Teen Face: Music, film help fill void from loss of mother

Since nearly the beginning of his life, Zola Ruiz has had to overcome hardship. As a 4-month-old baby, Ruiz was riding in a car seat in the back of his parents’ car on Highway 101 when a big-rig merged into their lane, sending the car flipping and crashing into a guardrail.

His 21-year-old mother, Marisa Beck, was killed instantly and his father, Daniel Ruiz, suffered serious head injuries but lived. Amazingly, baby Zola was unharmed.

Now 17, Ruiz, a senior in Santa Rosa High School’s ArtQuest program and an accomplished musician, has been learning about the mother that he never knew, a woman who played soccer at Sonoma State University and played piano and sang in a choir.

“I really wish I had been able to know my mom, to share music and art with her,” he said. “Fulfilling my quest as an artist and a scholar makes me feel like I am honoring my mother, and somehow that makes me feel close to her.”

After a rocky start to high school with poor grades and a troubled relationship with his father, Ruiz managed to turn things around, getting his grade point average up to 3.7 while taking 20 units of college classes at Santa Rosa Junior College. And he reconciled with his dad.

A family friend introduced him to the piano when he was 8 years old, and now he is a skilled jazz pianist and concert singer.

“Music and writing songs have been my salvation,” he said. “Art is what saved me before and it’s what’s saving me now. I feel engaged and inspired with music and film in my life. They fill me. They fill the void and make everything else seem more worthwhile. I have a burning passion to learn now.”

Through ArtQuest, Ruiz began making documentary films, and he has used his skills in the activist movement that he helped start called Students United for Restorative Justice, and with the North Bay Organizing Project. He is also a talented actor and soccer player. He credits his girlfriend, Sunce Franicevic and her family as well as other family and friends with helping foster his talents.

Next year, Ruiz hopes to attend college - he is applying to schools around California - and wants to complete a double major in history and film studies. And after that, perhaps he will assist another disadvantaged youth who needs help overcoming hardship like he did.

“I will go to college,” he said. “I will do it for me, to spite my father, yes, a little bit, to make my mother proud and to finish what she started but couldn’t. And - this is going to sound idealistic - I will do it so I can change the world. One day, I’m going to help a teenager, probably a Mexican kid. I will help him find his way.”