Standing on the convocation stage in Ian Beddis Gymnasium, Sayuri Gutierrez (BA ’16) was thinking about her grandmother.

In particular she thought about her grandmother’s battle with cancer, and the phone conversation they had the last time they spoke. It was 2010 and Sayuri, attending high school in St. Catharines at the time, was unable to travel back to her native Mexico to visit her dying grandmother because of unresolved immigration issues with the Canadian government.

“We said our goodbyes through the phone,” she recalls, “and she made me promise that I would continue my studies and graduate from university.”

Nobody from the family had ever graduated from post-secondary education, but that wasn’t what nearly caused Sayuri to break the promise she made to her grandmother.

Problems had started when her father Hermelindo — who had come to Canada as a seasonal agricultural worker — developed kidney disease that kept him from working. Then, the day after the rest of the family came to visit him, Sayuri’s brother was hit by a car while riding a bicycle, and ended up in a coma for weeks.

The family stayed in Canada and Sayuri and her siblings went to high school as the Gutierrez family sought asylum on humanitarian grounds. In 2010 the family couldn’t return to Mexico to visit her dying grandmother, or they wouldn’t be allowed to come back to Canada.

Then in 2012 they were deported anyway.

“When I thought I wasn’t going to be able to fulfil that promise I made to my grandmother, it made me sad and disappointed.”

The family’s plight made national headlines and caught the eye of the migrant advocacy group Dignity for Agricultural Migrant Workers, along with Brock professors Richard Mitchell and David Fancy, former Vice-Provost Kim Meade, Director of Student Awards Rico Natale and the Brock University Students’ Union.

The Brock group organized an award for children of migrant workers, and Sayuri was its sole recipient. The result was her four-year education fully paid for through the generosity of others.

That grassroots response was enough to turn the tides of deportation, and the family was allowed to stay in Canada.

“A few weeks later we received news that our permanent status had been approved,” she said. “It was amazing. You have no idea.”

Mitchell, the Child and Youth Studies professor who helped engineer the scholarship, said graduation day was a very special moment.

“The network of supporters for this project was considerable,” he recalled, “and as Sayuri passed by to receive her degree, I was reminded of commitments in our Strategic Mandate Agreement to these kinds of transdisciplinary projects — the sharing of University resources with community partners to address the complex issues of the 21st century.

“Brock’s partnership in support of Sayuri’s education has already given Niagara — and the country — huge dividends, since her family are now living here and on their way to becoming full citizens.”

The past four years weren’t easy for Sayuri, who plans to continue her education with the ultimate career goal of helping children of other farm workers.

“It was very challenging and overwhelming,” she said, “but I found a lot of people to help me through the years, and there were always people supporting me.”

When her name was announced at Convocation in October, a huge cheer went up from her parents, siblings and fiancée. For everyone it was a mission completed, a promise kept.

“After so much our family has been through, it’s a feeling that is hard to describe,” Sayuri reflected. “It was like seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.”

As for next steps, her grandmother would be very pleased to know that Sayuri is now working to save money so she can return to Brock to obtain a master’s degree.