Victoria's SAMOHI Wrestling team
Victoria and Nathan
Victoria with Apolonia
Nathan and Apolonia
Victoria and Apolonia
Apolonia with UCSD swag
“‘No’ doesn’t always mean ‘no,’” according to Victoria Salazar. “Sometimes it means ‘maybe later.’”
SMC’s 2025 graduation student speaker is thinking about a rejection letter she received in 2017 from her dream school, UC San Diego. Looking back, she sees that rebuff—agonizing at the time—as an invitation to try again.
“It just wasn’t my time yet,” says the 26-year-old from Santa Monica. “Sometimes setbacks and detours are the way you get where you need to be.”
After graduating in June, Victoria will transfer to—you guessed it—UC San Diego, where she’ll pursue her bachelor’s in psychology and sociology. Her career goal is crystal clear: “I want to be a criminal investigative analyst for the LAPD working with the non-profit National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.” The Alexandria, Virginia-based nonprofit is the nation’s largest and most influential child safety organization.
Victoria is passionate about children, calling them “the little stars in our society who need the most care and attention to shine.” As a criminal investigative analyst, she intends to fight for abused kids by piecing together crime scenes, interviewing suspects and building case profiles.
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Victoria is herself a young mother, so she understands how vulnerable children can be.
Her own childhood was difficult. Born in San Dimas, Victoria grew up feeling abandoned by her incarcerated dad and missing her mom—a struggling teen from a dysfunctional family. At a very young age, Victoria was sent to Santa Monica to be raised by her paternal grandparents, Daniel and Francisca Salazar.
While she was happy there, Victoria shouldered heavy responsibilities. Her grandmother, who speaks no English, toiled long hours cleaning houses. At 5, Victoria was already stepping up as her interpreter, scheduling clerk and client liaison. “She’s a firecracker,” says Victoria, of her abuela. “She really made me the strong person I am today.”
Victoria was a good student and a three-sport athlete in swimming, wrestling and track and field at Santa Monica High. She tutored classmates in math and writing. She volunteered as a kindergarten aide at Edison Language Academy while holding down a 3.8 GPA. So it came as a blow when she was denied admission at UC San Diego in 2017.
She had offers from other four-year colleges, but Victoria opted to enroll at SMC, where she’d taken classes through the high school concurrent enrollment program. She continued swimming as a Corsair and got involved in weightlifting. Pretty soon she was coaching other girls in the weight room.
As a nursing major, Victoria also volunteered in the ICU at Providence Saint John’s Hospital. But her heart wasn’t really in it.
“I was trying to force something that just wasn’t meant to be,” she says, in hindsight.
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As the pandemic landed, Victoria decided to leave school. She spent the next four years working at many different jobs: boxing gym coach, Bloomingdale’s sales rep, professional makeup artist, applied behavior analysis tech.
In 2022, she met and married Nathan Rodriguez, a fellow Corsair now studying computer science with a focus on cyber security.
After giving birth to their daughter, Apolonia, 2, Victoria resolved to finish her education. She returned to SMC last fall, switching from nursing to psychology, and decided to give UC San Diego another try. This time she received the thick envelope.
Looking back, she has no regrets.
“SMC gave me the space and the time to grow mentally—to mature and to focus on what I really want to do. It was a safe space while I was figuring things out.” And after a four-year hiatus, she says, “SMC welcomed me with open arms. No judgment, just: ‘Come on back. Finish your work.’”
Victoria is fiercely proud of what she’s accomplished.
“I broke a lot of generational cycles,” she says. “In my family, the women don’t usually go to school. My grandmother, who immigrated from Mexico in the 1980s, went up to 6th grade. The women before her didn’t know how to read and write.”
So, for Victoria, transferring to UC San Diego is “a big deal.” And she has even higher aspirations for her daughter: “I want her to get into an Ivy League.”
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Later this summer, Victoria, Nathan and Apolonia will pack up their 2000 Toyota Camry. (“It’s only a year younger than me and going strong,” Victoria says.) They’ll leave the converted garage of Nathan’s family home in the Palisades for family student housing on the La Jolla campus. Victoria’s tuition and fees will be fully covered under the UC system’s Blue and Gold Opportunity Plan.
Nathan, who has another year to go at SMC, will continue his studies remotely. Once Victoria finishes her bachelor’s, it’ll be Nathan’s turn. His dream transfer school is UC Berkeley, and Victoria says, “I’ll let him have his chance; he’s letting me have mine.”
Asked why she applied for the commencement speaker honor, Victoria describes her strong feelings upon hearing last year’s address. “It was a beautiful speech,” she recalls, full of thanks to family, friends and mentors without whom the speaker said she “couldn’t have made it.”
Victoria hoped to share her own experience, which had been different.
“I wanted to be a voice for the women who didn’t have people to support them—who just have themselves, who pull themselves up by their bootstraps and keep going,” she says. “I wanted to be a voice for the people who felt alone, so they know they’re not alone.”
Her victorious message to fellow graduates: “All you need is here,” she says, palms pressed to her chest. “If you know who you are and know who you want to be, then truly, no one can tell you otherwise.”
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SMC in Focus Volume XI, Issue 3
Future Designs
Navy veteran Antonio Renoj graduates having found purpose, community and a creative future at Santa Monica College. Read Article
From Center Line to Byline
Adriana Brady was only two weeks into her tenure as its new editor-in-chief when the devastating Los Angeles fires broke out. Read Article
Victoria’s Big Victory
It took eight years, but Victoria Salazar finally received the “thick envelope” from UC San Diego. The 2025 graduating student speaker shares her story of self-reliance, tenacity and hope. Read Article
A New Chapter for SMC’s Creative Writing Program
For the first time, SMC’s Creative Writing Program is offering a 12-unit creative writing certificate for anyone who wants to take their writing to the next level. Read Article
Bragging Rights
A dean receives a statewide award for leadership excellence. A police chief marches from from Auschwitz to Birkenau. An English prof. has a new short story out. Read Article
The Art of the Pivot
Graduating this year with associate degrees in philosophy and general science, Dexter Mack is ready to take the next step toward his dream of studying neuroscience. Read Article