Chamber’s scholarships help neighborhood teens from poor families go to college

By Bill Kossen
Seattle Times business reporter

As college scholarships go, it wasn’t much – $1,000. But Margarette Mony was overjoyed when she won the award last year from the Rainier Chamber of Commerce.

Every Penny counts for Mony, 19, a Rainier Beach High graduate who helps support her family of 14 brothers and sisters – many of whom are still in her homeland of Haiti. She works 20 hours a week as a bank teller while studying to be a nurse.

“Compared to them, I’m living large,” said Mony, taking a break this week after a University of Washington class she takes through a program at Seattle Central Community College.

“It’s very hard in Haiti. I’m sending money, food and everything. So sometimes it can get a little tough,” said Mony, who also received other financial assistance.

The chamber’s effort reflects some of the unheralded work community groups are doing to help high-achieving students from low-income families in this area get their college educations.

The chamber’s annual scholarship fundraiser, scheduled for this evening, can be poignant as business owners from one of the poorer communities in the region give what they can, starting at $25.

Last year, donations were slow until the longtime owner of a small service station on Rainier Avenue South pledged $1,000 to the Rainier Chamber Foundation Scholarships.

The only problem, Rudy Hanson told his fellow chamber members, was he didn’t know how to spell scholarship on his check.

Some people at the event became misty-eyed at Hanson’s candor and the donations started pouring in. By the end of the night, the group had raised $8,000. The Pepsi Bottling Group, which has a plant in Rainier Valley, chipped in $10,000.

While that may seem small compared with what other scholarship programs raise, it was by far the largest amount raised by the Rainier chamber since it started giving out scholarships about 60 years ago. It usually gives out a half-dozen awards a year.

Though Hanson has become somewhat of a Rainier Valley legend, he at first was reluctant to talk about his donation and adamant about not having his photograph taken.

“Only big shots are in the paper,” said Hanson, 59, as he tightened a lug nut on a wheel at his service station.

But Hanson relented on the interview, saying he has a good reason to support the scholarship program – he never had a chance to go to high school, let alone college. He left school after eighth grade to work and by 20 he was running the service station at Rainier Avenue and South Findlay Street. It’s been his business for the past four decades.

“I really believe in education. If I would have finished high school and stuff, I wouldn’t have done nothing different. But it probably would have made it easier,” Hanson said. He made sure his two children went to college, and they both have good jobs now, he said.

The Rainier Chamber of Commerce represents businesses stretching from South Dearborn Street to Rainier Beach and from Beacon Hill to Lake Washington.

It is one of the region’s most diverse areas, where recent immigrants live, work and go to school with people whose families have been in the neighborhood for generations.

Of its 86,811 residents, according to the 2000 census, 36 percent are Asian American, 28 percent are white and 23 percent are African American with the remaining 13 percent listed as Pacific Islander, Native American, Hispanic and other ethnicities. Some areas, such as Columbia City, are being revitalized, while others remain economically depressed.