Senior distance runner Monica Salazar is a first-generation immigrant from Guatemala. She's proud of that and of her native country where she still has relatives who have rooted for her and been proud of the strides she's made as a Viking.
 
And, there are many things she misses.
 
"I miss the culture. The architecture and the variety of different colors of buildings is something I don't see here. They're beautiful and unique to Guatemala. I also miss the tropical and warm temperatures. Everyone is so sweet and giving," said Salazar.
 
She also misses "being able to grow coconuts, bananas or mangos in my backyard."     
 
But, Salazar's fate could easily have been that of her parents Lucy Garcia and Tomas Salazar…forced to quit school during their eighth-grade year in rural Guatemala, working in the fields to help provide food and shelter for their families. And, in Guatemala 15 or so years ago, her fate could have been even worse.
 
"The education system and crime level were very bad in Guatemala. It has one of the highest rates of crimes and abuse against women in the world. It's very dangerous to be a female there," Salazar said. Plus, the teachers aren't as respected and the schools suffer as a result.
 
Instead, Salazar is carrying a 3.82 GPA in pre-nursing at PSU and has the luxury of deciding whether to graduate this spring or take another year and finish her athletic eligibility at PSU.
 
That's all because Salazar's parents made what must have seemed like an earth-shaking and risky decision at the time.  
 
"After my parents got married and had their first child, they still had hope things would change for the better in Guatemala. Unfortunately, they didn't."
 
So, Tomas Salazar and his two brothers saved enough to hire a "coyote", to guide them through Mexico and across the border into the United States, which was hungry for migrant labor to harvest its farm crops. It was a dangerous, eight-day trip that ended in the berry fields where he recalled being paid 38 cents a bucket to pick strawberries.
 
For the next three years, Tomas Salazar would work a few months in the fields, going to different farms depending on the season, then take his earnings back to Guatemala and his growing family in the rural part of Santa Rosa.
 
By the time he was given a green card, which allowed him to work legally in the U.S., he and Lucy had four children and they were more determined than ever to get to the U.S. so their children would have better prospects. Getting a U.S. residency permit was a long and expensive process, however. They were turned down on their first try, which Salazar said "was very frustrating and sad because my dad worked so hard for it." They were desperate but didn't want to cross the border illegally as a family because "it was too dangerous and risky." A second application was successful the following year – "a huge blessing for our family," Salazar said.
 
Getting to the U.S. was one thing. Surviving was quite another.
 
Garcia and Tomas Salazar brought their young family to a rural part of Washington county, outside Banks. Monica Salazar was six-years-old. She'd had only part of the first grade in Guatemala, spoke no English and not very good Spanish. They'd been living with her grandmother and great grandmother and the household language was a mixture of Spanish and Quiché, a Mayan language.
 
Their first American home for this family of six was a 300-square foot trailer in a mobile home community near the farm where her parents picked fruit. It was called "Casa Blanca." A worker had a car and would help drive kids to school and sometimes teachers would drive them back home.
 
Salazar was enrolled in the first grade in the rural community where she was bullied by other kids. "I felt so behind everyone and didn't know how to speak English. Because the school was not very diverse and I knew no English, I was constantly bullied. All the teachers were white and didn't know any Spanish so it was very hard to communicate with them," she recalled.
 
The following year, "my family was able to afford to move out of the trailer and into a migrant work apartment. I finally began feeling accepted and began to see hope. Although it wasn't the fanciest and nicest area to live in, it felt like home and I had a sense of belonging."
 
Equally important, she was enrolled in a different, more diverse school. "They were very accommodating and I was able to learn Spanish and English more. They were also very inclusive in teaching us about different cultures which made me feel accepted and loved."
 
She took English as a Second Language (ESL) class throughout elementary and middle school, which strengthened her Spanish as well as her English. "I was also enrolled in a summer school program that helped me get better. I started to get the hang of things once I got to the fifth and sixth grades."
 
In the U.S., Salazar's world also blossomed to include sports.
 
She remembers playing soccer "and beating all the boys" on a co-ed team. "I was always good at running after the ball and beating the boys. It was fun and I enjoyed the 'rush' it gave me."
 
She began distance running when an older brother, Angel, encouraged her to try out for cross country as a high school freshman. She was also inspired by an eighth grade PE teacher who made her class run a mile every week. "I remember liking it at times, hating it at other times, but I was always the first one to finish."
 
At Century High School, Salazar was a two-time Cross Country Athlete of the Month, received a CLAW award in 2017 and 2018 for track and wrestling, and captained her cross country and track and field teams as well as her girls wrestling teams.
 
In high school, she didn't take running seriously, she said. "I was involved in other sports and swam for two years and did wrestling for my last two years. I was part of Century High School's first-ever women's wrestling team and was very proud of that (she made it to the state women's tournament)."
 
She didn't think her run times were good enough for a Division I program, she said. But, Angel, who was running for Grand Canyon University, encouraged her to give it a try anyway.
 
And, Viking assistant track coach Josh Seitz admits he was a bit dubious when Salazar knocked on his door as PSU was transitioning its track and field program to specialize in distance running.
 
"We always want to give local runners who are passionate about the sport a shot. Although her times weren't exactly up to our 'walk-on' standards, she had a former high school classmate here who vouched for her character and work ethic. She has had to scrape and claw for a couple conference appearances. Still, in many ways, she has set the tone for what we expect from our distance running in terms of work ethic, respect and support for teammates, and emphasis on holistic growth as a human being," said Seitz. 
 
Besides earning All-Big-Sky academic honors, Salazar also has had her moments at several distances. 
 
"The signature move of Monica's Portland State career has been shaving huge chunks of time off her personal bests. She shaved 71 seconds off her 5k personal best during the course of the 2021 track season, and knocked 25 seconds off her 3k personal best during her last indoor season before the pandemic," reported PSU Assistant Media Relations Director Andy Jobanek following the recent Mike Johnson Classic, hosted by Western Oregon University.
 
At that meet, she knocked close to 90 seconds off her personal best in the 6k, finishing in 22:47.6 to place 12th overall and shatter her previous best from the 2019 Cougar Classic. That helped the Viking women place third as a team, even without their full complement of runners as half the team competed at another invitational that day.
 
Seitz said Salazar is better the longer the race gets. "She certainly has a love for the 5k, but Monica has just scratched the surface of the longer stuff. She always knocks the long runs and longer lactate threshold sessions out of the park. I definitely see marathon training in her not-to-distant future."
 
For Salazar, her time running at Portland State has had ups and downs.
 
"Coming into my first year, I was the slowest runner on the women's team. Freshman year was very hard on me because I had no confidence," she said…and she trained most of her freshman and sophomore years without a training group. She got back on track after some personal issues her sophomore year and started to see some progress. "Junior year came and COVID destroyed my dreams of running my first 10k, which was very devastating."
 
She's proud that she stuck with it last year. She trained on her own and in small pods with teammates last spring, and was able to run a few races, creating her best season up to that point.
 
She was finally able to run a 10k at the Vikings' home meet, the NW Distance Jamboree. Her only competition was someone chasing the Olympic 10k standard, which she found daunting. Still, "once that gun went off, I just went and my brain shut down. I vaguely remember hearing my teammates and coaches yelling splits every time I passed them…'90,90,90,89,89.' I kept that pace and just kept running. The last mile hurt so much, but I was able to finish the last lap with an 85 and an overall time of 38:23."
 
That night, she said "I was able to prove to myself that anything is possible if you trust yourself and just go for it. This was a race I was very proud of."
 
Head Cross Country/Track Coach David Hepburn wasn't surprised at her 10k time. "She has the right mental toughness to stay engaged in one of the longest races we run at the NCAA level. It takes a special individual to grind through that event, staying focused and trusting your training." 
 
For all her personal success as a runner, it's the education part of her Portland State experience that's most important to Salazar.
 
"My education comes first and I always prioritize that over running," she said. She's done extremely well in her classes and had a "hate/love" relationship with three terms of Anatomy and Physiology. "That was hard, but I learned so much from it."
 
The highlight was dissecting and working with human cadavers. "I've enjoyed the hands-on time we were able to have with cadavers during the lab," she said, while still noting that the two B-pluses and an A for those terms dropped her GPA "A LOT (keep in mind this woman is carrying a cumulative 3.82)."
 
Salazar's career choice was influenced by that first U.S. year when her family lived in the cramped trailer.
 
"I remember seeing the Virginia Garcia (clinic) van with the little girl on it and knowing they were here to help us. I liked the diverse group of healthcare providers they had and how they made healthcare accessible to everyone. That inspired me to get interested in the health field. In fact, after moving out of the trailers, I knew I was going to come back one day and help people living here (which she did last summer as a volunteer with Virginia Garcia's outreach program).
 
"Casa Blanca has always had a very special place in my heart because it was the trailer home my family and I first lived in here. I was able to tell my story of living there to the children and their parents. I felt a connection with them and was able to influence them to never give up and provide them with hope," said Salazar.
 
Monica Salazar has made her mark at PSU, said Seitz. "I hope Monica knows how influential she was to building this team over the last few years. I'm a huge fan and can't wait to see what her future holds."
 
And overall, her parents, Lucy Garcia and Tomas Salazar – who weren't able to go to high school, let alone college – must feel they did the right thing by making what must have seemed a momentous and frightening decision to uproot their family and head north to a completely different culture and language so their children would have opportunities denied them by circumstances.
 
The oldest brother, Thomas, has an associate degree from Clark College as a mechanical technician. Angel earned a bachelor's degree from GCU in business marketing with a minor in accounting. Youngest brother Yeison is currently working on general education classes at Portland Community College. And Salazar has recently applied to several nursing schools in Oregon.