Jose Navarro has been a fixture at Granite Hills High School for the past four years. The Grizzly senior is known around campus for his big, bright smile, his outgoing personality, and his involvement in several extracurricular activities.
But beneath the surface, Navarro was dealing with something not many people knew about.
The Granite Hills ASB president transformed a difficult battle with cancer into a story of perseverance and inspiration.
Navarro put his stamp all over Granite Hills, participating in the school band, journalism, the boys tennis team, and attending any and every event the school hosted.
“I wasn’t always the most confident person, so these are ways to kind of help me boost my confidence and make me a little more outgoing – just to get me out of my comfort zone,” Navarro said.
Yearbook advisor Ms. Chavez believes Navarro is one of the best student leaders that Granite Hills has had.
“The greatest thing about Jose, and the reason I think he is, like, one of the greatest, is that he leads by example,” Chavez said. “He leads by example of kindness and leadership.”
Navarro is also known for his TikTok presence, with many videos posted daily about his life and what he does every day at school, practices, with friends, and even at home. English teacher and Journalism advisor Mr. Marquez would regularly tell Navarro that he showed up on his For You Page.
“The reason I started creating TikTok’s was that during junior year, I was in a really bad mental state and it felt like I had no one to talk to,” Navarro said. “Being able to speak to a phone and have that feeling of being able to show/speak to someone about how my day went felt good. It really helped me grow as a person.”
Navarro’s goal was to post every day until graduation.
Then it all went silent early into the second semester of his senior year. Navarro stopped showing up to school, and his TikTok videos stopped.
Navarro was diagnosed with a type of stage-1 cancer and underwent 39 rounds of chemotherapy that lasted around three months.
This was devastating news for Navarro, but all he could do was laugh about the situation.
“When I first found out about my diagnosis, the only thing I could do was laugh because that’s my way of coping with a lot of serious situations,” Navarro said. “It wasn’t because the situation was funny, but it was just my way of coping at the time, and the only thing I could think of was, how is this going to affect my future?”
Having to step away from the many activities Navarro was involved in wasn’t easy, and not being able to see his friends wasn’t either.
“The hardest part was just not being on campus and being able to see my friends every day,” Navarro said. “It got pretty lonely just being home and at the hospital for three to four months.”
One of Navarro’s close friends, Genesis Chang, said that Navarro’s absence was very disappointing and frustrating.
“Being without him for our senior year and the second semester that we looked forward to, it was just really, like, okay, what the heck? Like it was hard to adapt,” Chang said. “Going to school without him, doing announcements, and going to my first period without him, being in ASB without him, and leading the class in general, I feel like that was really hard for me because we all really missed him.”
Throughout the process of chemotherapy, Navarro stayed positive because he believes that something good comes out of everything bad.
He was, in fact, correct about that because on March 30, Navarro returned to school.
“Coming back to school, I was a little nervous just because I didn’t know how people would react to me being bald,” Navarro said. “But overall, I had some pretty good friends who were there for me during that time. It was nerve-racking just being here, but I think over time I forgot that I’m the boss and lowkey the goat.”
Navarro was also able to return to the boys tennis team and played his first match of the season on April 9 against Orosi.
“Coming back to the tennis team was physically and mentally rough,” Navarro said. “After not being able to condition myself for months, it was hard to get back into the mid-season conditioning.”
Navarro has been a big part of the tennis team’s run to the Central Section Division V championship match. The team will play at Madera South on May 12 with the championship on the line.
Granite Hills tennis coach Luciano Moreno says that having Navarro back on the team was a great joy and relief.
“Hearing that he was coming back gave me great joy and relief for two reasons,” Moreno said. “One, because it meant he was progressing with his health and getting much better, and even if he wasn’t able to play, I was just happy that he was going to be back in school. Secondly, because having him back meant there would be more leadership/veteran experience back on the team, and there was definitely something missing when he was gone, so it gave our tennis team a much stronger chance to go further with him just being on the ladder.”
With graduation around the corner, Navarro hopes to leave a legacy behind for other students to follow. His plans after high school are to attend Porterville College and then hopefully transfer to a four-year university to pursue a career in nursing.
“The legacy I hope to leave behind is for people to know me as someone who can overcome anything,” he said. “I hope that gives them motivation to know that they can overcome anything in their life as well.”
