Not everyone who walks Alisal’s halls leaves with a plan. Monica Ambriz who now works in the school attendance office, left with one thing in mind, never going back. 

School was never her thing, and she wanted nothing more than to put it behind her. What she didn’t expect was finding her way back.

Growing up at Alisal, the classroom was never where she felt at home. It was the quad, her friends, the energy of the campus that kept her going. “I don’t have any memories of my actual classes,” she said. “I have memories of my friends hanging out on the quad.”  

She joined the Focus Club in 2002, a program that took students on tours of college campuses, even though college wasn’t something she saw in her future she still enjoyed being in the club. 

One highlight that stood out was baile folklorico. She competed in both her junior and senior year and won both times in baile folklorico. “We finished with the championship,” she said. “I was proud.”

She fell behind on credits and her path to graduation was anything but smooth. It was Principal Candy McCarthy who stepped in, advocated for her, and helped her cross the finish line in 1991. “She vouched for me and I graduated,” she said. 

She still visits McCarthy to this day, grateful for the push she needed when she had none left of her own. “She told me I can do anything I put my mind to, that it’s gonna be challenging but as long as you push through it, you will get to it,” she said.

College was never on the table. “I was like, nope. I’m done with school,” she said. A few months after graduation she enrolled in a trade school, earned her CNA certification and by 2004 had packed up and moved to San Jose. 

For the next several years, she worked temporary jobs in a temp agency, jumping from position to position, while her husband pursued his degree at San Jose State. “It wasn’t anything that I wanted to do, I would just take it,” she said. But it kept her moving and taught her something new everywhere she landed.

She returned to Salinas in 2023, and worked as a tenant’s clinic. Not long after she joined Alisal. She worked in the finance office, managing club funds, prom budgets, finances for the school, and everything in between. “I did the clubs, the funding, I interacted with kids, I did prom, winter ball, it was exciting,” she said. The pressure of keeping every dollar accounted for was real, but she thrived in it.

When a colleague in the attendance office went on maternity leave, she stepped in to cover for six months. After that she never left, and the attendance office is where she works today.

Returning to Alisal as an adult came with its own strange feeling. The teachers she once sat in front of were now colleagues she worked beside. “I still see them as my teachers,” she said. 

Ms. Lising in particular holds a special place because she met her husband in that very classroom, and they still talk about it every year. “She tells the story every single time to her new class,” she said.

The Alisal she came back to wasn’t quite the same one she left. The mariachi, the bandas, the packed rallies have faded over time. “The rallies were bigger, we had more school spirit,” she said. 

But the feeling underneath it all never changed. “Being here becomes like a family and everybody helps each other out,” she said. It’s why she enrolled her two kids, now a freshman and sophomore, here. She wanted them to feel what she once felt walking these halls.

For the students who are struggling the way she once did, her advice is simple and straightforward. “Focus,” she said. “Everything is just a struggle at the beginning, but in the long run, it will pay off.” 

She knows because she lived it, she swore she would never come back, and now she can’t imagine being anywhere else.