Richard Ruelas

The Republic | azcentral.com

Carl Hayden High School's victory in a robotic competition over colleges has inspired two films.

The team beat out prestigious colleges, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2004.

The documentary "Underwater Dreams" is out now; a movie starring George Lopez comes out in January.

The students have created a legacy of success at the west Phoenix high school.

The story has been a feel-good one since it happened a decade ago: A ragtag team of high school kids from a poor part of west Phoenix beats out students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in a robotics competition.

The aftermath has always been more complicated.

A decade later, the story of the robotics club at Carl Hayden high school is being told anew.

A documentary about the team and its legacy at the school, "Underwater Dreams," is running at a Phoenix theater and a truncated version airs on MSNBC and Telemundo on Sunday. A feature film based on the story, starring comedian George Lopez, is scheduled for release in January.

The films are putting the spotlight back on an underdog tale from 2004: How the Carl Hayden students entered the Marine Advanced Technology Education competition on a whim. How they went toe-to-toe with the nation's most educated and experienced engineering college students.

And how they came away with the win.

The four students – Oscar Vazquez, Cristian Arcega, Luis Aranda and Lorenzo Santillan – have been making the publicity rounds. As have their teachers, Faridodin Lajvardi and Allan Cameron.

All six were in New Mexico in 2013 to meet Lopez and the cast of young actors playing their fictionalized characters. They also served as technical advisers on the film.

Over the past few weeks, one or more of the group has attended screenings of "Underwater Dreams" before prestigious audiences.

Vazquez met Chelsea Clinton before a screening at a Clinton Global Initiative event in Colorado. Santillan and Lajvardi were at a youth convention of the League of United Latin American Citizens in New Jersey.

Members of the team walked the red carpet in New York for the theatrical premiere of "Underwater Dreams" last week. For all, it was their first time in New York.

But while the team's 2004 story has a happy ending, the past 10 years have been a mixed bag for the four students involved.

Of the four, only one, Vazquez, has a job in an engineering-related field. Arcega is attempting to start his own consumer electronics business. Santillan has a catering business and a job at a restaurant. Aranda is a janitorial supervisor at the Maricopa County courthouses.

All four entered the country illegally as children. For three of the four, their legal status has been an obstacle to entering college or finding employment.

"I can't let that get to me," Arcega said, "because that's always going to be an uphill battle with everything."

The Win

The story of the Carl Hayden students' triumph comes with ready-made cinematic moments:

The students enter the competition as a fluke, expecting to lose. Their teachers sign them up to compete against colleges, rather than in the high school division, figuring they might as well lose big. Their robot springs a leak and the students come up with an inventive solution — placing tampons in the case holding the sensitive electronics. They run the machine through a series of obstacles, including using a one-way valve to extract fluid from a container, all underwater, all by remote control. The course is so difficult, nobody's robot can complete every task successfully.

But the teams are also judged on their technical knowledge, and the Carl Hayden students, each of whom learned English second, shine in the technical presentation. They step up without the kind of PowerPoint slides other teams have. Arcega tells the judges that people only use slides if they don't know what to say — and they know what to say.

The teachers jokingly agree to take the students to Hooters if they win the competition. Cut to the awards ceremony and the increasing likelihood Carl Hayden would actually win. Lajvardi leans over to his students and whispers to them not to shout "Hooters."

After the victory, Lajvardi calls his wife to tell her. She doesn't believe him.

The team, not wanting to celebrate too loudly at the awards ceremony and insult the college teams, scurries to a nearby beach to whoop and holler.

Roll credits.

After those moments, the more complicated story starts.

On the ride back from Santa Barbara, where the competition was held, Lajvardi envisioned the school's marching band and a media contingent awaiting the team's arrival. Instead, there was a mostly barren parking lot.

The district sent out a press release about the victory. But it received little response.

It wouldn't be until a year later that a reporter for Wired magazine told the story of the win. The article, headlined "La Vida Robot," resulted in readers offering to donate money to help the students with college. The article was also optioned for a movie. The actress Selma Hayek was a producer.

But that project never got underway. Pantelion films was next to buy the rights. Filming on "Spare Parts," wrapped up in New Mexico late last year. Lopez plays the team's coach, a mash-up of the Lajvardi and Cameron characters. Marisa Tomei and Jaime Lee Curtis also star.

A documentary producer, Mary Mazzio, had also wanted to make a film version of the story since hearing about it in 2005. But she couldn't because the rights had already been optioned. After those rights lapsed, Mazzio was able to secure a deal to make the documentary.

The resulting film, "Underwater Dreams," uses a mix of new and archival footage to tell the tale of the 2004 competition and the legacy the team left behind at Carl Hayden Community High School.

Mazzio said she saw a story in the untapped potential the four students represent. "There are millions of kids just like these kids all over America," she said. "It's all about capacity and ability and not having old stereotypes about where you find innovation and capability and really smart, aspirational kids."

During one scene in "Underwater Dreams," the Carl Hayden team members head to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to meet with members of the 2004 team they defeated. The MIT alums talk about their current jobs. Three are involved in underwater robotics, with one headed to a project in Antarctica. Another designs accessories for Apple products.

One student then asks the Carl Hayden team what they are up to.

It's a scene that Mazzio says has made audiences in test screenings uncomfortable.

"It's heartbreaking," she said. "Here you have kids that can compete and that clearly are innovative, that love to build and to fuel the country forward ... We need these kids, and they face these impediments."

The Aftermath

Arcega, Santillan and Aranda still live in the west Phoenix neighborhood where they grew up.

Arcega, 26, entered Arizona State University after graduation — but lost his scholarship after state voters passed an initiative that barred state assistance to people in the country illegally.

He started taking classes in mechanical engineering and design at Maricopa Skill Center and Gateway Community College. He earned a certification in use of the Solidworks design program.

Two years ago, he applied for temporary resident status under the new federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Being granted the status meant the government would not pursue an immigration case against him. It also allowed him to work.

But he couldn't find a job. Most of the positions he applied for required experience, which he did not have because, until the deferred action program, he could not legally work. "Most asked for a driver's license, too," he said, something Arizona had not allowed.

Arcega worked at Home Depot for a while and is looking for another job. Those "just a paycheck" jobs, as he calls them, will help fund his designs for consumer electronics. His first creation is a new type of power supply.

Santillan, 26, went to culinary school, fulfilling a passion for cooking sparked as a child watching chefs Jamie Oliver and Jacques Pepin on public television. He started his own catering business, Dragonfly Catering, since his legal status prevented him from being an employee, but allowed him to create his own company.

Santillan received deferred action in 2012. He has since taken a job as a line cook at St. Francis, an upscale restaurant in uptown Phoenix. It allows him to see how a kitchen operates and gains him experience with a wide variety of dishes.

Aranda, 28, also went to culinary school. But dropped out when the lessons moved from the kitchen to the classroom. "I've always had too many problems at school," he said. "Reading doesn't come easy for me."

Aranda said he was good at writing and speech. But his comprehension was bad. He also said numbers sometimes appeared out of order to him.

Aranda said he was never tested for a dyslexia or other learning disabilities. Schools assigned him to the English as a Second Language classes. Although he knew the language fine, he said, he could never test out of the reading portion of the ESL classes.

They were the same classes many students, who weren't legal residents, ended up taking. But Aranda was different from the rest of the group in another way.

The Wired magazine article, and subsequent stories printed in The Arizona Republic and elsewhere, said all four students on the winning robotics team were undocumented.

But Aranda now says he had residency papers by the time of the 2004 competition.

Although he entered illegally at age 5, Aranda said, his father, a legal resident, filed for his wife and son to gain residency. Aranda said that happened sometime during high school, though he doesn't exactly remember when.

Aranda said in a interview this month with the Republic that he never wanted to correct the Wired article, or the perception of a team of four undocumented students. He said he didn't want to be singled out as different from his teammates.

"I'm not too concerned with them calling me illegal or not," he said.

Vazquez, 28, took a risk to not be in the country illegally anymore.

He attended Arizona State University and studied engineering. His picture graced the school's recruiting brochure.

When his scholarships and in-state tuition were taken away by the state law barring illegal immigrants from receiving them, Vazquez took on extra jobs. He also sought private scholarships.

He was one of three students singled out at his college graduation, receiving applause from the crowd in the stadium and that year's commencement speaker, President Barack Obama.

"I tried my best not to let (my legal status) stop me from doing anything," he said. "It limited me a lot. It took a lot of opportunities away. But I kind of looked the other way and put more effort into it."

Upon graduation, Vazquez decided to deport himself to Mexico, leaving his U.S. citizen wife and daughter behind in Arizona. He hoped he could make a case to allow himself to re-enter legally.

The government denied his request twice. The Republic told his story. It got the attention of Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, who was also being pressed by a Phoenix activist. Ten days later, Vazquez had his visa.

He joined the U.S. Army, fulfilling a childhood dream. He became a citizen after basic training. He then became a paratrooper and was sent to Afghanistan.

This year, he left the military and took a job as a foreman in a locomotive repair and maintenance yard at BNSF railroad. He, his wife and two children are moving to Glendive, Montana.

"If I had to do everything in the same way again," Vazquez said, "I would do it."

"I get chills sometimes"

Cameron is retired from teaching. He spends his summers driving a recreational vehicle across cooler parts of the country. "I'm just having a ball with all this," he said in a phone call from Colorado. "I'm not hustling for a new job or promotion. I'm in the payoff stage now."

Lajvardi still teaches at Carl Hayden. This summer, his team was preparing a robot to compete in an underwater competition. Although in this competition, the robots would be autonomous, or run themselves.

Lajvardi said the publicity has succeeded in attracting students curious about robotics. But it has not resulted in a flood of sponsors offering money and equipment. The Falcon Robotics club still has to cobble together funds in order to compete in the national FIRST robotics competition and any other contests.

Lajvardi, who was part of the MIT visit, said there was an uncomfortable feeling in the room when the teams compared jobs over the past decade. But, he said, it stands to reason that MIT students would all become engineers, while his high school kids from widely different backgrounds would take divergent paths.

"You can't think success is just one sort of result," he said. "Success takes different forms.

"You can't all be engineers. How boring is that? The point is to be successful at what you're doing."

Lajvardi can rattle off names of individual students who have gone on to great success in the past decade, all coming through the Carl Hayden robotics program. Although it might not translate into a higher salary or prestigious job, he credits those four with the legacy.

"The best thing that they can have credit for," he said, sitting at his desk, students in front of him programming an autonomous robot, "is opening the doors for all the kids that followed after them."

Santillan, who has been involved in immigration activism, has seen the legacy of his team — how it has lifted up the expectations of students in the neighborhood. "I think we've persuaded people to think higher for themselves and go get a higher education," he said. "I get chills sometimes. I feel that every time I think about it."

'Underwater Dreams'

Opening Friday at AMC Arizona Center 24, 565 N. 3rd St., Phoenix.

A shortened version will air at 10 a.m. Sunday on cable station MSNBC and at noon in Spanish on Telemundo, KTAZ-TV, Channel 39.