BY: BELLE ZUNABY

Twelfth grader and Miss Cardinal contestant, Jessica Navarro, wishes to be someone who represents her community. She is determined to lead others with her leadership skills into wanting the same.

Her determination comes from living here in San Bernardino and seeing but also experiencing struggles that we might not always pay attention to. That is one of her bigger goals, being the compassionate person she is. She is also involved in a lot of community service.

“Helping my community is giving me a better experience and it’s helping me learn how to communicate with people and I could use that to help me in the real world,” Navarro says.

Navarro is San Bernardino High School’s Senior Class President and her main focus is to help students and to get them more involved and engaged in activities like the rallies. She has a lot of school spirit and wishes for her friends and peers to have the same. With the title of Miss Cardinal, she will make rallies more fun and orchestrate things in the likeliness of her fellow peers.

She has said she wants to be a school counselor as she thinks she would excel in the career given her outgoing, friendly, and compassionate nature. “I’ve been involved in many clubs throughout high school. So I’m always busy. I’m able to communicate better with others and I’ve developed teamwork skills. Whenever I see people at lunch, I like to sit with them if they’re sitting by themselves. As for compassion, I put my heart into community service,” Navarro says.

Happiness is her first ambition in life. She says that the most important people in her life have stopped at nothing to bring her happiness and she wishes to do the same to others. “My parents have worked really hard to try and make me happy and I want to do whatever I can to make them happy too. I don’t want them to have to keep working hard. I want to take care of it,” Navarro says.

Navarro maintains a 4.0 GPA throughout high school and says wasn’t easy. It definitely takes a lot of work and determination. “The key is to just find a balance. Whenever I’d have to miss class, all my teachers and advisers would be very understanding,” Navarro says.

“A piece of advice that I would give to students is to prioritize. That’s something that I use a lot. I’d try to get everything done at once and it wasn’t good. I think that they should put certain things first, like a class they might be struggling with. They have to work hard to be successful.”

Remember to support Jessica as she competes for the title of Miss Cardinal 2018-2019 on September 15, 2018 at Sturges Center for the Performing Arts! Doors open at 5 pm.