La Reina valedictorian says her class is like a farm full of diamonds ready for the world
By John Phane
Acorn Editor

LISA ADAMS/T.O.A. THE FUTURE IS OURS-Stephanie Matthews, La Reina High School Valedictorian, gives a thumbs up as she makes her way to the front of the school with her classmates for 2003 graduation ceremonies. Matthews is a resident of Camarillo, will be attending U.S.C. and plans on going to law school.

"Congratulations. We’ve come a long way," said La Reina Valedictorian Stephanie Matthews as she began her final address as a Regent Saturday. "Even through we’ve been waiting for this moment for a very long time, it almost seems surreal."

Matthews was one of 75 women wearing white gowns, carrying bouquets of yellow roses, that graduated from the Catholic girls’ school. Like angles against the sun, the three score and 15 marched down the front steps of the school to receive their diplomas, their passports into the real world.

During her valedictorian speech, Matthews told what she said is a true story.

She said that an African farmer, obsessed with wealth, sold his farm and deserted his family to travel the globe to seek his fortune. He died alone and destitute at the end of many long years of loneliness.

The man that purchased the first man’s farm spent those years growing his crops and taking care of his family.

"One day he picked up an unusual looking rock, one that sort of looked like an egg, and placed it on his mantle as a curiosity," she said. "A visitor stopped by, and upon viewing the rock, practically went into convulsions. He told the farmer it was the biggest diamond he’d ever seen. The farmer said the whole farm was covered in them."

The farm turned out to be the Kimberly Diamond mine, the richest the world has ever seen.

The moral of the story, Matthews said, is that everyone is standing on their own acre of diamonds.

"Opportunity is there all the time. We just have to see it," she said. She said that the support of her family and going to school at La Reina has given her the tools to mine her diamonds.

She said that with graduation, it was time for the seniors to stop depending on family and teachers for guidance every step of the way, and to go out into the world, polish their own diamonds, and to become the people they want to be.

‘I hope all of you will use your special talents to do something you are passionate about. Something that will bring you true happiness, and makes the world a better place because you were in it," she said. "Remember, we are all making our own futures every day of our lives."