Well, now to Canyon Springs High School to celebrate another senior who, not too long ago, thought he wouldn't even graduate.

But thanks to the support of "Communities in Schools," CIS, Esteban Montoya-Mendoza will earn his diploma and is being featured as part of the nonprofit's graduation campaign.

Now, we caught up with this incredible young man during his photo shoot.

(Marco Mercado) My student, Esteban, won the 2024 CIS graduation campaign.

So we were pretty much-- it was a whole photo shoot-- outfit changes, I mean, smile here, smile there.

(Malcolm Griffin) He came up to me a couple of days ago telling me about this.

And I don't know if he saw it, but it just kind of like, made me a little emotional.

I got to do better at my emotions.

But uh, just because knowing what he's came from and some challenges he's went through, (Esteban) If it wasn't for Communities in Schools, I would not be walking that stage.

-A lot of the stuff that Esteban was going through.

I feel like there's a lot of students that would just give up and let it be.

And he chose, he chose not to.

-School was never my thing.

I really never liked it.

At my house, I had to remove myself from like a toxic environment.

It was kind of hard.

I was dealing with, like, stuff at home.

And then I was dealing with soccer and work and just a whole bunch of things just adding up to each other.

I felt like I was overwhelmed.

-So we had a heart-to-heart talk about just, you know, certain things that were going on in his life.

And it kind of felt like, from right there, we just created this rapport that it was just like, there's no going back from that.

(Debbie Palacios) I tell people that our program is our people.

It is the magic sauce of what we do.

Our site coordinators, who are on school campuses each and every day, and they are the ones that are building the relationships with students.

They're another caring adult that is on campus that is there to be a mentor, to be a cheerleader, to be a trusted adult that they can talk to and then really work on that goal setting for whatever it is that they want to achieve.

-He was one of the few kids who got presented with an award for his academic excellence as a student athlete.

And not only did he show up to the thing, but showed up shirt and tie, my shoes, nice pants.

So it's just, it makes it worth it seeing, seeing young men develop into men.

-He always told me, One way or another, I want to be successful.

I want to make things happen.

And I would tell him, It's one thing to talk it, but it's one thing to walk it.

And he definitely did.

-I'm really proud of myself.

I've never been as proud of myself as I am to this day.

I personally did not think I was gonna graduate.

I was very far behind.

I want to thank Mr. Marcos for that.

He's, I feel like he plays a really big part of my high school.

-I think he's gonna go above and beyond, just because I've already seen his work ethic.

-On everything we've done for the past two years, I just, just proud.

That's literally the only word I can say.

-Amazing!

Esteban, we're so proud of you.

By the way, he is graduating with an impressive 3.5 GPA.

He plans to go to trade school to become an electrician.

And did we mention he also runs his own car washing business?

Amazing accomplishment, and at such a young age.

By the way, you can learn more about the great work that Communities in Schools is doing in our schools at CISnevada.org.