Addy Rodriguez
Addy Rodriguez (far right) with her mom and dad.
“I’ve always had two jobs – I’ve been a single mom for a very long time. But what keeps me in this work is feeling like I’m living my purpose. When I feel like I’m making a real difference in someone’s life, that’s what matters to me.”
Addy Rodriguez joined America SCORES Bay Area in January 2024 and quickly moved from coach to Program Manager for Watsonville, overseeing 18 sites and 27 coaches. Born in Michoacán, Mexico, she moved to Watsonville as a baby and has spent most of her adult life there, drawn by the strong sense of community and her close relationship with her family. With a degree in human services from Fresno State, Addy has spent her career working with vulnerable populations – from homeless families, to autistic children, to kids and adolescents in the foster care system. We talked to her about Watsonville's tight-knit community, the healing power of poetry with kids, and why her inner child needed SCORES.
You've described Watsonville as having this incredible sense of community. How do you explain it to people?
I start by explaining that we’re a family, united. We’re supportive and involved in each other’s lives and in community events. That all makes it feel like home. There’s so much culture here. It’s like a little Mexico in Watsonville. We just had a strawberry run (year two!), and it felt like the whole community came.
I lived here when I was very young, moved to the Central Valley for my school years, and then returned as an adult. When I was young, my parents were very hardworking, and we had a beautiful home, but as I was growing up, my attention was mainly on friends and having fun. I was very into trying to find myself and who I was. When I moved back as a grown-up, I saw life in so many different ways. I’m very close to my mom, and she lives close by, so I get to see her every day–I’m so lucky. My grandma lives with my mom, so I get to see her every day too. It’s a very different phase of my life, and it’s one I love. We experience so many different communities in our lifespan.
You have quite a career path in human services – working in pediatric healthcare, with homeless families, and with kids and mothers in the foster system. Tell us about that work and what draws you to it.
I've always wanted to be in places where I know I'm making a difference. After I graduated from Fresno State with my human services degree, I started working in a pediatric clinic doing administrative work. Then I worked for Janus of Santa Cruz for seven years as a residential counselor, helping women who were trying to get their kids back from foster care. The kids may have been taken away because their parents were involved with drugs. The women were working on getting clean to be able to be reunited with their kids.
During the pandemic, I did case management for homeless families living in shelters. And now I continue to work at a group home with 12 girls in the foster care system between the ages of 12 and 18. They’re at high risk of danger, including suicide. My job title is residential counselor. My goal is to provide a good role model for them, to provide as close as we can get to family, because they don't have family. I want them to feel safe. I help them stay on track with school or work so they have a plan and a purpose, and can qualify for a transitional program until they turn 21. Sadly, the home is closing at the end of the month, so I’ll be leaving there soon.
I've always had two jobs – I've been a single mom for a very long time. But what keeps me in this work is feeling like I'm living my purpose. When I feel like I'm making a real difference in someone's life, that's what matters to me.
So that brings us to how you discovered SCORES. You joined in January 2024 – tell us about that transition and what attracted you to the program.
At the end of 2023, the shelter I was working at was going through a lot of instability, and I wasn’t sure what that might lead to. I felt like I had served my purpose there and was ready to make a difference somewhere new.
It was right before Christmas, and I found an ad on Indeed that SCORES was hiring. As I looked into the position, I thought, This is really good. So I reached out to Hamza (SCORES Chief Growth Officer), and Hamza being Hamza, he called me right away. We clicked, and he hired me almost immediately, which gave me time to onboard and train before the kids came back from winter break.
What attracted me to SCORES was the opportunity to be involved in something I’d always wanted to be part of. At one point in my life, when my kids were little, I wanted to be a teacher. But for various reasons, I didn’t keep going with that dream. My own kids were part of an afterschool program all through their school years, and they were the kids who were dropped off first and picked up last.
As I learned more about SCORES, I realized I could be that person that my own kids had in their lives. I could be there for the last kids getting picked up. I could make a difference in kids’ lives. And to be honest, it’s been the best job I’ve ever had.
Why has it been the best job you've ever had?
Because I've never been at a job where people get so excited to see me, where their faces light up, and they're just like, Miss Addy's here, Miss Addy's here. Kids would see my car pull up, and they would just run to me and hug me, and it's the best thing. These kids are so transparent and genuine. It’s been a real confirmation for me. I really, really love this.
And then the operations management position opened up, and I’d only been with the organization for five months. I've always been a very responsible person, always on time, always showing up the best way I can, but I’d never advanced to a higher position in my previous work.
So I wasn't sure what to expect. So then when I got it, I was just like, Oh, my God, this is so great. One reason I’d left other jobs in the past was that I wanted to grow within an organization. I wanted my potential to be recognized and wanted the chance to develop. But sometimes you can be somewhere a long time, but they just don’t see it. At SCORES, I was getting exactly that opportunity. It felt like I was in exactly the right place.
What impact do you see SCORES making with the kids in the program? I’m especially curious about the poetry impact.
There are so many ways the program is making a change and a difference! I go to school sites, and I see this all the time. I talk to the kids. Their coaches are teaching them core values. They're teaching them how to be good team players. They're teaching them how to teach someone else, showing how it can be fun and rewarding.
When the poetry slam came, a lot of the students were hesitant at first, so I started encouraging them to try journaling. The emotions that came out of that poetry slam were insane! We had kids talking about their parents' divorce, kids talking about how they hated going from one house to another, kids talking about how they lived at grandma's house because they didn't have enough room in their house for their whole family to live together. Kids wrote about just coming from Mexico and staying at families’ homes until they settled in.
And it really hit home because I didn't have a place when I moved here either. The connections that we have with these kids when we have familiar situations really make an impact and a difference. We can say, I know you feel this way, but you're not the only one, and I'm here for you. And I'm here to hear you out.
I always think about this because we're amazing with soccer, poetry, and service learning, but we're above that, too. We’re not tiny and mighty–we’re huge! I get so excited and passionate when I talk about SCORES because it really is happening. For these kids to have a coach and a mentor at such a young age is huge because that means that we're helping to build these geniuses. They're going to remember this. And they're going to remember what an impact a coach made in their life.
Final question. If you could look back and talk to your SCORES-aged self, say between third and fifth grades, what would you say?
There were a lot of things that brought me to SCORES, but I remember saying this to Hamza in my interview, My inner child needs this. I needed to be reminded that life doesn’t have to be serious all the time. It can be fun and adventurous and big. As a kid, you're fearless, you're not scared of speaking up, you're not scared of trying new things, you're not scared of jumping off a swing. Kids want to do everything and anything they possibly can because their imaginations are so big.
So if I could tell something to my younger self, or maybe it’s to my inner child now, it's to stop being scared. Don't be scared of dreaming. Don't be scared of thinking big, because you are big, and you are fully capable of everything and anything you want to do.
To read more Five Questions With conversations, go here.
