Natalia Montiel pulls on yellow work gloves and bends over a piece of notebook-size metal. The energetic teen with long black hair holds a cutting torch in one hand and places her other hand underneath. “Is this the hand that guides me?” she says, turning to Tom Forgette, her instructor in the art of classic and antique auto repair.

“Steadies it,” corrects Forgette. “I’m the one that guides you.”

Forgette, an instructor of some renown in this part of central California, is nothing if not precise. Minutes earlier he instructed Natalia to wait until a feather of flame appeared, then to adjust it using the oxygen valve. Now Forgette watches as Natalia uses the torch to cut the metal, a skill she’ll need to perfect for auto body repair. “You’re a little too close,” he says, then adds, “Now you moved too far away.”

In an airy garage with a high ceiling and open entrance, surrounded by car parts, stacks of tires, and tools, Natalia bends closer. A strip of metal falls to the floor. A straight cut. That is what Forgette wanted. Had Natalia done it wrong the metal would have stuck. Still, Forgette makes his pupil repeat the process. She doesn’t complain. And Natalia, who is wearing mascara and silver hoop earrings, quickly earns his respect in what remains a male-dominated craft. “She’s just going for it,” Forgette says.

The youngest of six, Natalia grew up watching her father, David, fix cars. In his native Mexico, he was a mechanic. In Salinas, in California’s Central Coast, her dad fixed cars for family members. Natalia helped him, passing him tools and holding a light. She knew she could do more, but her father didn’t think of his “princess” as a future mechanic.

As she got older Natalia forgot about cars and found herself on a precarious path, surrounding herself with friends who were unmotivated and into marijuana. It felt like she was “living the same day over and over again,” she recalls. “Not really like going anywhere.”

During her junior year of high school a counselor suggested an alternative vocational school called Rancho Cielo that also helps with social services and life skills. When Natalia heard the nonprofit organization had an automotive program she signed up. “I was like, ‘Wow, that’s perfect. That’s literally what I am looking for,’” she says.

Natalia started the program in November 2022. By the following July, she was one of six students in the school’s classic and antique auto repair course learning under Forgette.

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