Four undocumented Mexican American students, two great teachers, one robot-build
ing contest . . . and a major motion picture
In 2004, four Latino teenagers ar
rived at the Marine Advanced Technology Education Robotics Competition at the Un
iversity of California, Santa Barbara. They were born in Mexico but raised in Ph
oenix, Arizona, where they attended an underfunded public high school. No one ha
d ever suggested to Oscar, Cristian, Luis, or Lorenzo that they might amount to
much--but two inspiring science teachers had convinced these impoverished, undoc
umented kids from the desert who had never even seen the ocean that they should
try to build an underwater robot.
And build a robot they did. Their robot wasn'
t pretty, especially compared to those of the competition. They were going up ag
ainst some of the best collegiate engineers in the country, including a team fro
m MIT backed by a $10,000 grant from ExxonMobil. The Phoenix teenagers had scrap
ed together less than $1,000 and built their robot out of scavenged parts. This
was never a level competition--and yet, against all odds . . . they won!
