Winner of $250 gift certificate for beauty and spa pampering

Valerie Rodriguez
Fremont, CA

Imagine being 26 years old and having to care for three kids after a horrible and abusive marriage—with no family, home, or money to help support you. My mom worked two and even three jobs just to pay rent. She never had to tell us the reason why she was never home, but we knew. We knew how much sweat and blood she poured into her children's happiness.

Despite her hardships, she always made us feel special. When it was one of our birthdays, or if it was a holiday, we knew that she loved each of us with all of her heart.

Valerie Rodriguez (right) and her mom, Patricia Troxell,
in a photo taken after they learned that Valerie had
won the Mother's Day contest.

One day, when I was around 11, my mom unexpectedly picked my sister, brother, and me up from school. Usually, we walked home by ourselves and would wait for her to get home later that night.

This time, we got in the car and she said very seriously, "I have all of your stuff packed. We have to go somewhere tonight."

At this point, we went from being excited that our mom was picking us up to being scared that we were in trouble, or something worse.

No one said anything while she drove. Eventually, she had driven for so long that we all fell asleep. About six hours later and 20 degrees colder, she screamed out, "We're here."

I looked outside and could not believe it. We were looking at snow! To some people, this might not sound all that exciting. But I had never actually been any place where it snowed, so this was really amazing. It was too late to actually play in the snow that night, but after unpacking our stuff, she pulled out some fruit punch and told us she was going to make slushies with the fresh snow.

At this point, I was ecstatic. Snow and slushies: How could it get any better for a kid?

We all slept together in sleeping bags on the floor next to the heater in our hotel room. The next day, we woke up and there were snow disks on the bed! She didn't take us to any fancy snow hills—just some random steep hills off the side of the road.

We had so much fun. We all went down so many different hills and crashed at the bottom so many times.

Looking back on it, it's amazing how she pulled this off. She took the time to buy us snow disks ahead of time so that we would be surprised. She scraped up enough money to afford a hotel room for us to stay in and asked a friend to borrow a video camera so that if this was to be our only vacation, we could at least have it on tape.

I remember how happy we all were and how it brought us all together even more. She made us forget about our financial situation. It was a vacation from everything, and during that weekend with my family, I had the best time of my life. I will never forget it.

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