Tens of thousands of California college students to get relief from emergency grants

The text messages and email blasts went out to 5,500 Pasadena City College students last week. “Congratulations!” they said. “You have been awarded a Federal CARES Emergency Grant.”

Within 24 hours 4,500 students had accepted.

Lizette Hernandez, 21, was one of them. Hernandez, who shares a two-bedroom apartment in Rosemead with six relatives, said most of the adults in her household had been laid off, leaving her mother the main breadwinner. The $1,000 Hernandez will receive will help feed her family, including two siblings, 14 and 4 years old.

“She feels really blessed that we could receive this grant,” Hernandez said of her mother.

Read more at the Los Angeles Times.