School lights way through hardship for ‘nerd’ of family

Her mother lovingly calls her a “weirdo.”

Her extended family adores her but wonders sometimes where exactly she came from.

Chloe Calotis herself cops to being “such a nerd” that she used to cry when she couldn’t go to school.

“I just always had that mentality that I had to be successful,” Calotis says with a self-conscious laugh. “I felt that if I wasn’t in school, I might miss out on something really important. My mom motivated me to try and do great things and to not let anyone hold me back.”

Such motivation was precious in the unreliable environment in which Calotis grew up.

The oldest of six children, Calotis has had little contact with her biological father. Her stepfather is similarly out of the picture, perhaps in jail; she’s not sure. Her mother has always been supportive but has struggled with chronic unemployment for much of Calotis’ life.

For Calotis school wasn’t necessarily a refuge so much as a place where she could see her personal potential and her future path to success most clearly.

At Nanakuli High School, Calotis participated in the student council and National Honor Society, served as sergeant-in-arms for school government and was a member of Anatomia, a preparatory program for students interested in the field of medicine. She graduated with a 3.9 grade point average.

Still, balancing life in and out of school was often difficult, never more than in her junior year when, in addition to working 30-plus hours a week at a Pizza Hut call center to help with the family finances, Calotis also took it upon herself to look after a cousin’s baby.

“My cousin couldn’t take care of him, and my mother had already fostered another baby cousin and couldn’t take on another,” Calotis recalls. “So I said I would watch him. It was really tough but it was worth it.”

Although Calotis had always had her eyes set on attending college, it wasn’t until this summer when she secured a pair of major scholarships, one from Kamehameha Schools and another through Teach for America’s Native Alliance Initiative, that she knew for sure that she was going.

Now weeks into her first semester at Grand Canyon University, where she is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in nursing, Calotis says she knows for sure that she is on the right path.

“I’m the first in my family to go to college, so I feel a lot of weight on my shoulders,” she says. “I can’t let anybody down. I felt it was important not to stay home, but to go to college and explore what else is out there so I can be a role model and let others in my family know that they can make it.”

Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@staradvertiser.com.