Jeyly Ambrosio-Ruiz knows how to focus on the light, especially when she can’t see it. Even when she was exhausted and drowning in pain, when the darkness inside her threatened to erase any hope for any kind of future, it was her own determination that carried her through, her determination and a path her parents taught her.
“I remember coming to school after spinal tap surgeries and chemotherapy treatments, not feeling my best, and still had to work hard and get through the day with assignments and tests,” she said. “I now think back, and I honestly realize that at the time I did not know how I was making it through. I would stay up long nights, studying for a test, or finishing assignments, when I should have been resting. Many nights I would cry because I did not know if at the end of the day it was all worth it.”
One step and then another. She worked hard and did her best, one more day and then the next.
It was a path that her parents began walking before she was born, a path that began in poverty in a foreign country. That path led Jeyly through hard times and over many obstacles and that Saturday carried her across the stage at Jefferson County High School as its 2023 valedictorian.
Socorro Ruiz and Higinio Ambrosio were only 19 and 20 years old when they left their families behind in Oaxaca, Mexico and emigrated to Wadley, Ga in search of a better future and to start a new family of their own.
“My dad came first and my mom came three months later,” Jeyly said. “They came here seeking better opportunities…. It’s very poor over there and they wanted more. They knew they were going to build a family and wanted better.”
At that time, they weren’t much older than Jeyly is now.
“They said it was hard,” she said. “They had lived in poverty their whole lives and they knew it was not what they wanted for their kids. They lived in shacks really. They didn’t have money for clothes. Food was very expensive and so they couldn’t afford much food. They started school really late and so they don’t have much education.”
Not long after moving to Wadley, Jeyly’s dad found work at a recycling center. He’s been there, running the machines, ever since. Her mother is a housewife and Jeyly has three younger siblings.
Jeyly admits she hasn’t always been the best student. For the first few years school was just a place she had to go, a place away from family, a place where people spoke differently than the people she loved at home. She was in fourth grade when something changed in her, when she realized she wanted to do better.
“I actually started trying,” Jeyly said. “I knew the hard work my parents had done to come here to give us a better life. I knew I had to do better for them. They had to leave their family behind. They haven’t seen their family ever since then.”
Her grades improved and she quickly became a straight A student. In 2016, the year she entered Louisville Middle School, Jeyly, her mom, and two of her younger siblings were in a severe car accident.
“We were crossing a highway and this car hit us,” she said. “It was really bad.”
Jeyly was shaken up. Her brother got stitches in his scalp and her little sister, who was only 2-years-old at the time, was in a coma for 15 days. She eventually recovered and after spending so much time in the hospital and seeing the medical staff taking care of her family, Jeyly decided that she wanted to become an intensive care nurse.
A year later, she was still making A’s, and as a seventh grader, trying school sports for the first time when she was hit in the side by a softball.
Her ribs and much of her side bruised dark purple. Then she started running high fevers and developed chest pains.
“I knew it wasn’t normal, but the Xrays looked fine,” Jeyly said. “The doctors told me I would get better.”
But she didn’t. She started feeling worse. She felt weak all the time and started having trouble breathing. That’s when they took her to the children’s hospital in Augusta.
On Oct. 15, 2017, she could not walk herself into the appointment. After running tests the doctors told her something was abnormal with her blood.
“They told me it was Leukemia, cancer,” Jeyly said. “I had heard of cancer before, but I didn’t have the knowledge of what it was. I just knew it was a deadly disease.”
As soon as she heard that, she said, her mind went dark.
“My parents are not English speakers,” Jeyly said. “I was translating for them, but when I got the news I started crying and shut down. It was chaos in that moment. They had to use translators.”
She was admitted immediately and stayed in the hospital for a full week as she got blood transfusions and a port surgically implanted in her chest.
Her leukemia was stage three, nearly stage four, Jeyly said. Her lymphocyte counts were high and she had far fewer red blood cells than is normal. Her treatment included two and a half years of chemotherapy.
“Chemo wasn’t easy. I look back and I don’t know how I made it through,” Jeyly said.
The rest of her seventh grade year she spent at home or in the hospital.
Her middle school principal, Ken Hildebrant, visited with her and the family in both settings pretty much every week.
“We got her set up with the technology she needed, a school computer and a hotspot, so she could keep up from home,” he said. “She was really worried about that and wanted to complete it. I kept telling her not to worry about it, we got you. But she was adamant she was going to do the work.”
When Jeyly returned to class in eighth grade her immune system was still weak and so she got sick a lot and would have to go back to the hospital for a week or more. Regardless of how bad she felt or how sick she was, she continued to keep her grades up. That year she was named a REACH Scholar, a distinction that recognizes students who will be the first in their family to attend college, and one that provides significant financial assistance if those students keep their grades up throughout their high school careers.
“At the time I was real sick and then there was the transition from eighth grade to the high school,” Jeyly said. “That first year everything counts. You don’t want to get behind.”
On Feb. 5, 2020, she stood in the hallway of the cancer center where she had been diagnosed two and half years earlier and rang the bells of joy signifying the end of her treatment and announcing that she was cancer free.
“Beating cancer, I felt like I could do anything,” Jeyly said. “Hardwork is very important. If you don’t work hard you don’t really achieve anything. When I was diagnosed I thought all my dreams were done. But you have to keep a smile on your face, even when deep down it’s so hard and you feel like you can’t do it anymore.”
For the next three years Jeyly kept a 4.0 grade point average while embracing every opportunity that came along. In addition to being an honor student she was an active member of her school’s FFA, Key Club, Beta Club, Spanish Club, Marching Band, Jefferson County Youth Leadership and archery team.
“My mother is a huge supporter that has influenced me throughout my academic career,” Jeyly said. “She is always there by my side on my long nights of studying for a test. Whenever I felt like giving up, she would push me and tell me to keep working hard because it will be worth it in the end.”
Her principal, Dr. John MacAfee, calls Jeyly a shining example of what public education is about and the keys it can provide.
“She has talked about escaping poverty and a lot of people want that. She is an example of what education can do for students, families and for their futures,” MacAfee said. “She also talks about having to make choices. She could have chosen to lay out because of her sickness, but she made that choice. There were days when she felt bad physically, but still committed to do work that she needed to do academically. And it’s all paying off for her.”
When the school told Jeyly she had earned the school’s valedictorian top honor graduate, she said she was floored. She had been focused on her own path and just doing the best she could do; she hadn’t realized how those grades compared to anyone else’s.
The scholarships she has earned she plans to put to use at East Georgia College as she pursues the credentials to become a pediatric oncology nurse.
“If I could go back and tell that little girl not to fear and to keep working hard because it will pay off, I would,” she said.
But she can’t go back. All she can do is go forward and trust that her faith in her own hard work will continue guiding her path.
Hopefully her story provides some flicker of light, some fraction of hope, that will help guide others out of their own dark places.