“Frankly, it took me a while to realize that while we were sponsoring kids at Cristo Rey High School, we were also reaping very big benefits from it,” says Dave Lucchetti, president and chief executive officer of Pacific Coast Building Products, Inc. “The people we place the kids with, mainly in accounting, fall in love with them. So students and their mentors are both being rewarded.”

“Students who attend Cristo Rey pay approximately 60% of their own education costs while earning the rest in the schools’
work-study program.”

Cristo Rey High School is a Catholic, fully-accredited, college prep high school. It provides a curriculum that helps guide urban students with financially limited possibilities of continuing their education after 12th grade toward both college acceptance and graduation.

Cristo Rey parents serve as partners with the school and its sponsors with the intention of educating the “whole person” — mind, body and spirit. The school’s academics may be challenging, Lucchetti says, but that’s balanced by chances for what the school calls “co-curricular, spiritual and religious formation.”

The Cristo Rey Network is made up of 41 schools across the United States. All students who attend Cristo Rey schools pay approximately 60% of their own education costs while earning the rest in the schools’ work-study program. 

That program, which Lucchetti’s company has been supporting since the Sacramento campus of Cristo Rey was built, provides them with meaningful jobs in the community for all four years of their high school experience, thanks to the school’s partnerships with more than 100 local businesses (including law firms, hospitals, government entities and small businesses).

The school points out that most of its students are the first generation of their families to graduate from high school. By providing financial assistance to families in need, Cristo Rey — and its generous sponsors — play a key role in removing economic barriers to education success as well as breaking the cycle of poverty.

Lucchetti and his wife Chris have three grown children and six grandkids. He says his company sponsors some 40 students a year. “About 25 or 30 of the kids are still working with us,” Lucchetti says proudly. “Kind of a win-win.”