There are two Mexicos, it is often said, and on the northeast outskirts of Guadalajara is a prime example of the one that drew the short stick. Bouncing along a deeply rutted dirt road that passes through the middle of a barrio known as La Coronilla, a passenger is jarred by the scenes of abject poverty: an open-air meat market where hanging beef and poultry carcasses draw flies in sweltering heat; an emaciated horse struggling to pull a cart; small stucco houses with roofs of corrugated metal. The bleak, baked-out backdrop evokes the depressing footage of a Middle East war zone, except that these wary inhabitants are mestizos.
"These are the people that try to escape to los Estados Unidos because they have nothing," says the driver, Guadalajara social worker Pedro Merino, as he wrestles the steering wheel through a rough turn. But as the car rolls haltingly down a steep hill to a dead end, a majestic canyon that drops some 2,000 feet to a green valley floor is suddenly revealed. So is a simple but just as surprising steel and concrete building whose windows and balconies are perched on the cliff's edge. It's an elementary school called La Barranca, the place Lorena Ochoa, the world's best woman golfer, has focused her deep desire to help and give back.
Employing an experimental curriculum aimed at breaking through Mexico's extreme class divisions, La Barranca charges no student more than $20 a month, and most far less. The school day opens with 45 minutes of exercise, stretching and meditation designed to put kids in a calm state they reach too rarely in their often chaotic home environments. The school emphasizes theater arts as a way of tapping into creativity that is too often repressed. The children frequently learn songs containing their lessons in order to better retain knowledge. They also practice judo as a way to channel latent anger and aggression and foster self-control and self-esteem. Each day, a group of neighborhood mothers gathers to cook breakfast and lunch for the children in the school kitchen. At night, the classrooms are used to address the widespread illiteracy problem among adults in the barrio, as well as for community workshops on parenting, drug and alcohol counseling, and domestic violence prevention. The panorama of the majestic canyon is always present, a subliminal reminder—along with benefactor Ochoa's accomplishments as the first Mexican athlete to achieve world No. 1 status—of possibilities.
Ochoa got involved in La Barranca after she started the Fundación Lorena Ochoa upon joining the LPGA Tour in 2003. "People said, 'No, Lorena, it's too soon, you are too busy, too young, you don't have enough money, you don't know what's going to happen,'" the 25-year-old says in accented but articulate English, a language she did not begin to learn until her late teens. "I said, 'I don't care, I want to do it.' Somehow, I just knew the thing would work, and it did."
Ever since then, Ochoa has used her rising influence with -corporations and other donors to raise money to fund the school. During her half-dozen visits a year, she is moved to tears as the children sing for her and give her handmade gifts. "When I go there, it's very, very nice," she says. "Better even than going to the golf course and winning. Because it's the thing that I like most, to reach others and really make a change. Everybody has a mission in life. This is my mission."
It's a chosen path that included supplanting Annika Sorenstam at the top of the women's game, something Ochoa, voted the 2006 Associate Press Female Athlete of the Year, officially accomplished last spring when she finally ascended to No. 1 in the Rolex Rankings four weeks after winning her 10th LPGA title at the Safeway International. As she widens her lead over current No. 2 Karrie Webb, it's clear that the LPGA Tour is now in the Era of Lorena.
Many longtime observers of women's golf hope it's an enduring one. "Lorena is such an amazing giver—to the fans, to the other players, to her country, to her friends—and she does it with grace and empathy and humility," says veteran player Helen Alfredsson, this year's European Solheim Cup Captain. "She somehow knows, at a very young age, that sharing your accomplishments and affecting other people in a good way is what really matters in life. She has perfected that."
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