Mooseheart High School graduates look to future

Damion Moore was reluctant to be at Mooseheart when he first arrived 12 years ago from his home on Chicago's southwest side.

But Saturday, with his high school diploma in hand, Moore said he's come to realize "it's one of the best places in America."

"I don't know what I'd be like today if it wasn't for Mooseheart," he said. "In the city, you kind of develop an attitude. I take more pride in what I do now."

More than 1,500 people turned out Saturday to see Moore, 18, and 23 other students graduate from Mooseheart High School, just south of Batavia.

It was the 92nd commencement for Moose International's privately funded school, which sits on a 1,000-acre campus known as Mooseheart Child City & School and serves children in need of stable home environments. Among those in attendance were hundreds of Moose members from across the United States and beyond.

Supreme Moose Governor Liguori Saladin said "only the future will tell" where the graduates' successes take them next. But more than 83 percent are leaving with college scholarships.

"You can be most anything you want to be if you keep your mind on the goal you set," Saladin told the graduates.

For Adrianna Aguayo, 19, graduation means embarking on new path at Olive-Harvey College, where she plans to study nursing with an eye toward working in prenatal care.

Aguayo said it's a dream she might not have pursued if she hadn't moved from the southwest side of Chicago to Mooseheart her freshman year.

"The neighborhood I lived in was bad," she said. "I didn't see myself graduating high school. I didn't see the outcome I see now. I feel I've accomplished a lot."

Moore, who's going to Waubonsee Community College with plans to become a hospital administrator, attributes much of his success to the friends and support he found at Mooseheart.

"There's a difference between people you see every day, and people you see everyday and love and care about," he said. "You're together all the time, and they become a part of you. You're brothers and sisters."