Youth Spotlight: Jaiden Vizcaino

By Nick Krishnan, Marketing and Events Manager

Being a teenager is often a time in our lives where we are looking towards the future and anticipating becoming an adult while simultaneously holding on to childhood.  For many of us, growing up and becoming an adult is a slow process of balancing the free-spirited leisure of being a student with little responsibility beyond school as we begin to create a vision for who we see ourselves becoming as adults.  Not everyone is afforded the luxury of growing up at their own pace, for Jaiden Vizcaino, becoming an adult was a necessity for himself and his family.

A senior at Eagle Valley High School, Jaiden plays volleyball for Vail Christian High School and enjoys dirt biking in his spare time.  Born in Vail with parents from Mexico, Jaiden has spent his entire life in Eagle County.  Like many others, Jaiden’s parents came to the valley in search of work and better opportunities for their family.  Jaiden’s mom, Ruby, works as a house keeper and his dad, Jaime, does dry wall; Jaiden will often go to work with his dad to earn extra money. 

At first glance, Jaiden’s life is similar to most kids who grow up in Eagle County, but during the fall of 2024 things changed for him and his family.  Around this time, Jaiden’s older brother, Haziel, was diagnosed with schizophrenia.  As a senior in high school, Jaiden not only had to navigate school, sports and his social life, he also had to learn how to become a caregiver to Haziel.  Just like that, Jaiden was forced to become the older brother. 

With such a heavy and demanding new challenge in his life, it would’ve been understandable if Jaiden had put school on the back burner in order to focus on Haziel.  Instead, Jaiden used his newfound responsibility as an opportunity to grow up and develop the time management skills necessary to fulfill his new family obligations while completing his senior year of high school.  This new challenge also taught Jaiden how to better communicate with his parents to ensure that someone would always be at home to help take care of Haziel.

Learning these new time management and communication skills didn’t just help Jaiden with his obligations at home, they helped him in school as well.  By instituting his newly acquired time management skill in to his school routine, Jaiden was able to improve his grades and open up new possibilities for himself and his future.  Ultimately, Jaiden’s improved grades earned him a scholarship to Colorado Mesa University Tech to study welding.

Jaiden was first introduced to welding when visiting his extended family in Mexico, some of his uncles are welders.  Intrigued by the idea of building something from scratch, Jaiden was immediately attracted to welding, and the possibility of fabricating a custom dirt bike is an added bonus to this career path. 

Jaiden will certainly miss his family as he moves to Grand Junction for the upcoming school year, but he hopes that with disciplined studying and hard work a welding career will not only be fruitful for himself, but hopefully it will allow him the opportunity to improve the lives of his parents and brother as well.