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What do a skateboarder and an entrepreneur have in common?

Well, the answers pretty simple actually, determination, determination to reach their goals, the drive and focus to keep trying out something, even when they feel like giving up.

Today, we're going to look at two such individuals.

One, Devin Mullins, a skateboarder in the Central Valley.

And two, Elijah Hernandez, an entrepreneur who created his own nonprofit organization, SHINE for Education.

These stories and more to come on Valley PBS Spotlight.

Hey, guys, what's up?

My name is Randall Bacon, and I'm a producer here at Valley PBS.

With a population of over 2 million people, our Central Valley is home to some of the most diverse personalities in all of California.

Music tells you the texture of our world.

This is my home.

I don't have to be home with this.

If makers and creators are on every corner, there's never been a better time than now to tell the stories that capture the heart and soul of our great valley.

What Is she...

So for the past couple of years I've been doing just that with Valley PBS Spotlight, a short documentary series that uplifts, influences and inspires.

We've interviewed many business owners, hometown heroes and creative minds whose captivating stories help to make up the Central Valley's rich environment.

Come along with me as we showcase some of these incredible stories and engage in deeper conversations with the interviewees right here in the Valley PBS studio.

To a lot of people, skateboarding is simply a means of transportation, but for this next guest, it's everything.

First up, we have Skateboarding in the Central Valley.

Enjoy.

It's always been seen as a rebellious thing?

Exactly.

Its just rebel mentality.

Its just corny as that sounds.

But it's serious, though.

Growing up, I was a more alone and everything.

I had some stuff going on at home, so I was just left to myself, not really too much guidance and everything so I just went out on my own.

I don't know.

Id always realize even when I was younger, I was just always away from home.

10 years old, just going around all around the city, just on a bike, just away from home.

And then I was like, man, I wish I got on it earlier because like this is my home.

This is where Im meant to be.

Like, I don't have to be home with this.

What makes skateboarding?

I think just the people.

Everybody's good at their own things.

You got some skateboarders who are good at flack ground, some skateboarders that are good at rails, ledges.

There's different styles, but nobody really cares about that.

Everyone really cares if you have a good vibe.

It doesn't matter what color you are, it doesn't matter what you look like, it doesn't matter your gender, as long as you can kick it and you have a good time and you have a good attitude, you can hang, then you're going to be a homie.

And that's unique about it.

Theres skaters are getting knocked out and they'll get right back up and they're like, “Nah, nah, I'm getting that real quick.

” It's like, dude, you have to be insane for it.

I feel like... Mostly what I see is, when people are like that and they're resilient and they constantly get up and they're back on it and they're like, man, I don't care about taking that hit.

Usually, they're just running away from something or I don't know, just problems.

Thats why we're all out here.

We all, we're all running away from something.

These are our problems and it's like you slam out your problems.

Turn it off.

I'd say skate culture in the Central Valley, a lot of people are very, very supportive of it.

We have Art Hop.

You can skate at Art Hop and you can combine yourself and immerse yourself in not only just the art and the music, you get to meet cool people who may not skate themselves, but they support it and they'll talk to you about it.

It's really nice just to see that whole art community just flourish together.

Skateboarding in the Central Valley, dude, it's gigantic, man.

There's people from all over.

Everybody here is usually really good to each other.

And then, there's a lot of spots... A lot of skateboarders from up north or down south come here to skate a lot of the time.

And it's just luckily that I wasn't born on the outskirts or something.

If they don't have stuff that's big, they wish that they couldve grown up skating here sometimes.

To the people who don't understand it's like, what thing do you have to hold onto that really gets you through?

My lifeline is skateboarding.

That's the only thing I've ever had to grab through and just keep going.

I don't know, it just gives you something to hold onto.

I am in the Valley PBS studio now with Devin Mullins, a local skateboarder here in Fresno.

I got a lot of comments from viewers talking about how they connected with your story, especially because of the fact that you said in that video that you used skateboarding as a way to get away from your home life and to disconnect.

So my question to you is, when did you start skateboarding and why did skateboarding really stick with you?

I started skateboarding around 15, a little bit later than most folks, but it stuck with me because it really kept me from going left and kept me going right.

And in school, I wasn't hanging around the greatest people.

And with that too, really, I almost got off track pretty heavy.

So this thing really kept me going.

It gave me a line to stay in.

And skateboarding can get you into trouble.

It can keep you out of trouble.

For me, it kept me out of trouble, and I got really lucky that I had that.

So it kept me from not feeling too lonely from the home life.

It kept me company and that's why I stuck with it a lot.

And earlier we were talking about how we have bad influences in our lives and good influences.

How did skateboarding introduce you to better influences to actually do that to get you out of trouble?

It introduced me to an art aspect, and it introduced me to people that were on the right path.

A lot of people think that a lot of skateboarders are just this or that, and they have all these stereotypes, but the guys that I met, especially over at Melody Park, all those guys, those are really the ones that kept me on.

Theyre a lot of just straight edge guys hanging around them all the time.

They just wanted to skate all the time.

They had juice, they had fire in them.

I wanted to be there.

I wanted to be there with that fire.

I wanted a piece of that.

So it really just kept me there all the time, nonstop.

It introduced me to art, it introduced me to cameras, recording, filming.

It just enthralled me.

I just got stuck in there.

That's one of the things I've experienced having grown up skating actually with you in Fresno, is the guys that I was meeting, the guys, the girls, whoever it was, everybody was so nice.

Everybody was so accepting.

It's a community that takes care of one another and actually builds each other up.

So that's one of the things I really noticed about it.

So there's always been a stigma surrounding skateboarders.

What do you think the majority of people get wrong about skateboarders?

A lot of people think that skateboarders are just these hippies that just are always against everything, they want to drink, they want to party, they want to do all these drugs and everything.

And it's like, dude, I want to hang out with my friends.

I want to skate.

I want to stay alive.

I want to do what I love.

I want to be happy.

I want my therapy.

It's a form of therapy rather than just like, oh, partying, going and doing this, doing that, losing all your responsibilities.

You're just going out there messing around.

For us, it is a play thing.

It's fun and everything, but it's not just some excuse to go out and mess around and go to be hoodlums or whatever.

It's an excuse for a form of therapy.

Again, I've said before, it's a lifeline.

It just keeps you there instead of...

I don't know.

Instead of just doing what people think that we're doing, it's not.

It's art, it's love, it's passion.

It's not what stereotypes people think it is.

That's true.

And I feel like a lot of people think that skating is very dangerous, which of course it's a dangerous sport, but really in terms of an environment, the safest I ever really felt with people was when I was skating with you guys.

Exactly.

And there is a danger aspect.

Physicality, yeah, of course, it's always dangerous.

I can break it arm.

Im going to break leg, but that's part of the... Everybody needs a thrill.

If you want that thrill, you want that juice, you need to get that satisfaction from something, what else...

I don't want to go out and get that satisfaction from going out and partying and stuff.

I want that satisfaction from tre flipping the set of stairs from crooking a handrail or something.

I want that satisfaction.

Hitting the floor and then being like, “Hey, sick.

I'm good.

That woke me up.

I'm feeling the earth.

I'm feeling life right now.

” There's no better feeling than rolling away from a trick that you've been trying for maybe even days.

Exactly.

There's no better thrill than that.

There's nothing.

There's nothing.

It's a very euphoric feeling.

I hate to use that word, but it is.

It straight up is.

You don't remember what happened when you finally landed.

You don't remember.

You just feel good.

You feel that form of relief.

You feel that more dopamine than, I don't know, Instagram will give you or something.

You feel that, I did that for me.

I did that for me.

I'm here for me right now.

I'm not here for anybody else.

I'm doing that for myself, for my heart.

And in a way, like you said, that's what makes it really an art form, is because you're not doing it for approval or, oh, I want somebody to see that this trick looked good or something.

You're really just doing that for you and your own enjoyment.

In the video, you said your lifeline is skateboarding.

What does that mean to you?

My actual lifeline, what I'm meant by that when I said that is...

I hate to be blunt in a little vulgar in fact, but I probably wouldn't still be around if it wasn't for this.

By lifeline, I didn't mean it's my form of fun to feel like, yeah, I'm alive.

It's what keeps me alive.

Quite literally, if I didn't have this, I probably wouldn't be here.

I probably wouldve freaked out by now and really lost it.

Like I said before, it's therapy.

It's really just therapy for me.

And it's therapy for a lot of people too.

I got, again, a lot of friends over at specifically Melody Park is what I think about because where I grew up at skating.

A lot of those guys have the same thing.

I was just talking about it with a friend a couple nights ago.

They feel that same thing.

It's therapy.

If it wasn't for this, just plank of wood with wheels, I would not be here anymore.

That's what just keeps me going.

It gets me juiced.

Again, you feel that fire.

It's something to be passionate about.

Its what just gets me to wake up in the morning or go outside at night.

And that goes into my next question, and this is a little bit more deep, but when you're gone, what do you want to be remembered for?

What do you want your legacy to be?

Honestly, I want to... Man, that's a hard question to answer, but if anything, it'd be instead of people being like, “Oh, remember... ” Instead of me being, “You remember when I did that trick that one time?

” it's more like I want to be, especially working at the skate shop, I want be known for some of the high school kids coming in or the middle school kids that are still out and skating and be like, “Dude, like that guy... ” Or when they're adults telling their kids, I want them to be like, “Dude, that's the guy that helped me put together my first skateboard, that was there for me when I had questions, that was there trying to encourage me to keep going, that was there to be there, ” there as, I hate to say an inspiration, not to sound conceited or anything, but there as an encouraging item, just like an encouraging person that really kept somebody going.

I want to be I known for keeping somebody going, if anything.

That's awesome.

And having known you, I can just say, you are an inspiration to so many people, and so many people love you and look up to you.

And I'm sure you know you've gotten some people into skateboarding yourself, which probably saves lives in and of itself.

So you are an inspiration to people.

So thank you so much for coming in, Devin.

Appreciate it.

When it comes to education in the Central Valley, there's always more that can be done.

This next spotlight shifts our focus to Elijah Hernandez, a 20-year-old entrepreneur here in the Central Valley who's doing everything he can to give back to his community through his nonprofit organization, SHINE for Education.

Let's take a look.

It's always interesting to think about SHINE for education and myself.

As much as I'd like to say SHINE for Education is a huge team, which it is, a lot of it does start with my own personal experiences.

Growing up in Fresno, seeing my friends getting locked up, pass away, made me very depressed at a very young age.

At age 13, I first attempted to kill myself.

Going through something like that, it made me reflect on what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

I realized there was more people who were struggling just like me, and I figured out one thing that really helped me were afterschool programs, and that's where it started.

First, I started with what I knew, which was robotics.

Then I understood that not everyone is going to be into robotics the same way everyone isn't into sports.

So I branched off from robotics into media productions, creative writing, subject by subject to giving every student I could possibly find an opportunity to get into something new, not only build a career for them in the future like I did, but just give them the time to be themselves, give themselves a creative outlet that I know that if I had at a younger age I'd be even more further along than I am right now.

Hi, my name is Elijah Hernandez.

I am the founder of SHINE for Education, a local nonprofit dedicated to the creation of afterschool programs with a focus on project-based curriculum.

It's a very long story.

I grew up in Fresno, but I actually went to school in Clovis.

My family moved out from Selma all the way out here to give me better educational opportunities.

I grew up going from elementary all the way to high school, seeing a lot of kids fall into bad habits, bad experiences while I was able to take advantage of what I had over in Clovis Unified.

I had a chance to recollect on my own experiences and decided, why not give kids the same opportunity I had and bring that back home?

So that started with, at the age of 16, making my first educational programs focusing on robotics.

So in between that time, all the way until when I was in senior year, I got the opportunity to teach over 1,000 children the basics of STEM, science, technology, engineering, mathematics.

Ultimately, the ball just kept on rolling.

One moment I was just teaching kids in the halls of high school classes to then getting invited to teach 7,000 miles away out in the villages of Laos.

A week after, I would end up being invited to present to former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown, the 1,000,000th solar panel ever made in California.

I think we should all stand up, give a round of applause to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for the million Solar roofs.

That ended up just being the sign for me to take it to the next level.

Here I am now pursuing it as a career, teaching, not just at schools anymore, but at foster homes, daycares, understanding that education isn't just in the confines of a classroom.

Education is everything.

Education is everywhere.

After teaching about a hundred kids in Laos, I understood that impact is shown in more ways than one.

I was teaching educational workshops here locally, but after going to Laos, understanding the conditions these students were going through, not even having shoes, not having meals that eats, seeing literal blood and bone in the streets, I understood that I needed to make a bigger difference in my community.

Even if one of the students participating in one of our programs doesn't want to pursue that career for the rest of their lives, at least they have a tangible skill thatll help them get into a good program, into college.

I have students who volunteered through my program that used our organization and our programs as the tickets to get them into UC Santa Cruz, Duke University.

I want to be able to spread that kind of impact more, making sure not only do they get experiences that they remember for the rest of their lives, they get skills that also follow them for the rest of their lives.

It's interesting to think about my own success in the context of my entire family.

Not so long ago, my great-grandpa was working in a raisin farm picking raisins.

I used to help him as a little kid, pick raisins in that same farm.

And when he wasn't doing that, he was working in engineering shops, trying to build parts, getting minimum wage.

Then you go to my grandparents who were also in that same exact situation.

Fast-forward, we were able to get from Kingsburg and Selma area to Fresno, going from farmers to CEOs all in the matter of four generations, the American dream.

It's funny to think about.

This isnt instant success.

This might be the first time you ever heard of me, but trust me, my family has been here laying it down brick by brick in the Central Valley, just so one of us to get a spotlight just like this.

We're now joined by Elijah Hernandez from SHINE for Education in the Valley PBS studio.

Elijah, you went from attempting suicide at age 13 to teaching overseas in Laos, to meeting Arnold Schwarzenegger, to then ultimately creating your own nonprofit organization.

Tell me, what changed from age 13 to now?

After that experience at 13, I made a bit of a personal commitment to myself that whatever I was going to do for the rest of my life, starting at 13, I wanted to do something that was going to make me happy.

And I think that was the biggest change, going from just living life day-to-day and focusing more on a pursuit of happiness.

And through that whole journey, it gave me time to recollect that I can use what I'm doing to impact others.

And what you're doing is really changing lives.

And do you see that impact on a day-to-day basis and how does how you go forward with your business every day?

Yeah, it's impacting students in a variety of different situations.

The real impact of our programs, unfortunately, we aren't going to see until a lot of these elementary students graduate, but we see it in the small moments when they're learning, really enthused, being joyful about something that they want to learn more about.

And even when they aren't learning, I've had students come up to me personally, give me hugs, these little kids saying, “Hey, I'm really happy that you came out today because you and your education team, it made our day, ” things like that.

It just reminds me to keep on going.

Its tough.

And that's amazing.

I wonder being so young, because how old are you?

21 now.

So you're 21.

A lot of people, when they get into education, it's usually later in life.

Do you find yourself feeling a lot of pressure from being so young in education?

Certainly.

There's a bit of a high standard, especially with the projects that I set early on at 17.

Just like you mentioned, I was meeting government officials, traveling overseas.

So beyond just the pressure of being in an older environment, thats something youre going to encounter regardless when youre 21 in any job market.

More so, it's the personal pressure that I'm always trying to tackle, making sure that whatever product that I'm delivering for students is the best that it possibly can be.

Everything outside of that kind of a core vision where I'm trying to impact students, it's all, I guess, miscellaneous.

So on that note, what is it that keeps you motivated and inspired to keep doing what you're doing?

I'm constantly motivated by being in the community, seeing what students around me are actually interested in, just getting a tapped into the mind hive of what Fresno wants and seeks for its youth.

And from there, just also learning a bit more on education overseas and just outside of California, seeing what common trends are being pushed forward right now and seeing how I can bring that innovation here to the Central Valley.

And when you taught overseas in Laos, did you see a big difference in terms of education and educational resources?

Basically, how are we privileged here in America with our education and how can it improve?

Yeah, I mean, it's an entirely different situation when you're comparing America, one of the, if not the leading world power as a country, compared to a third world developing country where, I mean, some schools don't have power.

There aren't lights to turn on once it goes dark.

They aren't after school programs.

Even the way curriculums developed, there's different regulations that go behind that.

In fact, there's very little regulations.

I mean, compared to, say, California here where we have a bit more established standards, compared to overseas, there isn't as much guidance in regards to how education is being developed.

So I would say the biggest thing is the foundations we have here to give students a safe haven to pursue their education in the first place.

And also turning that as a space to help them even enjoy their hobbies.

That's something that kids overseas aren't getting.

So their experience with education is far more different.

I would say theyre far more grateful because it's not something that they really have the chance to get every day.

So I guess that would be my question then, is teaching in a Third World country, how did you implement what you learned in the Third World country to your teaching styles and habits here in America with SHINE for Education?

It was a bit of a simple process in many ways.

How curriculums develop in the first place is assessing the needs of the student base.

Here in the United States, I was creating educational workshops more based around coding, science experiments.

When I went overseas, I realized that assessing the student base, that I had to go a bit more introductory beyond just coding, introducing students to science and even general literacy.

So I made sure to change some of my workshops, to focus more on introducing students into science in general, as well as translating some childrens books from English to their language to make sure they can get the first step into the door in regards to literacy.

When you're long gone, what would you like your legacy to be?

What would you like people to say about you?

Yeah, it's a bit of a tough question, right?

I'm only 21.

I hope I have a few more years left to go, right?

Yeah, hopefully.

Yeah.

ah, hopefully.

So something I just try to keep in mind is the feeling that I'm trying to give these students as we're teaching these programs.

Beyond the curriculum, it's more so a philosophy that I want students to believe that they can do whatever they want to pursue, but also, once they have this kind of leverage where theyre established in their community, to give that back in some way.

Be kind about it.

I'm 21.

Again, I've taught over a thousand kids, traveled around the world for it.

I would hope that even someone who is one of the students that I teach one day when they're my age and they're an established director at 21, that they use the resources that they get to help out young videographers like themselves like they used to be when they were only eight years old in a SHINE for Education program.

It's building that cycle in our community to give back to itself That is a great goal and a great thing to have in mind as you're achieving your goals and planning for the future.

Thank you so much for coming in and we appreciate what you're doing and just keep doing what you're doing because it's changing lives.

Thank you.

We really appreciate it.

Thank you so much for watching.

I had a great time here in the studio interviewing these amazing people.

We can't wait to see you back here next time.