Branching Out: Part 2                                   En Español
Spending a summer overseas, and apart, changes Jazmin and Lizbeth's lives

	The ritzy wineries mostly lie outside the city limits of Napa, home for many of the people who make a living in the vineyards or in service jobs fed by tourism. The Lopez family rarely visited the wineries. More photos ...

AN ASTOUNDINGLY COMPLICATED set of conditions comes together to make the Napa Valley a perfect place to grow wine grapes, an “American Eden.” The 30-mile long valley is tucked between the too-cool California coast and the too-hot Central Valley, providing just the right climate for those grapes to ripen slowly and evenly, according to the Napa Valley Vintners. Everything from the placement of canopies to the way the vines are pruned plays a part. After the harvest comes crushing, fermentation, bottling and more. Longtime Napa Valley winemaker Cathy Corison ’75 describes the making of a good wine as an art and a science and something beyond. “It’s a miracle,” she said. “No question.”

The story behind the Lopez sisters’ success is almost as complex, and just as alchemical. Of course, family played a big part. In the living room of the Lopez family’s humble 1920s bungalow, where Jazmin and Lizbeth had lived their entire lives, hangs a large, framed photograph of their mom’s parents, ranchers from Central Mexico whose lively eyes seem to watch over the house. The Lopez family rarely visited San Francisco, about an hour away, or the swanky wineries that mostly lie outside the city limits of Napa. But every year or so the family traveled south to Mexico for several weeks during the summer to visit their parents’ hometown in the state of Aguascalientes, with cobblestone roads, adobe homes and bountiful guava crops. There the twins stayed with their mother’s mother—the one in the living room picture—listening to stories from the old days.

Hotspots for Napa teenagers are  the bowling alley and the Cinedome  movie theatre, a brick structure awash in pink paint. “This isn’t white wine and canopies,” says Joe Richmond, a teacher who had the twins in his English classes at  Napa High. More photos ...

Their mother, Maria, found these summer sojourns to a slower-paced world to be relaxing. She sometimes pined for the simpler life back in Mexico. Their father, however, found the long summer stays with his wife’s family in Mexico boring. His life was in the U.S. Decades ago, Rodolfo Lopez had followed his father north for better opportunities than his life as a ranch hand. In Napa, he learned to paint homes, then did plumbing work, then electrical. With no time or money for school, he learned English on his own.

While their mother had taught them the importance of family and their roots in Mexico, their father taught them “if you just put your mind to it, you can do it,” said Lizbeth. Jazmin still remembers her parents giving her a Butterfinger candy bar for a good report card. “If we brought good grades” home, said Jazmin, “we knew they were proud.”

Rodolfo and Maria Lopez were unusually involved parents, both showing up for parent meetings and utilizing recommended study tips, said Renee Hernandez, who helps run Talent Search, a program for promising low-income students that the twins participated in. Jazmin and Lizbeth also benefited from the example of their older sisters Ana and Alma; both had graduated from the University of California, Berkeley.

Still, the family couldn’t do it all. Jazmin and Lizbeth benefited from a bevy of government programs, beginning with Head Start preschool. In the sixth grade, they were placed in Talent Search, started during the 1960s War on Poverty, designed to seek out low-income students with potential and put them on track for college. Through Talent Search, they would connect with a privately-run program called Summer Search, which sends low-income high school students who show an interest in serving others on summer adventures. Summer Search encouraged the girls to explore their inner lives and look beyond Napa.

	The Lopez family on the front porch of their home in Napa, Calif., where Jazmin and Lizbeth lived their entire lives before college.  More photos ...

“During that time is when I started realizing it’s OK to be me, and I don’t need to put on a mask for people, to act in a way they expect me to act,” said Jazmin.

The biggest turning point came during their second year in Summer Search, when participants get to go on an overseas service trip. This would be the longest the pair would be apart—six weeks—in their young lives.

Malcolm X drew Lizbeth to Ghana, where she worked at an orphanage. The Civil Rights leader’s famous autobiography had made a big impression on her, and she remembered reading about his time in Ghana on his pilgrimage to Mecca. When Lizbeth arrived in the African nation, language barriers posed challenges but she persisted with independence, impressing the group of young people she came with. She, meanwhile, was impressed with Ghanians’ pride in their own culture: “They were so proud of who they are.” The mixture of material poverty and rich culture reminded her of Mexico, and all the summers she had spent there growing up. “I got back home and just let the pride in my Mexican heritage show,” she said.

Jazmin, on the other hand, hated her first weeks in Honduras and wanted desperately to go home. She spoke the language, and had expectations that people there would be instantly warm and welcoming. Instead, the indigenous people were quiet and cautious. “I was used to my own Mexican culture,” she says. “It took me a long time to adapt.” But in time she realized she had to put aside her preconceived notions and reached out farther, and she started to enjoy her work helping to build latrines for families and teaching nutrition to children. The experience exposed her to the region’s persistent poverty. “I know for sure now I want to do something to fix the situation,” she said. continued ...