Hobby Robotics

The Sharp Question From The Van’s Driver

It was the end of June. Lorenzo Santillan, 16, sat in the front seat of the school van and looked out at the migrant farmworkers in the fields along Interstate 10. Lorenzo’s face still had its baby fat, but he’d recently sprouted a mustache and had taken to wearing a fistful of gold rings, a gold chain, and a gold medallion of the Virgin Mary pierced through the upper part of his left ear.

The bling wasn’t fooling anyone. His mother had been fired from her job as a hotel maid, and his father had trouble paying the rent as a gardener. They were on the verge of eviction for nonpayment of rent. He could see himself having to quit school to work in those fields.

“What’s a PWM cable?” The sharp question from the van’s driver, Allan Cameron, snapped Lorenzo out of his reverie. Cameron was the computer science teacher sponsoring Carl Hayden’s robotics program. At 59, he had a neatly trimmed white beard, unkempt brown hair, and more energy than most men half his age.

Together with his fellow science teacher Fredi Lajvardi, Cameron had put up flyers around the school a few months earlier, offering to sponsor anyone interested in competing in the third annual Marine Advanced Technology Education Center’s Remotely Operated Vehicle Competition. Lorenzo was one of the first to show up to the after-school meeting last spring.