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Family Vibes Are Real for These Los Banos Alumni, Coworkers
“The Los Banos Campus would still feel like family, since it’s so small, but having a family member here makes it better. It feels even more supportive.”
Tiffiny Tevis, Library Media Technician
By Luciana Chavez Special to Merced College
Vikki Grijalva was minding her own business on the job one afternoon on Merced College’s Los Banos Campus when our other protagonist, Tiffiny Tevis, with a friend tagging along, arrived at Grijalva’s window to pay a fee.
The friend blurted out: “Hey, are you Robert’s mom?!” And that was how Grijalva met Tevis, her future daughter-in-law.
“I was grabbing my friend, like, ‘You’re not supposed to ask that!’” Tevis said, laughing at the memory. “Her son and I weren’t even officially dating.”
Grijalva recalled: “I was thinking, ‘Who is that cute girl?’ A couple of months later, Robert brought Tiffiny home to meet me. He’d never done that before. I knew then that she was special.”
Today, Tevis is Robert’s wife and mother to their 7-year-old son. And she and Vikki—both alumni of Merced College—are now coworkers at the campus where they first met.
“Although that first moment was awkward for me, their family took me under their wing and loved me how I wanted to be loved,” Tevis said.
Roots
Grijalva started as a CalWORKS employee in Los Banos in 1997. Then she became a Merced College student in 1998, and she graduated with an AA in 2001.
It was 2014 when Tevis first met Grijalva as a Merced College student. She graduated in 2016 and eventually earned a BA in business administration from Central State University. She’s now studying for an MBA.
In 2001, Grijalva first became a Merced College employee with a part-time job in Admissions and Records at the main campus in Merced. In 2002, she returned to Los Banos for another part-time position.
“I was a single mom with two kids at that time, so I had to go for it,” she said.
She applied for any position that offered a step up, eventually landing a full-time gig in Financial Aid. Then she moved over to work with the Extended Opportunity Programs and Services (EOPS) program.
Grijalva became a program assistant in Los Banos and held that job for 15 years before a reorganization in December created an Instructional Support Coordinator position over noncredit and adult education operations, which she now holds.
Tevis, the Library Media Technician in Los Banos, could not have guessed she would love library work until she was assigned there as a student worker in 2014. She graduated Merced College in 2016 and had her baby, then returned for part-time work in 2018 and a full-time role in 2022, all in the library.
“I love helping students,” Tevis said. “They come in with so many questions and think we might have the answers. And so we make sure we do. I tell them there are so many people here with knowledge of so many specific things to support them.“
Growth
Grijalva has multiple eras in the history of the Los Banos Campus. She remembers the portable classrooms on Mercey Springs Road and the joy of walking onto the current campus on Highway 152 for the first time in 2007.
“(The new campus) felt huge, and we’ve already outgrown it,” Grijalva said. “We’ve seen a great expansion of students from different backgrounds. Our ESL students are not just Spanish speakers. It’s the source of such wonderful growth. And we don’t let language barriers hinder anyone. We use Google translate, our hands, whatever. We make it work. The end goal is to teach all of our students to be self-sufficient.”
Grijalva loves taking daily walks around the campus with coworkers, including Tevis. During the summer, they might walk past the campus food forest, picking peaches and plums for themselves.
“I love having coworkers to share that with,” Grijalva said. “It’s a little family.”
Family
Family is a theme at work, but Grijalva also respects Tevis’ integrity as a professional. She shared a story about a time when Tiffiny was doing a project that included coworkers’ names, and Vikki wanted one of the handmade items herself.
“She told me, ‘If I make a special one for you, I should make one for everyone,’” Grijalva said. “That’s something a leader says. I might have been very briefly irked, but she said it in the absolute nicest way. I truly love that quality about her. It’s cool because we respect each other’s roles here.”
The connection is just as solid for Tevis, who can turn to Grijalva anytime for help. Well, first Grijalva teases her, Tevis said—then she can ask her mother-in-law to shuttle her son home or to sporting events, which she does several times a week.
“She’s a beautiful, hands-on grandmother for sure,” Tevis said. “She never stops saying, ‘Whatever you need, just let me know and I’ll do it for you.’”
“The Los Banos Campus would still feel like family, since it’s so small, but having a family member here makes it better. It feels even more supportive.”