CSU Pueblo Student Graduates Twice, Carrying Her Mother’s Dream

The porch was still new when the professors arrived that late November evening. Hand-laid tiles, each one carefully placed by a father during what should have been vacation time. He’d built it for his wife so she could sit outside, feel the Colorado breeze one more time.

That night, the porch became something else entirely. It became a stage for a graduation ceremony that wasn’t supposed to happen until May.

Alondra Solis Ayala is about to walk across the commencement stage at Colorado State University Pueblo this week. It will be her second graduation. The first one happened in her family’s living room, with her dying mother watching from a chair, too weak to stand but strong enough to declare “esa es mi hija”—that’s my daughter—as faculty members in full regalia handed over a diploma cover and stole in what became an impromptu, deeply personal ceremony.

Nobody at CSU Pueblo knew Alondra’s mother was dying. Not her fellow Associated Student Government members, not the students she advocated for, not even most of her professors. While she organized winter events and pushed for better Hispanic representation on campus, while she interpreted at official ceremonies and challenged the university president about what being a Hispanic Serving Institution really meant, her mother lay in a hospital bed.

“In our culture, we keep everything private,” Alondra explains, her voice steady but soft. Family arguments stay in the house. Family pain stays in the house.

The 23-year-old first-generation college student would leave class to drive her mother to appointments. She’d sit in hospital rooms doing homework, closing her notebooks whenever doctors arrived so she could translate medical terms from English to Spanish. Her mother knew only basic English phrases. Hi. Hello. Bye.

When doctors said her mother’s liver and kidneys were failing, when they mentioned transplants that would never come, when hospice became the only option, Alondra translated every word. Then she went back to planning campus events and maintaining her grades.

First in the Family

She almost never made it to college at all. Growing up on an isolated ranch where her father worked as the “main guy,” she knew nothing about applications or financial aid. Her parents never attended college. Neither did her siblings, all of whom were significantly older than their “baby” sister. When COVID hit during her senior year of high school, she gave up trying to navigate college websites and went straight to work.

Victoria Obregón changed that trajectory. The CSU Pueblo Director of Intercultural Initiatives and Belonging personally signed Alondra up for college. She recognized the potential Alondra couldn’t yet see. Obregón became the only person Alondra confided in when her mother entered hospice care last.

“I called her and said ‘hospice,’ paused and just broke down crying,” Alondra remembers. The next words changed everything. “My mom wants to go to Mexico. I don’t know; I’m leaving.”

Obregón had another idea. It was something she’d done 10 years before.

Graduation Comes Home

Within hours, phone calls flew among administrators. The provost, deans, faculty members. Food arrived at the Solis Ayala home. Then came the professors in their academic robes, transforming the family’s living room into a ceremony space. Alondra was glad her sisters were meticulous about cleaning. 

The Solis Ayala extended family had gathered, thinking they were there to say goodbye. Her mother sat in her chair, her body ravaged by complications from decades of diabetes, but her pride intact. When faculty members spoke about Alondra’s achievements, about her advocacy for Hispanic students, about her 3.5 GPA despite everything, her mother found the strength to stand and repeated those three words. “That’s my daughter.”

With everyone looking, Alondra placed her stole around her mother’s shoulders, then her father’s.

They drove to Mexico the next day. Eight hours to a sister’s house in Texas, with Alondra at the wheel because her father gets too sleepy to drive long distances. Her mother had been clear. She wanted to die in Mexico, in her real home in Durango, not in the house where she’d spent decades in Colorado. She packed everything. Jewelry boxes, clothes, every possession except a Virgin Mary statue left to bless the home her husband built.

Her mother died January 5th.

Now Alondra prepares for her official graduation, the one where her mother won’t be watching. At this ceremony, she’ll receive the Homer and Diane Blackwell President’s Leadership Award. The recognition is for a student who goes above and beyond to serve others. The award acknowledges what her professor saw that November night in her living room. A leader who carried unbearable weight in silence while lifting up her entire community. 

She has pushed back graduate school, where she was in the process of applying to Harvard. She’ll take a gap year after she gets her double-degrees in Spanish and Social Work with a minor in Chicano Studies. Alondra plans to work at CSU Pueblo to give back to the community that supported her. Alondra hasn’t fully processed the loss, she admits. Sometimes it hits her like it did in Mexico City, at the Basilica, where she left flowers one month to the day after her mother’s passing.

The diabetes that killed her mother lives in Alondra, too. Most people don’t know. They see an energetic student leader, not someone managing a chronic illness. “They think of someone with diabetes as heavier, not doing much,” she says. “I’m everywhere.”

That restlessness comes from somewhere deeper than ambition. It comes from parents who crossed borders to give their children better lives. From siblings who treated their baby sister like one of the boys, teaching her to get up when she fell. From a mother who managed diabetes for over two decades while raising five children on a ranch hand’s wages.

The tile porch remains at the family home, each piece a testament to a father’s love and loss. Soon, after the official ceremony ends and the caps fly, another graduation party will happen there. Carne asada will sizzle on the grill. The family will gather. And somewhere in the celebration, perhaps in the voice recording tucked inside a Build-A-Bear made for her grieving father, her mother will still be saying those words.

“Esa es mi hija.”