A vision of her own

COEUR d'ALENE - When Melly Casillas learned she was named the 2012 Parent of the Year by the National Head Start Association, she says she couldn't breathe.

"I thought, me of all people. Thank you, Lord," said Casillas, who lives in Rathdrum with her husband, Mario, and the couple's three young daughters.

The 33-year-old has been involved with the Kootenai Head Start program since 2009. She serves on the agency's policy council, and has contributed 632 volunteer hours to the Lakeland Center in Rathdrum.

The national award recognizes a parent who serves as a role model for his or her children and the community by demonstrating a commitment to education, financial stability and positive parenting.

Casillas attends North Idaho College full-time, and plans to graduate in May. She will then transfer to Lewis-Clark State College to complete a bachelor's degree in social work.

She gives credit to the local Head Start program, for helping her get to this point in her life.

The road has been long, and there have been challenges along the way.

There still are.

Casillas, the child of a migrant, farm-working family, has an hereditary eye disease, retinitis pigmentosa. She has just 10 percent of her vision left.

"I'm eventually going to go blind one day, but with the new technology available, you don't have to stop working," Casillas said.

Getting her education completed has become a race against time.

She can no longer drive at night. With her husband, she is doing everything she can to teach her little girls, ages 7, 5 and 3, the things they will need to know when her eyesight is gone - how to be safe in the kitchen and help in the grocery store.

"There's no type of surgery or cure for it. It's just a matter of time," she said.

She says it all in matter-of-fact way, with no evidence of self-pity. Her approaching blindness is just another thing to deal with.

The face of Head Start

Casillas said being named Head Start's Parent of the Year hasn't really sunk in yet.

She does know it's good for Idaho's program to be represented like this, at the national level.

The federally funded Head Start program provides child development and school readiness services to nearly one million children each year, most from low-income families. Children who are in foster care, are homeless or with disabilities are also served by Head Start.

"It helps the whole family. They have encouraged me to move forward, to find the resources to set myself up to reach my goals," Casillas said.

Local Head Start director Beth Ann Fuller said the agency is excited to see Casillas recognized in this way.

"She's an excellent example of a hard-working, Head Start parent," Fuller said. "She's not only dedicated to her entire family, but to her community as well."

Fuller said Casillas' attitude about her approaching blindness is "amazing."

"To me, it's hard enough to be in school and be a parent, but to also know you're going blind? That's such a huge challenge," Fuller said. "Her ultimate goal is to make sure she gets this done so she's able to work in a field where she's able to help people. It's just so remarkable."

Building a better life

Casillas and Mario moved to North Idaho in 2004 so Mario could accept a job doing drywall.

The couple fell in love with the area and the people, and within months, learned they were expecting their first child. They knew this was the place where they wanted to raise their children.

Casillas said it is important to her to provide a stable, consistent home for her children, in one place.

As the child of migrant workers, Casillas' own family moved around a lot as she was growing up. They went wherever there were tractors to run, seeds to plant. They picked strawberries, bundled onions, greens, radishes, potatoes.

Early each year, at a set time, they would move from Texas to Michigan. Then, from May through October, the family traveled wherever there was work.

"We went to Ohio, Florida. We've been all over," she said.

That lifestyle made it difficult to build relationships, to have friends in school, she said, because they always had to move along.

"It made it harder for us to concentrate in school and get the routine medical care we needed, although there were little mobile health clinics that came into the camps. We called them 'campos,'" she said.

With her husband, Casillas said she is doing everything she can to ensure her family achieves financial stability. She said they want their girls to have opportunities that will help them become productive members of society. She hopes her husband will be able to find steady employment.

The construction slowdown that came with the collapse of the economy has made it difficult for Mario to find steady work.

"That's like his art. When he's working, he's very, very happy. He loves to talk about his work, the details, about how fast he can do things," she said.

In addition to the support the family has received from Head Start, Casillas and Mario are taking parenting, personal finance, marriage and bible study classes through their church, Real Life Ministries. Through these classes, they have been able to pay off a vehicle, learned to budget, and firmed up their faith.

"Sometimes people struggle a lot without any hope, but knowing God just gives you the hope and the strength to persevere in whatever you're doing, especially during the hard times," Casillas said.

Desire to help others

Casillas became a Certified Nursing Assistant in 2006, and is licensed in Idaho and Washington. Her desire to attend college was first sparked by the work experiences that followed. She went to the homes of people with disabilities and helped them learn to cook for themselves, choose their clothes, dress themselves. She also visited people living in assisted living facilities.

"The reason I wanted to go into the social work field was because working as a CNA, you'd see all the things that go on, people that are not being taken care of. You feel helpless," Casillas said. "I wanted to be able to have the authority to do something about those things, to help people not being treated well, people who are not able to get the services they need."

Casillas is already doing this kind of work through her church, and in her school work.

Through a work-study grant, she has spent time at St. Vincent de Paul's Help Center in Coeur d'Alene, taking information from people applying for housing, utility, clothing and food assistance. She works with families affected by domestic violence, and helps with her church's program that provides assistance to people in need.

She said she is compelled to get her degree so she can help the elderly, the disabled and at-risk teens. She said she feels most drawn to helping troubled adolescents.

"Coming from an Hispanic background and seeing the communities, I know there is a lot of drug abuse. Parents leave the kids. They're not attended to," Casillas said. "I want to be the person who helps the family get out of that."

She said she wants to help give other kids the same things she wants for her own daughters.

"It breaks my heart to see children who have parents, but the parents can't really do anything for them," she said.