You're listening to The Drag.

It's the spring semester at Texas Southmost College in Brownsville.

Dr. Tony Zavoleta is teaching his Intro to Sociology class, like he does every semester.

It's a big class with well over 100 students.

It was not any different from any other Intro to Sociology, large class, you know, large classroom, that I had taught.

But one student sticks out.

She and her two sidekicks always sat in the very back row.

And of course, I wasn't happy about that.

And I would urge people in the back row to move up, but there were so many students in that class that it just was not possible.

But that's not the only reason.

She was a rather tall, you know, as far as Hispanic women go who are generally short, I know that's a stereotype, but it's true.

She was tall, tall woman, and looked different. She was different, so she stood out.

Her name is Sara Adrete.

Sara Adrete was someone who was known on campus. She was known. She was a Jim Rat.

We had some very significant women's volleyball teams, national champion volleyball teams at Texas Southmost College in the 80s.

And she was kind of like a, I don't know exactly what her position was, but we'll say that she was kind of a mascot.

She hung around with them.

She's also blonde.

And the thing about the Rio Grande Valley and Brownsville, a majority Hispanic part of Texas, is that tall and blonde is not a combo you see a lot down here.

And Sara always shows up to class wearing these strange dark red beaded necklaces, which makers stand out even more.

So she was wearing beads, different colored Santaria beads.

And that was very unusual for South Texas. And I don't think I had ever seen it before.

...