Success stories from our world
Success Stories
Ilia Lopez '09
Following her dream
Ilia Lopez rediscovered her calling when she joined the Film Studies program at St. Cloud State University. |
Growing up a latch-key child in New Jersey, Ilia Lopez found friendship in television shows and movies.
She also found her calling. But for years she did not act on her yearning to work in the entertainment industry.
Two college experiences in Florida ended without a diploma, including an attempt at an associate degree in graphic design that fell three classes short.
By 2004, she’d grown weary of Florida so she moved to Minnesota with her partner, James — in part because they enjoy the Minnesota-based movie “Grumpy Old Men.”
When James landed a job with the State Patrol in St. Cloud, Lopez checked out St. Cloud State.
Fast forward to 2009 and the 29-year-old Lopez is interning with the Central Minnesota Red Cross, waiting to hear about an internship with the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation and preparing for her May graduation with honors.
Armed with a bachelor’s degree in film studies and minors in creative writing and women’s studies, Lopez will pursue a master of fine arts in film. Her first choice is a graduate school in Australia, where she studied a semester through St. Cloud State’s Center of International Studies.
Lopez credits St. Cloud State professors with rekindling her love of learning, helping her discover feelings of success and accomplishment absent since middle school.
“The professors here are so amazingly wonderful,” Lopez said. “And, they have such a passion for what they are teaching that it evokes a passion in you.”
Lopez’ passion for film is split between film studies and film production. The part of her that dreamed of being a film critic is making way this spring for work behind the lens and in the editing room. She’s directing and producing an HIV/AIDs educational video for Central Minnesota Red Cross.
The hour-long video replicates the live presentations she’s given for four years as a Red Cross volunteer. Her interest in HIV/AIDS began as a 13-year-old when she heard about the pandemic in nearby Newark, N.J. and New York City. She sent off for information from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and then embarked on a program of self-education.
Her middle school principal rebuffed Lopez’ attempts to bring HIV/AIDs education into the classroom. But, as general knowledge of the disease and condition grew, she found herself helping lead an HIV/AIDs school assembly at her high school in Harrison, N.J.
As her final semester at St. Cloud State draws to a close, Lopez looks back on a life path littered with obstacles.
Stricken with an infection as an infant, she endured the amputation of her right leg above the knee when she was two-years-old, learning to walk and play sports with a prosthetic limb. Twice she failed to earn a college degree, despite wearing the hopes and dreams of her working-class Puerto Rican/Cuban family on her shoulders.
Now, with her bachelor's degree and magna cum laude tassle a reality, Lopez revels in a life transformed.
Like Ariel, the heroine in her favorite Disney animated picture, “Little Mermaid,” Lopez has found the legs upon which she can move into “a whole new world.”
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