Education, even at the high school level, was not a luxury Michelle Solano could afford. Kicked out in her early teens, Solano lived with her grandparents for a bit. But by 15, she was bouncing around and couch surfing at friends’ homes, working various part-time jobs just so she could purchase the basic necessities she needed to survive. When a full-time position opened at the restaurant where she was working, she gladly took it, but that meant she also had to drop out of high school.
Solano went on to do some telemarketing work and even secured an apartment, but by 19, she was pregnant with her first child and experiencing complications that forced her to quit her job. Soon after, she would lose her apartment and spend most of her pregnancy homeless.
But that would all begin to change a couple of years later in June of 2001 when she began working full time as a custodian at ˾ (˾). At the time, ˾ offered a GED program, which Solano took advantage of, and six months later, she earned her high school equivalency diploma.
She then took a handful of classes at ˾, thanks to ˾’s tuition waiver for employees, but the single mother decided to take a break from college in 2008 to focus on raising her now three children while working full-time. It was during this time, while working the night shift at ˾, that she would stumble upon a flyer promoting , a nonprofit organization that brings volunteers together to help families build or improve their homes. Living in a small two-bedroom, one-bathroom, run-down apartment that only had a swamp cooler, Solano immediately applied to Habitat’s home-building program and was accepted.
Habitat for Humanity requires its clients to provide sweat equity, helping to build their homes as well as other clients’ homes. They are then given a no-interest, affordable mortgage loan, a portion of which is paid for by their sponsor after they’ve made their payments for a set amount of time. The Solano home was finished at the end of 2010, and the family of four moved in in February of 2011.
“This is my very first house, and I am so grateful that this program gave me the stable security of never having to move again,” Solano said. “It gave us the space that we needed, and we were so excited to actually have air conditioning.”
By 2021, Solano had completely repainted the inside of the home, her children were older, and it was time to finish what she started all those years ago.
“One of the main reasons that I decided to go back to school was to show my children that it is never too late to finish something that you started,” she said. “My youngest was not doing so well in high school and decided that she would rather work than finish her schooling, so I wanted to show her that even if you work, you can make school happen. She wound up completing high school and knew that working retail was not what she wanted for her life, so she started talking to me about college, and now she is enrolled at Rio Salado and doing great! Michelle Obama said, ‘Change happens one person at a time,’ and I believe if you can change one person’s perspective, in return, they will change the next person’s perspective.”
When Solano stepped back into higher education, she did so gingerly as she wanted to make sure she could balance work, school, and her homelife. She started by taking one class in the spring and one in the fall, but it wasn’t long before she was taking two classes at a time and even taking four accelerated Flex-Start classes during one semester. It was also around this time that she started a new job at ˾ as a Property Material Technician in Receiving, and credits her new team members as some of her biggest cheerleaders.
“My supervisors and team have been super supportive of me completing my associate degree,” she said.
Solano will receive that Associate in Applied Science in Organizational Management degree and cross the commencement stage with the rest of the Class of 2025 at ˾’s annual graduation ceremony on May 9, which takes place this year at Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale. She will be the first person in her family to graduate from college. She’ll then take a few more classes at ˾ and then transfer to Northern Arizona University, utilizing the to earn a Bachelor’s in Strategic Leadership. She hopes to find another career opportunity at ˾.
“I would like to possibly move to Student Services, maybe Outreach,” she said. “I would like to be able to help students who are struggling or may need assistance with everyday life. I want to show them that I know what it is like to have roadblocks come up and that these are just little bumps that we as individuals can drive over with the right support system.”