Born in Texas, raised in Mexico: How Carlo Aguilar found himself center stage at CCA's record-setting scholarship fundraiser

Carlo Aguilar was sitting near the stage with two other scholarship recipients when Mike Hanley, a CCA Foundation board member, called his name at the Hyatt Regency Aurora-Denver Conference Center.

For a moment, Aguilar did not move.

He looked behind him. Then he looked toward the back tables.

“They were like, ‘Yeah, you,’” Aguilar said. “I was like, ‘Oh, yeah.’”

When he stepped on stage at CCA’s annual scholarship luncheon April 30, Aguilar saw his name written across an oversized Community College of Aurora Foundation check. The check was dated April 30, made out for $1,000 and marked for the John Wolfkill Legacy Scholarship.

That is when the surprise settled in.

“I was kind of startled at first, because nobody told me about it,” Aguilar said. “So I was like, ‘Oh, shoot, this is me.’”

Aguilar became the first recipient of the John Wolfkill Legacy Scholarship at the annual scholarship luncheon, a record-setting fundraiser that raised $312,000 for student scholarships, according to Brittany Davis, scholarship and donor impact coordinator for the CCA Foundation.

The scholarship was created to honor John Wolfkill’s 10 years of leadership at the CCA Foundation, Davis said.

“Besides the monetary support, we hope a student who receives the Legacy Scholarship emulates John’s ability to leave things better than he found them,” Davis said.

A scholarship made CCA feel possible

Coming out of high school, Aguilar was not sure CCA was where he would end up.

He considered taking a year off. He considered the Air Force. He worked at Costco, where he said he was a cashier, stocked shelves and pushed carts.

“I was like, man, I feel like I could be doing a whole lot more,” Aguilar said. “I know I can.”

Now, Aguilar is studying criminal justice and said he wants to help his community on a larger scale.

Aguilar said he is an only child, born in Texas and raised in Mexico. Growing up in Mexico, he said college did not always feel like the expected next step.

“Most people just finish high school or school straight to a workforce, and that’s OK,” Aguilar said. “Some people need to provide for their families. I understand that, but it’s also a privilege to go to higher education.”

He said he did not always picture himself going to college, partly because he did not enjoy the classroom environment he experienced in high school.

CCA started to feel possible after he was selected for Aurora Gives, a scholarship program that gave him more support before he enrolled.

“Just getting that scholarship really just made me feel like, OK, I can do it,” Aguilar said.

Applying anyway

CCA was close to home, had criminal justice and felt realistic, Aguilar said.

Even then, he said he sometimes questioned whether another scholarship application was worth the time.

Aguilar said he learned about the John Wolfkill Legacy Scholarship through Aurora Gives, where Davis held monthly student check-ins and shared scholarship recommendations.

The application asked about character, ambition and the experiences that shaped him, Aguilar said. To prepare, he kept a Word document with stories, reflections and moments he could use in scholarship applications.

Still, the doubt stayed with him.

“More common than not, I found myself being, should I do it, should I not?” Aguilar said. “I have other things I could be doing right now. I have homework. Is this scholarship worth my time?”

He applied anyway.

“I was not losing out on anything if I didn’t do it,” Aguilar said. “But in my case, I could win a lot for just doing it.”

Looking back, Aguilar said he thinks his application showed his perspective and ambition.

“I just highlighted where I’m from, what I want to do and why I’m here,” Aguilar said.

Davis said Aguilar stood out as a 4.0 student in the Aurora Gives Scholarship program who also works at CCA’s Career Readiness Center as a work-study student.

“He’s committed to CCA and truly makes everyone he comes into contact with feel comfortable and seen,” Davis said.

Room to look for internships

Before CCA, and during school breaks, work often came first.

Aguilar said he sometimes finished a semester and clocked in at Costco the next day. He valued the experience, but said it left little time to explore criminal justice or gain experience in the field he wants to enter.

The scholarship changes what his next school break could look like. Instead of going straight back to work, Aguilar said he may look for an internship connected to criminal justice.

“This money has changed the way I approach that,” Aguilar said. “So that would look like now, working over summers, maybe doing like an internship to expose me to the career I want to do.”

Blake McKenna, chief operating officer of SM Energy, said the company supports CCA scholarships because of the students the college serves.

“The students that come out of CCA come out with a lot of strength, tenacity,” McKenna said.

McKenna said SM Energy wants to partner with colleges that push students to achieve more, including students who have worked through difficult circumstances.

For Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman, the scholarship program connects directly to the city’s workforce needs.

“I have so much confidence in CCA in terms of working with our employers, understanding the demand that is out there in terms of training and education to get jobs that pay a living wage,” Coffman said.

Coffman said that matters to him as mayor.

“That’s very important to me,” Coffman said. “And so I personally support the scholarship program.”

The work before the stage

Wolfkill, whose 10 years of Foundation leadership the new scholarship honors, said the stage moment is only part of a scholarship story.

The bigger question, he said, is whether students can picture college as possible in the first place.

At the luncheon, Wolfkill recalled an Aurora Gives student from Central High School who became the first in his family to attend and graduate from college. The student, Wolfkill said, had not seen college as an option until a scholarship made him willing to try.

Aguilar said people often see the stage moment, the award and the oversized check. They do not see the work behind it.

“The biggest thing I will say is the discipline,” Aguilar said.

For Aguilar, college has meant studying, asking questions and finishing assignments before watching TV or walking the dogs.

“People see the highlights, people see the success,” Aguilar said. “They’re like, dang, I want to be just like that. Where the just like that looks like super grueling effort and work that goes into all this.”

For Aguilar, the stage moment did not come from assuming he would win. It started when he applied even though he was not sure it would be worth it.

“It’s those little decisions that really shape the end goal,” Aguilar said. “And for me, that looked like winning the scholarship today.”