A record 363 graduates received degrees as La Sierra University held its 2005 commencement ceremony Sunday, June 12, the largest graduating class since the school became an independent institution in 1990. That number is up from 353 graduates last year and 323 in 2003, and includes 118 masters, 29 specialists in education, and 17 doctoral students.

This year's graduating class included a number of remarkable stories. Here are two of them:

Pablo Velasco

Pablo Velasco was born in East Los Angeles to immigrants from Jalisco, Mexico. To make sure he stayed away from the heavy gang influence where they lived, Pablo's parents kept him busy. It worked. Despite many close scrapes, Pablo stayed out of gangs.

After an unimpressive high school career, Velasco hit the workforce instead of college. With no marketable skills, Velasco spent six months as a field worker.

Eventually, he landed a job with an Internet company. Working in a high-tech environment alongside highly educated people, he realized he needed to go back to school.

At age 24, Velasco started his freshman year at Riverside Community College, then transferred to La Sierra University to pursue a degree in finance.

Velasco flourished at La Sierra. He joined the SIFE team, where he received valuable experience and made important connections, even serving as president.

Velasco didn't stop when he finished his bachelor's degree. He stayed on at La Sierra to earn his M.B.A. Companies started recruiting him even before graduation. Velasco is now contract manager for a hospital in Alhambra, Calif.

Shelly Gilroy

Born in rural Jamaica to peasant farmers, Shelly Gilroy was taught from a young age that education was important. But when she became pregnant at the age of 17, that goal seemed out of reach.

When daughter Sherieka was born, Gilroy left the child with her mother and traveled to Kingston to look for work. Unable to afford an employment agency fee, Gilroy was sitting in front of the agency after hours when a woman approached in urgent need of a live-in maid. Since all the agency workers had already gone home, the woman hired Gilroy.

After four years as a maid, Gilroy enrolled at West Indies College (now North Caribbean University), an Adventist school in Jamaica. She had to work hard to pay tuition while studying for her associate's degree. After graduating, she took her first real job as a full-time secretary at the college. For the first time, she could afford to support Sherieka on her own.

At West Indies College, Gilroy also had an opportunity to meet Jesus Christ. "It was there that my dignity was restored," she says.

Fourteen years later, mother and daughter graduate together at La Sierra University. Gilroy, now 38, received her M.B.A. in human resource management and Wright earned a magna cum laude distinction in biomedical science and has been accepted to Loma Linda University School of Medicine.