California college grad honors farm-worker parents with special photos

(KYMA, KECY/NBC) – College graduation is marked with celebrations and pictures.

One California graduate used her photos to honor the parents who encouraged her to follow her dreams.

21-year-old Jennifer Rocha says she started working in the strawberry fields with her parents when she was a junior in high school.

She describes leaving cross-country practice at two or three in the afternoon going home to eat and change and then leaving to plant strawberries until the early hours of the morning.

Rocha says her parents, immigrants from Mexico, had worked in the fields from the age of six or seven.

“For all the Latinos out there, just keep working hard and making your parents proud and don’t forget where you came from,” Rocha said.

She says she wouldn’t have earned her degree in sociology at UC San Diego without their financial help and support.