Irvine Valley College (IVC) alumna Kim Virrueta's story is not a conventional one. Three weeks after receiving her high school diploma in 1992, she found out she was pregnant at age 17. Determined to build a life for her growing family, Kim embarked on a path that would begin with enrolling at IVC and then weave through time and opportunity to land her the career she feels she was always meant for.
By the time she was 21, Virrueta and her husband had grown their family to three children. Despite the demands of raising young ones while her husband served in the Marines, Kim's commitment to education never wavered. For more than a decade, she made incremental steps toward her ultimate goal: to provide compassionate counseling to children undergoing medical procedures or those with chronic disease.
Balancing work, family, and education, Kim faced the routine challenges of being a working parent. "Irvine Valley College was amazing because it provided the flexibility I needed at that time," she shares. "Sometimes I was able to take two or three classes, sometimes just one, and sometimes I had to take a break. Your evenings and weekends are taken up with studying, and I wanted to make sure I was also there for my kids.”
Through her courses and hands-on experience working in hospitals through programs at IVC, Virrueta soon discovered that her original career aspiration – to be a clinical child life specialist – didn't align with her desire to develop meaningful relationships with children and families. Hospital stays, for better or worse, aren’t usually long enough to connect with patients long- term, she learned.
A pivotal moment came when Virrueta switched her focus to marriage and family therapy after consulting with specialists in the field.
"The hours and experience in a child development center that IVC requires for its degree – that is the thing that really put all the pieces together for me,” she emphasizes. “It showed me this is how this job functions and allowed me to explore if the job would really be. IVC takes it beyond the book smarts and into the street smarts. That was really important for me."
After a pause in her education in 2004 to focus more on her children’s after-school needs, Virrueta then ventured into entrepreneurship, starting her own medical marketing business. It was during a conversation with her husband a few years later that the spark to return to her original passion was reignited.
“He said ‘Do you want to be doing this for the rest of your life?’” she recalls. “‘What happened to working with kids in the hospital?’”
Assuming she still lacked enough credits at IVC to transfer to a four-year university and complete her degree, Virrueta decided to call the academic counseling office at IVC anyway. It would be a phone call that would change her life.
"It was such a huge surprise to be told I did have enough credits to transfer, and that I could get my bachelor's degree in two years," she recalls. She then enrolled at Cal State Fullerton, earning a bachelor’s degree in child and adolescent development in 2018, followed by a Master’s degree in Marriage and Family Therapy in 2021.
Virrueta’s current specialization in mental health counseling and grief counseling, focusing on cancer patients and those dealing with chronic illness.
“It’s very much in line with what I wanted to do in the hospital, but you get the opportunity over months or years to build a relationship,” she adds.
Reflecting on her time at IVC, Virrueta acknowledges sometimes feeling older than her peers due to her life experiences. "But for me, the biggest thing was that everyone was supportive and encouraging," she notes. “The biggest impact on me was from my instructors. I still remember things they said, the way they taught, the way they were there for me – all of that was very helpful.”
Now, as Virrueta transforms lives through her work, she carries the lessons of resilience and dedication cultivated at Irvine Valley College. Her journey from a young mom to a seasoned therapist is a testament to the transformative power of education – and never, ever, ever giving up.