Stan State student gets viral exposure in national McDonald’s campaign

McDonald’s has a new face in a nationwide social media campaign. He’s from this West Side city and his name is Ronald. And, yes, he’s been jokingly asked a million times if his name is Ronald McDonald. But judging from his broad smile, he doesn’t seem to mind.

Ronald Williams, 23, is one of 22 employees of the fast-food giant whose images and stories are on Twitter and Facebook to promote its Archways to Opportunity scholarship program. Those 22 represent 5,000 McDonald’s workers across the nation getting help from Archways to pursue educational goals.

Williams, the only Northern Californian featured in the social media campaign, was chosen after submitting an application. “From my perspective, he has a pretty compelling story,” said Arnold Regalado, who with wife Teri owns and operates the Sperry Road McDonald’s at which Williams has worked for more than three years. “From everything – where he’s come from, where he’s at, where he’s going – you’ve got to invest in him.”

The short version. Williams is from Oakland. He’s attending California State University, Stanislaus, on track to graduate in spring 2017 with a bachelor’s degree in microbiology. He’s planning to earn his doctorate and become a researcher with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Now, the longer version of how Williams and his family left an environment of gang violence and drugs and how he overcame obstacles of bullying and health problems.

“When I was 7, I lost my father to gang violence,” Williams said, sitting in the restaurant where he works. “He was shot eight times in broad daylight.” In other ways, the boy already had lost his dad. His only memories of him are visits with him behind bars. “My father was a drug lord. ... He was always either in jail or absent,” Williams said.

Young Williams also began losing his hair and developed severe acne not just on his face but his body. That damaged his self-esteem and made him subject to bullying, he said. “It was really hard to talk to anyone about being picked on,” he said. “In the situation I was in, you had to be tough. Any sign of weakness and it was over. You feared the consequences of talking about being bullied.”

At the time of his father’s death, Williams’ mother, Marcella, already had remarried, to Franklin Barfield. The couple didn’t want their children to continue living in that atmosphere.

The proverbial “last straw” that led his mother and stepfather to move their family out of Oakland was when their residence was riddled with gunfire as someone targeted other people living in their apartment building. “It frightened my parents because no one knew when it could be their child hit,” Williams said.

They moved to Stanislaus County about 10 years ago, when Ronald was 13. The Barfields were checking out other communities and drove south on Interstate 5, past Tracy, and decided to explore Patterson. “I thought, why Patterson, of all places? There was only one high school, only one McDonald’s,” he said, shooting a smile across the table to Arnold Regalado. “But at the time, Patterson had relatively cheap housing, that’s pretty much why we moved here. And it was a good neighborhood.”

He didn’t like leaving behind friends and extended family, and didn’t appreciate at the time that his mom and stepdad were moving for the children’s sake. “I later thanked them. Now I know my parents always do have their kids’ best interests at heart,” he said. “I could have gotten shot in the streets.”

In Oakland, Williams said he hung out with youth who were dealing drugs and running with gangs. “I was around it, but never involved, because I had intelligence about me, I did well in school,” he said. “I wanted to get somewhere and I knew what they were doing would get me nowhere. Jail, or killed, or paralyzed, or on welfare – I didn’t want any of that in my life.”

The move to Patterson gave Ronald a fresh start in several ways. Medication was clearing up his skin, and the handsome young man is now wearing a clean-shaven head.

His stepfather stressed the importance of education. “He’s very intelligent, he pushed me to go to college.” Williams said.

At Patterson High, Williams got active in the AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) program. He said teacher Craig Bettencourt was a great influence, and he thinks of his former teacher as one of the few people who really cared about him. “The thing I loved about him is he treated me like one of his sons,” he said. At the start of his junior year, Williams, the always strong student, started to develop an attitude and slipped academically. Williams recalls Bettencourt asking him, “Are you ready to throw away what you’ve worked for?”

“I read him the riot act” is how Bettencourt put it.

“He was in my AVID program the only four years I taught it,” Bettencourt said by phone from Patterson High on Friday. “It was really a pleasure to watch him mature and grow. Some of the cards he was dealt as a young boy were a terrible hand, but he – not to sound cliché – he slowly but surely made lemonade out of lemons. He kept plugging away.”

Of all the students he’s taught over more than 35 years, the teacher said, “Ron’s right up there in the top 1 percent.”

He’s held in high regard by the regulars at McDonald’s, too. Williams was cheered as “Good Day, Sacramento,” visited the restaurant to do a TV segment on him Friday.

“His ability to interact with customers” is impressive, Regalado said. “He has a good rapport with anybody who walks into the restaurant. … That interaction goes a long way.”

Pastor Ken Hasekamp of Adventure Christian Church of Patterson was one of the folks who on Friday congratulated Williams on his academic success and social media attention. “He’s got persistence, he’s always been very confident. And he’s just got a great smile,” Hasekamp said.

“I go out running in the mornings and I see him walking quite a bit. He calls me pastor. It’s easy for a young kid to write off old people, but he’s never done that. ... He’s well-spoken, with good aspirations.”

This story was originally published April 22, 2016 at 4:16 PM with the headline "Stan State student gets viral exposure in national McDonald’s campaign."