At Lafayette's Centaurus High School, they participated in Public Achievement, an international youth initiative that allows young people to address issues through service-learning and civic education projects. Now students at the University of Colorado, both are serving as mentors for "I Have a Dream" elementary students in an afterschool Public Achievement program.
"I always wanted to see how it felt to be the coach instead of the student," said Castillo, a sophomore at CU who's working with students at Lafayette's Pioneer Elementary. "When I was at Centaurus, we felt like we didn't have a voice. But the coaches in Public Achievement always told us we did."