Woman whose college plans were thwarted created app to help ‘Dreamers’

Photo: Peter DaSilva, Special To The Chronicle Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca, creator of Dreamers Road Map chats with...

Growing up as an undocumented teenager in Southern California, Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca didn’t feel different from her high school classmates. She spoke English fluently, studied diligently and pretty much led a normal life.

But as she prepared for college in 2008, she attended a workshop on acquiring student grants and loans. It was there Salamanca realized she couldn’t apply for federal education aid because she lacked legal status.

Her counselors told her that, in general, students like her drop out and go to work instead of pursuing a degree.

“It was one of the hardest moments of my life,” recalled Salamanca, now a 28-year-old resident of East Palo Alto.

So for several months after she graduated from high school, Salamanca didn’t go to college because she didn’t think she could afford it. Instead, she worked cash jobs like cleaning homes and taking care of children.

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“I didn’t fully comprehend it,” she said. “I had fought as hard or harder than my classmates.”

Years later, in 2016, Salamanca harnessed her disappointment from that formative experience to launch an idea designed to help others who found themselves in her position.

Her mobile app, called Dreamers Roadmap, organizes scholarships that are available locally and nationally for undocumented students across the country, so they can be armed with the knowledge Salamanca lacked when she was in high school.

For her work, Salamanca was nominated for a 2018 Visionary of the Year award, sponsored by The Chronicle. The award comes with a $25,000 grant, which the winner may use to fund his or her work or apply to a chosen cause.

Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca, creator of Dreamers Road Map speaks during a Women's Day event at the Mexican Consulate in San Francisco, California, USA 8 Mar 2018. Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca, creator of Dreamers Road Map speaks during a Women's Day event at the Mexican Consulate in San Francisco, California, USA 8 Mar 2018. Photo: Peter DaSilva, Special To The Chronicle Photo: Peter DaSilva, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 2 Caption Close Woman whose college plans were thwarted created app to help ‘Dreamers’ 1 / 2 Back to Gallery

“Sarahi embodies the traits of a true visionary — someone who lights the path forward so all of us can prosper,” said Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, a member of the nominating committee. “Her sharp and creative mind developed an app to help undocumented students find scholarships so they could fulfill their individual dreams.”

Salamanca’s parents brought her from Mexico to the U.S. at age 4, crossing the border to live with family members in the Bay Area. For years, Salamanca moved from city to city, rotating through relatives and just getting by.

By age 16, her mother and father had moved back to Mexico, but she stayed. Salamanca believed the only path to stability for her family relied on her gaining a good education and eventually a well-paying job.

When counselors told her she’d get no funding for higher education, she thought that was it. Her path was closed.

Months later, though, a friend told Salamanca about legislation in California that had allowed undocumented students to obtain lower, in-state tuition.

Soon, she enrolled at Foothill College in Los Altos. But during her time at the community college, doctors diagnosed her father with cancer, and Salamanca took a break from studying to work and send money back to Mexico. She wasn’t able to travel to see him before he died because of her undocumented status.

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“It was the second time my status came in the way my life,” she said.

In 2013, Salamanca gained protection under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. She returned to school while also going to technology seminars.

The next year, she was selected as a finalist for the Voto Latino Innovators Challenge, a MacArthur Foundation-funded effort to improve life for Latinos through technology. Her innovation was her app, which she saw as simple, unique and important.

Undocumented students could access all aid programs available to them. The app would allow users to narrow the information by selecting where they live, whether they are a recipient of DACA and other characteristics.

The Voto Latino judges had one question for Salamanca: “How are you going to fund it?”

“You guys are going to give me the money to make it,” she said, as the judges burst into laughter.

She was right: The judges granted her the $100,000 prize.

Though she eventually gained a green card, Salamanca said she never lost sight of her earlier struggles, and by 2016 she had released the app.

While undocumented students in U.S. colleges are difficult to track, one estimate last year placed their numbers at upward of 80,000 in California alone. Salamanca said 20,000 people across the country have used her program.

Over the years, Salamanca said, she has been occasionally pulled aside by some of these students — like a woman who told her in February that she’d been able to attend UCLA thanks to money she found through the app.

“That was the whole purpose,” she said. “If I could change the life of one student — give them that sense of hope to go to college — then that’s a success for me.”

Hamed Aleaziz is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: haleaziz@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @haleaziz

About VisionSF

This is one of six profiles of finalists for The Chronicle’s fourth annual Visionary of the Year award. The honor salutes leaders who strive to make the world a better place and drive social and economic change by employing new, innovative business models and practices. The finalists were selected by a nominating committee that included Emmett Carson, president and CEO of Silicon Valley Community Foundation; Ron Conway, angel investor and philanthropist; John Diaz, editorial page editor of The Chronicle; Steve Malnight, senior vice president strategy & policy of Pacific Gas and Electric Co., a program sponsor; Ken McNeely, president of AT&T California, a program sponsor; Libby Schaaf, mayor of Oakland; Charlotte Shultz, chief of protocol for the city and county of San Francisco; and George Shultz, former U.S. secretary of state.

Chronicle Publisher Jeff Johnson, Editor in Chief Audrey Cooper and Diaz will select the winner, which will be announced in late March.

To read more: www.sfchronicle.com/visionsf