LITHONIA, Ga. — Arantza Peña Popo, the Arabia Mountain High School valedictorian, beat out more than 200,000 other students nationwide to win the 2019 “Doodle for Google” contest.
Her artwork is currently featured on the front of Google’s homepage and placed in the upper lefthand corner of search results – pages seen billions of times a day.
Popo appeared on “The Tonight Show” with Jimmy Fallon on Monday night as she was announced as the winner.
She will get $30,000 scholarship toward her college education and Arabia Mountain will get a $50,000 technology package, according to Google.
She is set to use that scholarship to attend the University of Southern California this fall, where she'll study graphic design.
The piece is titled: "Once you get it, give it back," according to Google.
“When I grow up, I hope to care for my mom as much as she cared for me my entire life,” Popo wrote in her contest submission.
According to a Google post for the Doodle, the illustration was based on a real picture in her house of her mom holding her sister. The piece depicts her in the future, caring for her mother in her older age.
"When I grow up, I hope" was the theme of the contest.
"I wanted to make it more personal to me, so I decided to make it about my mother, she's made so many sacrifices for me, so I kind of wanted to show me paying it back in the future," Popo told Jimmy Fallon during her interview on his program. "So I wanted to just care for her in the future, and make her life better in the future like she did for me."
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