehicle and fought to get him out.
“She sold her Chevy Blazer for $500 to bail me out,” he said.
He says education helped keep him from going back. He enrolled at Cerritos College and graduated with honors, earned his bachelor’s from Cal State Long Beach, a master’s from USC and then returned to Long Beach for his doctorate.
He credits programs like Project Rebound, which helps formerly incarcerated people achieve higher education goals, for helping him stay in school.
“They welcomed everybody here,” he said. “You could study, feel like you belong.”
Now officially Dr. Marroquin, after defending his thesis in education leadership and preparing to accept his degree this weekend, he says this isn’t just about him.
“I want to be an advocate for people that come from my background,” he said, adding he wants to help students impacted by poverty, incarceration and the same systems he says once defined his life.
But his deepest motivation is much closer to home.
“I wanted to make it up to my mom,” he said. “That, for me, was ultimately the goal, to make my mom proud, to make my daughters see that gangbanging was not it.”