PLUS ME Spotlight: Frank Mundo

Motivational March is underway. PLUS ME is placing relatable role models in virtual classrooms for the third and final push of this year’s 100 Volunteers, 100 Stories campaign.

Courageous volunteers shared their stories for the first two events, Wisdom Week and Giving Tuesday, and former volunteer Frank Mundo will be sharing his story once more to inspire underserved students in LA.

Here is his amazing story:

As a writer, I’m best known for my poetry book, The Brubury Tales, and an essay called, “How I Became a Mexican,” which are taught in high schools and colleges across the country.

Over the years, I’ve visited many schools discussing these works and reading to students.

So, when the Plus Me Project asked me to tell a story to high school students for GIVING TUESDAY last year, I immediately said yes. Telling stories to students was right in my wheelhouse.

It wasn’t until I had actually read the details and discovered the story’s theme, “academic success,” that I realized I’d made a huge mistake – or worse, that they had made a mistake inviting me.

Whenever I visit schools, I typically share a few poems or read an excerpt from my essay, and then I answer the students’ questions for the rest of the time. It’s super easy for me because it’s my work, I wrote it, and I know all the answers to those questions.

But academic success? Now that’s a story I was not prepared to tell. And I almost called and canceled my appearance after that.

The truth is I was a terrible student in high school. I was a good athlete, sure. But, to my friends and classmates – and I suspect my teachers as well – I was definitely a jock and not an academic.

Now, this wasn’t completely my fault. I had a pretty rough start to life. I’ll spare you the gory details, and I’ll just say this: I was in foster care as an infant; my father spent much of his life in prison, all of my childhood really, and I’ve never had a relationship with him. Unfortunately, there was abuse involved at some foster homes I lived in, and my siblings and I were split apart.

So, by the time I got to high school, I was an angry teenager, a terrible student, living alone in an illegally converted garage in south Los Angeles – no parents and no siblings. This was the late 1980’s-early-90s, just before the riots, and easily the most dangerous time to live in LA, let alone in that firetrap I called my home.

I worked full-time on the swing shift almost every night, and, when I could, I went to high school during the day – mainly if we had a game that day. I rode my bike, skateboard or took the bus everywhere I needed to go until I was old enough to drive whatever used piece of junk I could buy and keep running.

I attended a nice school on the west side, where my mother had lived briefly. However, just like the forged documents I used to work full-time, I used a fake address to attend this public school. It helped that one of the football coaches was also the Dean, so I never got in any real trouble.

Deep down I guess I always knew that college wasn’t a real option for me, at least not right out of high school, but it all seemed so far away in the future that it didn’t concern me. There was always time, I thought, and so that’s how I lived my life back then – even in the second half of my senior year when I was on academic probation and my baseball coach was finally forced to bench me. For a while, I had thought I could possibly get a sports scholarship to college – but now, I was certain that wasn’t in the cards for me either.

It wasn’t until the day after graduation that I had a real awakening about the future and what life had in store for me after high school – a brutal dose of reality so strong I wouldn’t fully recover from the shock of it for years to come. I woke up that morning and realized that I had nowhere to go. What’s worse, I realized what school had been for me for all those years, just a place to go to every day, a kind of placeholder, a chance to meet up with friends and play sports and that’s about it.

I’ll tell you what, sitting there, alone in my little garage, letting it all sink in, I’d never felt more alone and out of place in the world…

Now, why would anyone want me to tell my story – this story – to underserved students on a day called Giving Tuesday?

Because it gets better, right? Because it has to…

After all, I was the first person in my family to graduate from high school. I would also graduate from UCLA, on a partial scholarship after that, where I completed the school’s exclusive creative writing program. Only 15 students are admitted each year to this program. After that, I went on to become the full-time professional writer, author, and speaker I told you about in the beginning of my story.

How does that happen? How did I go from one extreme to the other?

Well, it took me some time, quite a few years actually, to find my place in the world, to work towards healing myself, to create healthy relationships that added value to my life, and to find the confidence in myself and my abilities to live the kind of life I deserved.

That’s the story I would tell – a story that, as I wrote it the night before Giving Tuesday – left me in tears but smiling from ear to ear. It was a story I needed to share with myself as much as wanted to share it with the students.

I’m so glad I didn’t cancel my appearance. I’m so proud that I shared that story, and I’m so honored to work with PLUS ME. If you’re thinking about volunteering or if you’re unsure if your story is right for this important program, I promise you it is. In fact, your story, may be the all-important spark that helps light a fire of hope for a student – who just like me – may feel lost, alone, or even worse, hopeless.

Please, share your story with these students. Take your time. Give it your best effort. Be genuine and real, and you can’t go wrong…