By John Keough '04 and Melissa Warnke '04

It can be hard to make the transition from junior high school to freshman year at Deerfield. But imagine how hard it is if you came from a tough neighborhood in the Bronx.

And imagine what it would be like if you were shadowed by a reporter and photographer from a national newspaper throughout the year.

That was the case for Emmanuel Saldana, affectionately known as "Chino." From his first sitdown dinner to lacrosse practice and the New England Swimming Championships, he was observed by two staff members of The Christian Science Monitor.

In the story and photo essay that the newspaper published in August, the reporter wrote "We thought that we would be chronicling a difficult journey, one in which the young person confronted isolation and prejudice." Instead, she wrote, Chino encountered a school that embraced him.

Chino said that being closely followed and interviewed by journalists was sometimes annoying, but that they tried to make him comfortable.

"They asked mostly basic introductory questions, about life in the Bronx and what my old school was like," said Chino. The reporters also interviewed some of Chino's teachers and took pictures of him from morning till night.

Chino grew up in the Bronx, and was a standout student at the East Harlem School, a junior high school which prepares promising students to attend some of the top prep schools in the country. He was first approached by The Monitor in his 8th grade year. Reporters from the paper were visiting a few schools in each state, looking for kids to talk to about what it was like to be a teenager. A few of Chino's friends turned down the chance to be interviewed because they were too shy.

"I wasn't sure why the reporters were interested in me," said Chino.

Nine months later, Chino made it through his freshman year. "It's a lot to deal with," he told The Monitor. "You have to learn to deal with two places, two worlds, at the same time."

The story was not completely accurate. It failed to mention, for example, that Chino's father lived on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Saldana shrugs when he talks about the inaccuracies, which he thought were only minor details twisted to make the story more dramatic. The article was good enough, he said.

When the story was printed, Chino was suddenly famous. "My family and friends were really excited," Chino said. "Kids at Deerfield and at home reacted really well to the article."

Adding to his new found publicity, Chino was asked to appear on the end of CNN's Wolf Blitzer Show to comment on what it was like to be interviewed for the article. "I thought five minutes was going to be really long, but once I was on the air, it went by really quickly."

Now out of the national spotlight, Chino still enjoys his celebrity status. A few days after the show, he was recognized by a stranger while riding on the subway in New York. "He came up to me and said, 'Hey, I saw you on CNN!"