From WHEELS to the White House | Manhattan Times

Posted on March 5, 2014

Story by Robin Elisabeth Kilmer

“It doesn’t happen every day,” says Estiven Rodríguez; the senior was recognized during President Obama’s State of the Union address.

Safe to say that when the President offers you a shout-out, people might pay attention.

Estiven Rodríguez might well count as Washington Heights’ newest celebrity.

President Barack Obama knows him by name, and so does anyone else who saw the State of the Union address in late January, which Rodríguez attended as a guest of the White House.

Rodríguezis presently a senior at WHEELS, Washington Heights Expeditionary Learning School, on West 182nd Street.

For those who missed the President’s remarks, Rodríguez is graduating this spring first in his class after arriving in New York City at the age of nine without speaking any English. He is now an accepted student at Pennsylvania’s Dickinson College, a liberal arts college to which he has received a full scholarship.

In the fall, he will be his family’s first-generation college student.