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Senior Spotlight: Jose Luviano-Mondragon
Close to his right ear, Jose Luviano-Mondragon has a little pink circle.
It’s about the size of a dime, and it’s hard to notice unless you know where to look. But Jose knows it’s there. It’s his constant reminder of a Friday night three years ago - of going to his aunt’s house and delivering three orders of enchiladas made by his grandparents.
His uncle drove. They pulled into the driveway, and with the enchiladas in his hands, Jose stepped out of the car. Just one step. Immediately, he tumbled back inside. His whole body felt hot and wet. He couldn’t see, he couldn’t hear, and he yelled, “They got me! They got me!”
Jose had been shot.
He and his uncle ran from the car and banged on his aunt’s door.
“Let us in!” his uncle screamed.
She opened the door and saw her nephew covered in blood.
“Are you OK?” she asked, shocked.
Jose didn’t answer. He was in shock. His uncle was screaming. His aunt’s husband called the police and 911. Jose called his mom.
“I’ve been shot,” he told her.
She screamed, too.
The paramedics and police came. The police asked them what happened, and the paramedics checked Jose’s pulse, cleaned up his arms and legs, asked him a few questions before loading him onto a gurney, rolling him into an ambulance and rushing to the hospital.
In the ambulance, Jose had visions flashing before his eyes of his parents, his family, his friends and his dog, Bella. He kept his eyes open. He wanted to remain conscious because he worried if he closed his eyes he wouldn’t wake up. He prayed.
“God, I hope You can work Your power, and everything comes out good.”
It did. Jose spent three days in the hospital. The bullet didn’t go very far into his cheek. He left the hospital on a Monday, with an ice pack on his swollen right cheek.
His recovery took three months. He had his mouth wired shut, and the doctors removed the bullet after three surgeries. When he went back to school in January, he got lots of questions. He hated it. He wanted everything to be OK, back to normal.
That was hard.
Jose spent three months in therapy trying to cope with the unconceivable. Meanwhile, he found out from police the shooting was a case of mistaken identity. The shooters thought Jose and his uncle were someone else. No one has ever been arrested.
“It’s sparked a growth in me,” Jose says of the shooting. “I have truly realized you only have one life to live. Anything can happen in the blink of an eye. Me and my uncle, we were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Jose is the oldest of three. His dad works in landscaping; his mom works for a cleaning company; and this fall, Jose will become the first in his family to go to college.
“I believe that God saved my life,” he says. “I was too young, and I still need to accomplish many more things in life. So, I feel like that’s the main reasons I got a second chance at life. I have so much to accomplish.”
Jose will graduate from Dudley High, seventh in his class of 264. This fall, he will start N.C. State, major in computer engineering and continue pursuing the passion he first found in Donald Sweeper’s engineering class.
Jose was a sophomore when Sweeper introduced Jose to coding. Jose didn’t know anything about hardware and software. But once Sweeper introduced him to coding and the computer language known Python, Jose was enamored with the possibilities.
“It just blew my mind,” he says today.
Sweeper started the Panther Coding Club. He brought in a student from N.C. A&T to help. Jose became the club’s president.
After Jose came back to school after the shooting, he and three other members competed in the Healthy App Innovation Challenge, a coding competition in Winston-Salem. They had to create a computer app about healthy eating in school. The Panther Coding Club competed against eight other schools. They won.
The club received $5,000 for Dudley High. The club members who competed received an Acer Chromebook laptop. That laptop became Jose’s first computer.
Jose has earned a $4,000 scholarship created by Nichad Davis, a 2009 Dudley grad. He created the Rose From Concrete scholarship, and according to its description, the scholarship is awarded to a student who "exemplifies the grit, intestinal fortitude, and perseverance to overcome adversity and become a beacon of hope for the world. "
Jose is that.
In a seven-sentence Facebook post about Jose, Sweeper wrote: “Seeing him rise from the ashes, not giving any excuses to give his best in all things, encouraged me to continue teaching …. Again, I am very proud of seeing Jose still on the grind, and I believe he is one that will help save our world one day.”
Jose reads that post at least once a week.
“When I read it, it’s such a great feeling,” he says. “I know I have people who have my back. I am beyond grateful. I’m blessed.”