Sixteen young men and women received their high school diploma during the Manteca Adult School graduation ceremonies Friday held in the board room of the Manteca Unified district office.

One of them was Tahani Lachelle Lewallen.

“It’s been a long road for her,” Adult School teacher Pam Lawder said before presenting Lewallen her hard-earned diploma.

Lawder was speaking literally of Lewallen’s determined quest for education.

When the Manteca Adult School, under pressure of dire budget cuts, was moved out of the Lindbergh School on East North Street to the school district offices on West Louise Avenue at Airport Way, Lewallen was directly impacted. That move meant she had to walk to her classes from Union Road to Airport Way “rain or shine in order to finish her diploma,” Lawder said to the graduates and their families gathered for the morning ceremonies that concluded with a brunch complete with a graduation cake.

Each graduate’s quest for a high school diploma – two received certificates of completion – was embroidered with a special story all its own, which made the graduation unique. The inspiring stories were shared by each of the students’ teachers before handing out the diplomas.

Joel Ojeda couldn’t make it to the graduation in 2011 because of “personal issues.” But he returned to school “because a full-time job was waiting for him” which required a diploma.

Monique A. Hernandez, who was in the Independent Studies Program, took six years to get her diploma. When she first met with her teacher at New Vision High School in Weston Ranch where she had her classes, she was pregnant with child. But her “strong will” and “love of education” brought her to the graduation ceremony Friday, and with her family that included her mother, sister, and son watching and applauding in the audience, she received her diploma. During the last six years, she had three children, yet she kept coming back to school to continue her studies.

Heather Nicole Thayer almost did not make it in time to receive her diploma. She had to take the bus with her two young children from Stockton where she is currently residing, took another connection bus, and then had to have a friend pick them up at Walmart and drive her to the district office for the ceremonies. The girlfriend looked after the children while she attended her graduation. She was expecting her second child when she started at the Adult School. She had actually finished a program at a private college in Stockton and needed to take a certification test so she can apply for a job, but the certification requirement called for a high school diploma. She needed just two credits to get the diploma she needed.

“Now, I can go and take the (certification) test,” she said, smiling broadly as she showed off her diploma.

Allison Nicole Scharnow was expecting her second baby when she enrolled at the Adult School. Her two children – Amiyah Vazquez, 7 months, and Auriana, 2 – were with her, along with her three-generation family cheering her on when she went up to receive her diploma. She was described by her teacher as “very reliable, very conscientious, very bright, and very hardworking” with excellent grades. She is also now in the fourth month of a nine-month medical assistant program at a college in Stockton where she is number one in her class.

The students’ struggles and hard work in their quest for a high school diploma was embodied in the message delivered by the graduation speaker, Manteca Adult School Administration of Justice instructor, Joe Waller. His speech was aptly titled “The Key.” The key he was referring to was his own high school diploma, which he showed during his speech for added impact. Sharing his own struggles as a teen-ager, Waller said he soon realized that a high school diploma was a vital key to moving on in life.

To stress his point, he said that when he enlisted in the Army after high school, the first question he was asked was, “do you have a high school diploma?”

And when he went to enroll at a community college, again that was the first question that they asked him, he said.

Despite all the odds – he had been on his own since he was 15 when his mother died, followed by his father’s death – he graduated from high school, Waller said. “I graduated at the bottom of my class, but at least, I finished.” Board of Trustee Michael Seelye, a retired college professor, described Waller’s speech as “the best graduation speech I’ve ever heard.”

He seconded Waller’s message about the importance of education, saying, “Without a diploma, you won’t even be a trash collector.”

The following students received their high school diploma on Friday: Alex M. Bingham, Michael Brouwer, Deauntae Cooper, Leticia Louise El Alami, Nicholas Robert Gonzalez (certificate of completion), Francisco Hernandez, Monique A. Hernandez, Michael T. Hoek, Tahani Lachelle Lewallen, David Alex Newton, Joel Ojeda, Robert John Ruelos, Allison Nicole Scharnow, Maricela Silva, Heather Thayer, and Ernesto Velazquez (certificate of completion).