Computer Technician
Rosendo Corralez discovered his knack for fixing computers right around the sixth grade, when he was a student of Ms. Veronica Taylor at Alisal Community School.
During that year, somehow he and some of his classmates got a hold of a magnet, which they waved around the computer monitors Ms. Taylor had in her classroom.
“If you put a magnet on it, all these rainbow colors come out, so we did it once and it stayed like that and we got scared,” Mr. Corralez said.
Computer -- or television -- screens that work with a Cathode Ray Tube can have the image distorted with a strong magnet. Newer monitors will reset by just turning them off and back on, but apparently, the computer’s at Ms. Taylor’s classroom were so old the trick didn’t work. Still, the next day the computers were back to normal, so Mr. Corralez and his friends used the magnet again to bring back the “cool colors.”
“We still did it for close to a week,” he said. “We pass the magnet around, and you’d see a bunch of cool colors, and then it’d just stay like that.”
The group of friends stopped the prank but Mr. Corralez continued with his interests in computers. He assembled and disassembled the one he had at home, and he began repairing computers for the neighbors. After graduating from Alisal High, he began taking computer classes at Hartnell College, where he earned his associates degree. An internship at a local hospital turned into a job, so he ended up staying there for 1.5 years. Then a position opened at Alisal Union School District, and Mr. Corralez applied. He’s been here for four years, and intends to return to college to earn his bachelor’s degree in the near future.
After starting his new job, Mr. Corralez told the story of how he garbled the computer images when he was in 6th grade. Low and behold, it was his new boss who had been assigned to fixing them.
“It was you!” Mr. Villarreal told Mr. Corralez when learning of the story, a tale they know chuckle about.
Since every student at the Alisal Union School District has a computing device, there’s never a lack of maintenance issues. As a computer technician, Mr. Corralez is assigned to different classrooms throughout the district to try to figure out what’s wrong with Chromebooks or iPads.
“I used to break them, now I fix them,” he said, adding that he can tell when the devices have encountered a student like himself used to be.
“It reminds me of myself,” he said. We didn’t have these devices. If I’d had one of these one I was younger… They remind me of when I was breaking these and seeing how far you could go.”
Whenever he goes into a classroom he likes to tell students that he used to be a student like them and answer all of their questions.
“When I was at Fremont, they asked me to read a book, so I did. It makes my job pretty good. I like it a lot,” he said.