Sisters Adriana and Celina Mendoza are creating their own path, and making a difference for others, in a familiar profession

FOR AS LONG AS THEY CAN REMEMBER, Adriana and Celina Mendoza have known dentistry to be their family business.

Born exactly one year and one month apart, the Mendoza sisters grew up around the profession. As kids, they occasionally tagged along when their mother, Anna, got called to the office in her role as a dental assistant for one of West Contra Costa’s most well-known dentists, Dr. William van Dyk, DDS.

“He was really a mentor for my sister and I,” Celina Mendoza said of van Dyk. “He told us ‘you guys need to become dentists’ ever since we were little. We really didn’t start taking it seriously until we started going to college and realizing what we were going to do.”

Both Mendoza sisters graduated from De Anza High and matriculated to Contra Costa College. Having grown up with dentistry as a family constant, both sisters began their college experiences with the goal of entering the profession.

At Contra Costa, the path to achieving those goals started to come into focus. Both sisters speak glowingly of their experience on the San Pablo campus, saying the resources they took advantage of during their first years in college played a formative role in what was yet to come.

“The people (at Contra Costa), they’re so welcoming, and I just feel like it’s so diverse that I felt very at home here,” said Celina, who enrolled first as the eldest sister. “The teachers are amazing. Especially with math. I struggle with math. There’s this whole program here, it was like a little after-school tutoring kind of program. You could go there and ask the tutors questions, and I always felt like I had help. If it wasn’t for the tutoring, you could ask the teachers afterwards for help…I’ve always felt supported here. There was never a time where I was like, “What should I do?”

One resource came from Richmond Promise. Both sisters got to know Richmond Promise staff, particularly now-Director of Programs & Partnerships Miguel Molina, and support from the organization — both financial and programmatic — made a big difference.

“Through the workshops (Richmond Promise) had, and also just letting us know what resources CCC had, that very much prepared me for how I was going to interact with my professors already,” said Adriana. “In high school, they let you know what it was going to be like, but I think the (summer workshop) Richmond Promise had really solidified what Contra Costa was going to be like. (They told us) there’s office hours, so if you have a problem, you can go here. Or, they even let us know there’s a math tutor here at Contra Costa that you guys can go to for free. They really helped a lot with that.”

Contra Costa was also the point at which the sisters found their own path forward.

To start, they each took a turn interning with Richmond Promise during their first years in college. Because of their family roots — their father, Eduardo, was born in Mexico but attended Richmond High while their mother also grew up in Richmond and attended El Cerrito High — both felt a connection to Richmond Promise’s mission of creating a college-graduating culture in Richmond.

“I loved going back to the community. I think my sister and I really enjoy giving back to the community, just because we were in their positions at one point in time and you kind of feel almost lost,” said Celina. “Going to the kids and encouraging them to go to college and get an education, growing up, I don’t know if I really had that. Having Richard Promise go to the youth I think is exactly what they need to be doing, and I think those are the people that are going to come after us, so we want to make sure that they’re getting the proper education and proper resources.”

“Richmond Promise just made the transition so much smoother. It made everything so much easier,” Adriana said. “I don’t know what a lot of us would have done without it. It was really helpful.”

Building a relationship with Richmond Promise helped both sisters play a role in their own community. As they did, they also started to figure out how they wanted to proceed academically.

For Celina, that meant a slight shift in the original plan.

“I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do the dentist route,” Celina said. “It is a big responsibility, and I feel like you have to absolutely love school, and that’s Adriana, like to the T. She will tell you all these funny facts about cells and biology, and I was just like, oh gosh, I just don’t know if that’s for me. So I went to (Dr. van Dyk), and asked what other routes can I do? And he was like, you should become a hygienist. I was already taking all these crazy courses, like I was taking Physics 3, Physics 2, Calculus 3. So he said, ‘you already have all these classes, you should become a hygienist.’”

After finishing her studies at Contra Costa, Celina enrolled in a dental hygiene accelerator program through San Joaquin Valley College. The program was difficult, but it set her on a path that led to her now working as a Registered Dental Hygienist in Marin County. She also works in clinics in Richmond, San Pablo, Kensington and Berkeley, and still lives in Richmond.

Adriana’s path took her from Contra Costa to UC Davis, where she graduated in 2022 with a degree in Cell Biology. Her experience at Contra Costa was also a positive one, and she references her participation in an on-campus Math Jam program as particularly helpful in preparing her for the math-related prerequisites she needed to continue towards dental school.

She also recalls a referral Molina provided to a recent UC Davis grad, Elleanor Pangilinan, who had returned to work at Contra Costa and who provided even more assistance in figuring out financial aid packages, picking the right classes and ultimately transitioning to Davis.

While at UC Davis, Adriana helped out at a dental clinic in Woodland, where she ended up serving as a translator for some of the clinic’s Spanish-speaking patients. Even though Spanish isn’t her native language, she recognized that because she is Latina, patients would often turn to her for assistance.

“That’s where I saw my need, because there’s not very many (Latino/Latina dentists),” Adriana said. “I think we are grouped with the 5 percent of Black people and Native American people who are dentists in the United States. And I think it’s even 3 percent of them that speak fluent Spanish. Especially in this area, and even in San Francisco, it’s a very high population (that comes from) a Hispanic community, right?”

Adriana’s drive to help people through the field of dentistry also comes from another intensely personal point of view.

“I did an internship one time, and I was talking to my interviewer, and I was like, look, I don’t have much to offer like the other students do, but I have a really big heart. And I told her why I wanted to do it, and I actually really want to work with the special needs community, because my little sister has special needs. So I know how it feels to be on the family side when they’re going to the dentist. And I told her that I really want to help that population, because they’re very underserved, like a lot of dentists don’t want to see them.

“And she said, well honestly, that’s probably the best response I’ve heard all day. She said, you have the heart to be kind. Because the thing is, she said, with dentistry, you can have the skills of your hands and you could do whatever, but if you don’t have a good personality, a lot of patients are not going to like you. They’re not going to be able to relate to you.”

This spring, Adriana wrapped up her studies at the University of the Pacific’s Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry in San Francisco. She’ll head next to a residency in Sacramento, where she plans to spend a year gaining further experience. Ultimately, she would love to return to Richmond and find an associate dentist position as she builds her career.

Celina is also back in school, taking additional classes at Contra Costa as she works towards earning her own Bachelor’s degree that would allow her to become an extended function hygienist.

And, whether it’s in the near future or further down the road, both say they’d like to pay it forward for a Richmond community that has supported them.

“I also want to motivate (others). I want to go out back into the schools and tell kids to go to school,” Celina said. “When we were in high school, there would be a panel of alumni from De Anza, and they would talk about their journeys. I loved hearing about people getting their bachelor’s degrees. That’s what I was striving for. So, I would love to go back to my high school and talk about my experience, so somebody could be like,’Oh, that’s what I want to do.’”

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