Ex-mentor ‘urging nonvoters to vote’
She was one of those girls with chips on their shoulders as big as millstones, whose broken hearts and broken dreams leave too many cracks for apathy and animosity to seep in. Early on, Sheena Savorillo had plenty of breakage.
She was 7 when she lost her older brother, a gang member in and out of juvenile detention. She was 13 when she lost her mother to cirrhosis of the liver.
The family lost its home after that. She lost her faith, lost her freedom after she was arrested for assaulting her father. She lost hope, falling into gangs and out of school.
Before she was done with her childhood, she had three children of her own.
But there was something defiant and stubborn and strong about Savorillo that saved her.
And there was someone. In 1998, Albuquerque teacher Mary Darling created a mentorship program to help dropouts get back into school. So began the Albuquerque Public Schools’ Drop Back In Mentorship Program — and so began a bond between Savorillo, then 14, and Darling, a determined woman who has never accepted the word “can’t” into her lexicon.
Twenty years later, the women still share a bond that has served — and saved — them both.
“With Mary, there was no judgment, no pity,” said Savorillo, now 34. “But she was also not going to let me get away with excuses. If she sees a door, she pushes me through it, and it usually leads to something good.”
The two women got together last week over cups of chai after Savorillo asked for help in walking through another door — one that leads to a voting site.
“I’m not very political,” Savorillo said as the women pored over a sample ballot. “I just don’t understand the whole gist of it, the mechanics of how it all works. But one of my daughters turns 18 next year, and she has questions. And I just thought, well, I need to do this, and I can’t think of anyone better than Mary to push me through this.”
Besides, Darling was already pushing.
“I am one of the millions of people urging nonvoters to vote in this midterm election, and she was definitely a target for me,” Darling says.
She had pushed Savorillo toward doing her civic duty before, taking her to register to vote when she turned 18.
But it hadn’t stuck. Life, Savorillo said, kept getting in the way.
It always had, and sometimes in far more turbulent ways, especially after her mother died.
“I was grieving and just so angry,” she said. “I felt like God had let me down, betrayed me, like he didn’t love me. I went into a dark phase, got into devil worshipping. I wore a rosary upside-down. That was what the argument with my dad was that got me arrested. He ripped the rosary off my neck and told me, ‘You won’t wear this in my home,’ and there was an altercation.”
Her arrest led to her being court-ordered to attend an alternative school.
And that led her to Darling.
“We just clicked,” Savorillo said. “She was like, that’s it; you’re mine; we’re doing this.”
It took six years — and three children with her boyfriend, Michael Gilcrease — but she graduated from high school, with Darling pushing all the way.
Savorillo and Gilcrease are still together, still busy raising their three daughters in Rio Rancho.
“We’ve come a long way, and we succeeded,” Savorillo said. “I always tell Mary, ‘You did this for us.’ ”
In 2017, it was Savorillo’s turn to do something for Darling. That March, Darling’s son, Deavon Tabish Moran, broke his spine while snowboarding in the French Alps. Savorillo was among the first to offer her support and to push Darling through the door from despair to hope.
“She helped heal my heart,” Darling said.
The mentorship program ended in 2004 when Darling left APS. She’s now involved in the local film industry, line dancing and many community causes, including getting out the vote.
“I said to someone recently that all of us who do vote can no longer carry those who don’t,” she said. “It’s just too important.”
One thing Savorillo said she has noticed about this election is how many women have become involved in the process as candidates, activists, volunteers and voters. Now, she is one of them. It’s another push through the door with Darling’s help, another move toward something good, something better, something she never wants to lose.