Holiday wishes can come true at UCI

Jeff Benson

The Christmas season sure looked bleak for 21-year-old single mother

and UCI student Julie Cruz-Ambriz.

She helped her father recover from a painful side effect caused by

his diabetes medication and assisted her mother through a bacterial

virus that’s attacking her stomach.

Then she found out her 5-year-old daughter Yvonne needed remedial

tutoring prior to entering kindergarten. That was an unforeseen

expense, she said.

These events just forced her to work even harder to make up for

days she never planned to take off of her part-time job.

The holiday shopping season never waits around for anyone --

especially those with financial troubles -- and she began to wonder

how she could provide gifts for her daughter and her 10-year-old

brother Andres.

But earlier this month, Cruz-Ambriz, Yvonne and Andres were

adopted by the UCI campus Verano Holiday Project.

The program, now in its 14th year, is helped along by UCI’s

Academic and Professional Women, an organization that annually

requests wish lists from financially dependent students and connects

them with campus departments.

The staff and faculty of those departments provide the needy

families with gifts.

The California Institute for Telecommunications and Information

Technology adopted Cruz-Ambriz, and its members chipped in for a

pasta Christmas dinner as well as toys and clothes, which she’s put

under the tree.

She’s not even sure exactly what she received, since it all came

to her door gift-wrapped for her and the children.

“I’m very, very grateful,” Cruz-Ambriz said.

“My brother was happy, my daughter was happy, and my parents were

happy. They were really nice. We couldn’t have asked for anything

else.”

The Verano Holiday Project is named for the campus apartments

where students with families and foreign graduate students live.

Various UCI departments and offices adopted 17 families this year.

“Many of them are single parents or are families who’ve come from out

of the area to go to school at UCI,” said project founder Kim Ayala.

“They don’t have a whole lot of time to be working as well. I’ve

found most families just want basic food items.

“Some kids say they just want bread. And some just want some basic

toys and things for their kids.”

Ayala, director of the undergraduate/undeclared advising program,

began the project by herself 14 years ago.

But when the program outgrew what she alone was capable of, she

requested the help of her UCI co-workers.

“I could probably handle eight to 10 families as an individual,

but now it’s gotten much larger than that,” she said.

* JEFF BENSON covers education and may be reached at (714)

966-4617 orby e-mail at [email protected].