On May 17, 2021, my dad unexpectedly passed away due to a massive heart attack. There was a knock on the door that morning from the Sheriff, letting us know that my dad had been found unresponsive and to call Mission Hospital. We immediately got in the car as my mom made that call. That is when we all heard the ER doctor say the words that will stay with me for the rest of my life, “I’m sorry to tell you this over the phone, but James Cruz has passed at 11:49 a.m., we did everything we could before calling his death”. It was, and continues to be, the hardest thing that I have ever encountered. I was 16, on the varsity basketball team and in the blink of an eye, I became an adult. My life changed forever. All my dreams of playing basketball and going to college became small. I quit the varsity team and left school to attend a school closer to home because I saw the financial burden that my mom endured to make that drive every day.  I saw the pain in her eyes, and I heard the late-night cries. Not wanting to burden her anymore, I kept my cries to myself.

My parents did not have life insurance. My dad was self-employed and worked as a carpenter to support my family. Even though my mom worked, the day after my dad’s funeral, she broke her lower leg and was unable to go back to work. Not too long after that, she was diagnosed with skin cancer. My uncle picked up extra shifts to help support our family financially. One year and one-month after my dad’s passing, my uncle, passed as well. The thought of leaving for college was slipping through my fingers again. I knew I couldn’t leave now.

Having life-insurance would have made things different for my mom, my siblings’, and I. It would have helped pay off the mortgage, medical bills, and add to college funds, among other things. I also can’t help to think that maybe my uncle would still be here if he didn’t overwork himself or that my mom wouldn’t be in and out of the hospital from anxiety attacks she experiences with all the stress about how she will pay bills.

I still applied to college and was accepted to California Baptist University as a Mechanical Engineering major and with a minor in Christian Studies. Even though this is an exciting time for me, it also weighs me down finically. This scholarship would not just be for me, but for my family as well and everyone else that has impacted my life as I will be the first to attend college. I hope to be an inspiration for my family and generations to come. I want to increase my knowledge and to be able to learn new skills and broaden my life experiences. I pray that I’ll be the man that my dad was to me.

My name is Leah Maxwell and I’m a full-time student majoring in biology at a local community college. I am also working full-time as a veterinary assistant at an animal hospital. I’m 21 years old and my education path was set back about a year due to my father unexpectedly passing away. He was my sole provider and my best friend for my entire life leading to this point. He raised me as a single father. He had also never set up a life insurance policy. When my dad died, I was left homeless as I was unable to pay for the apartment we lived alone in. I was left dealing with PTSD when I had been the one to find him after he had gone missing. I had no stable housing for a little less than a year until I found a full-time job. If my dad had life insurance set up, I would have been able to avoid falling into homelessness, and I would have been able to commit to my studies during this time.

I had attempted to continue my education by moving around community colleges where I had to move during my housing insecurity, but the trauma I had faced had made it impossible to continue. That was until the semester that I found my job. I am now a full-time student and manage to work full-time to provide secure housing for myself. I’m trying my hardest to do it all but I’m constantly burning out under financial pressure. I have to pay my rent late this month because an unexpected car bill came up. I’m constantly terrified that I’ll end up homeless again.

I’m applying for this scholarship because my aspiration is to graduate with a major in biology and attend vet school. I’m doing everything I can to strive toward this goal, but I was dealt the worst experience in my life at the young age of 19. I am currently working 10-hour shifts at the hospital four days a week, and I am on campus from 7:30 am-9:50 pm during two other days of the week. I turned 21 less than a month ago, and I have no parents or guardians to help me. Sometimes I feel like a small helpless child and other times I feel like I was forced to skip 10 years ahead just to survive. I know my dad would want to see me thrive. It can be extremely hard to ask for help, but sometimes you really need to. This is one of those times.

If my mom had had life insurance when she was killed in a car accident, it would have undoubtedly changed my life. My family has always been poor, so the day I turned fifteen in September of my sophomore year, I had to get a job and start bringing in money for the household. I helped pay bills, buy groceries, and purchase anything else we needed. April 27, 2021, was the day my mom died. My need to work and support the family never changed. If she had life insurance when she died, my situation would be drastically different.

I wouldn’t have to worry about working forty hours a week to care for my family while completing scholarships and maintaining decent grades. I might have even been able to attend college without having to stress about how it’s being paid for. Attending college has always been my plan, but I would have liked to do it all at one school, unfortunately, due to my mom not having life insurance and my family’s poverty. Instead, I’m starting at a community college for my first two years and will be further away from my friends and family. By attending college, I hope to give my future family a safe place to live without wondering where they’ll sleep and where their next meal will come from, unlike what I experienced. Believe it or not, due to poor decisions made by my mother (bad choices in men, drug use, quitting jobs, etc.) I have been homeless; I’ve slept in tents and gone from place to place, looking for somewhere to sleep. I have knocked on doors, asking people if they had any food we could eat.

At one point, my siblings and I were placed in foster care, and right after my mom regained custody of us, she was killed. My step-grandma took us in, and I currently live with her,  three disabled uncles, and four half-siblings. My grandma and I are the only forms of income in the house, so we both have to work forty hours a week to make ends meet. In the past two years we’ve lived with my grandma she has had two heart attacks and stents placed in her heart. Life insurance would have given my grandma something to work with and would have lessened the strain put on her.

Despite all the hardships I’ve experienced, I continue to push forward. I’m determined to give my future family the best life possible. Due to my circumstances, I know how important life insurance is. So, as I think about starting my own family, I am determined to have life insurance because I don’t want them to go through what I have experienced.

Hi, I’m Chloe Haberman, and I am currently a senior in high school. On June 19, 2017, my life was completely changed forever due to my mom tragically dying. I remember being worried about not remembering the day my mom had passed away for some reason. Maybe it was because as a twelve year old, feeling as if I didn’t get enough time on Earth with my mom, I never wanted to forget the time I did have with her. The truth is, this is the one date I can say for a fact I will never forget because of how much my life had changed in what seemed to be a quick second. After my parents had gotten a divorce when I was two, my mom was in and out of different relationships with different men. Most of which abused her physically and emotionally in front of me and my siblings. My mom’s third and last marriage was always up and down with her husband being abusive toward her and my little brother. One weekend my siblings and I went to my grandparents house in Arizona and little did I know saying goodbye to my mom before we left was going to be the last time I ever saw her. Her husband had killed her that weekend and then killed himself.

I suddenly had to go live with my dad full-time which caused more financial stress onto him because he was bringing in the only income in the house. Due to my mom not having any life insurance,I didn’t get the better end of the stick when it came to setting up funds for my future college financial needs. Maybe if my mom did have life insurance, I wouldn’t be in the same situation I am in now, but life isn’t about the “maybe”. Since my mom was a single-mom and working minimum wage jobs, there wasn’t much money left behind after her passing to help my siblings and I out when it came to future expenses.  I continued to try my hardest in school to get the best grades I could, obtaining a 4.0 gpa and working part-time to help put money aside for my college needs, but without scholarships, a four year would not even be a consideration for me. In the time that I’ve had since my mom has passed, I’ve really developed the mindset that despite the terrible things that happen, you can’t give up your dreams and ambitions. If I were to stop trying my best in the things that I do, my life would be no more than just the bad things that have happened to me, and I refuse to let my trauma define me.

I want to mention that my mom’s name was Jamie because as I tell the story of her sudden death and all the bad things that had happened, I still want everyone to know that she was an amazing woman and the most loving mom that was only looking for someone to love her. This scholarship would help me tremendously to get through college in which I would hope to continue to make my mom proud while being able to achieve my goals of being a nurse and helping the people that need it.

I often wonder if the grief’s aftershocks—the agonizing moments of loss that have punctuated the years after my mom died—are more painful, as a whole, than the precise moment of her death.

In 2011, when she passed from stage IV colon cancer, I could barely comprehend how my beautiful, healthy mother had gotten so sick. My 8-year-old brain, therefore, couldn’t begin to envision the toll her death would have on my family. I never expected that every milestone in my life, happy or sad, would force me to re-experience the trauma of her death as I imagined how different my life would have been without the instability created by her death.

The loss of my mother (and the massive cost of cancer treatments, despite my mom’s health insurance) forced my dad to work longer hours, leaving me and my brother little time to spend with our only parent. I took on new responsibilities to ease my father’s load, looking after my little brother and taking care of our house. However, my dad’s small business struggled financially, forcing him to spend our savings and shut down the family company. He sold my childhood home, filled with memories of my mom, and moved to a small, cheap rental unit in Florida. I realized that if disaster struck my family or my father’s health failed, we had no financial safety net, largely due to my mother’s lack of life insurance. The stress of feeling like I could lose everything at a moment’s notice took a harsh toll on my mental health, and the added expense of therapy prevented me from treating my depression and anxiety.

This financial and emotional uncertainty suddenly intensified when I was accepted to my dream college, Georgetown University. I was thrilled: my mom, a Chinese immigrant, had always wanted me to attend a school like Georgetown. My spirits fell, however, as I realized that even with financial aid, it would be an immense struggle for my family to afford tuition. I’m now a sophomore, and paying for college has been more painful than I expected. I’ve been unable to register for courses on-time because my tuition payments have been late for multiple semesters, jeopardizing my ability to complete the required classes for my major.

I’m majoring in biology because I want to work in biomedical research, with the ultimate goal of improving cancer therapies for people like my mother. Thus, it’s upsetting that the very motivation for my desire to help cancer patients—my mom’s death—may also be the obstacle that stops me from achieving my dream. I worry that with my college fund empty and my little brother entering college next year, this vocation is beyond my reach. This semester, I’ve found it incredibly challenging to balance my rigorous biology coursework with an off-campus job. I can only imagine that if my mom had life insurance, I’d be much closer to my goal of using my biology degree to protect other families from cancer’s short-term and long-term hardships.