An L.A. 'posse' passes its Iowa test

GRINNELL, IOWA — The phone rang at 10:30 p.m. Lauro Franco picked up and heard panic in the voice of his friend.

"I'm leaving," Sandra Herrera said. "I don't belong here."

Dressed only in pajamas despite the winter chill, Franco sprinted from his dorm room at Grinnell College to Herrera's a floor below. She opened her door and burst into tears.

Herrera told Franco she was tired of the cold, exhausted by school and worried about her father, who was sick back home in Carson.

"We're going to make it, Sandra," Franco said as he hugged his friend and shared his own concerns about his mother in Pacoima.

And so the pair hit on a plan: They would spend Saturdays at the library and break the monotony with occasional trips to the mall, 50 miles west in Des Moines.

Franco's late-night rescue that sophomore year may have saved Herrera's college career, both now say -- just as recruiters from the New York-based Posse Foundation had hoped.

Franco and Herrera entered tiny, idyllic Grinnell four years ago as members of a "posse" of 10 disadvantaged but promising high school graduates from Los Angeles.

By banding together, the students would help one another navigate unfamiliar academic and social terrain in this remote college town surrounded by fields of corn.

Grinnell would cover their tuition -- $1 million worth -- and in return get a little more diversity on its campus of 1,500 students, virtually all of them white.

The preparation for their journey was chronicled in a Times story in 2004. Over the four years that followed, academic demands reduced some of the "posse scholars" to tears. Cultural differences left a few feeling like outsiders. Homesickness was a constant, especially in the midst of bone-chilling winters.

The pressure drove one student to quit. Two others fell behind in their coursework.

But most found opportunities they never would have imagined back at high schools better known for producing dropouts than graduates.

Evelyn Gandara found her calling during a summer of study abroad before her senior year. She dreamed of becoming a doctor in a developing country and ventured to Ecuador for what she thought would be an internship in a rural hospital. She wound up treating patients.

That was a turning point for Gandara, a top student in high school who was surprised that her hard work at the prestigious liberal-arts college often produced only average results.