Who were the real students?
Oscar Vazquez, Cristian Arcega, Lorenzo Santillan and Luis Aranda were the four students behind the Carl Hayden team. The competition took them from Arizona to the University of California, Santa Barbara, where they faced college-level opposition. Joshua Davis’s publisher describes their journey in its reading guide.
Two teachers, Fredi Lajvardi and Allan Cameron, mentored the team. Both were Arizona State University graduates. Their involvement matters when comparing the real story with the film’s teacher character. ASU’s account identifies both mentors.
A detail often simplified: the students did not all have the same immigration status. WIRED’s 2014 follow-up reports that Luis Aranda was already a US citizen when the team won. Read the follow-up.
Want to connect those names to the faces in the film? Our cast and character guide maps each student to the actor who portrays him.
Oscar Vazquez: leadership and a future in engineering
Oscar helped organize the team, sought technical advice and persuaded local businesses to contribute. His ROTC experience informed his leadership. WIRED’s original report follows his part in the project.
Carlos PenaVega portrays Oscar in the film. The real Vazquez later earned an engineering degree at Arizona State University and served in the US Army. Washington State University’s February 2018 profile describes those milestones and his public speaking. See Oscar’s dated follow-up for what happened after the competition.
Luis Aranda: handling the robot and tether
Luis handled Stinky at the pool and managed its tether during the underwater run. His work supported the teammates operating the controls. Read the competition account.
Oscar Gutierrez plays Luis Aranda in Spare Parts. Luis is a different person from both the actor and teammate Oscar Vazquez. For his later work, see the dated account of Luis and Lorenzo’s catering business.
Cristian Arcega: design and control
Cristian worked through power and buoyancy problems and piloted Stinky alongside Oscar. The original reporting describes those decisions. David Del Rio portrays him in the film. Explore the design choices in our Stinky robot guide.
Lorenzo Santillan: practical mechanics
Lorenzo brought experience rebuilding engines and helped develop the robot’s mechanical systems. WIRED traces his engineering contribution. José Julián plays Lorenzo in the film. Our follow-up on Lorenzo covers published accounts of his culinary studies.
Explore the Carl Hayden school, teachers and wider robotics legacy for more context on the program behind the film.
Stinky: a small-budget underwater robot
The students called their robot Stinky. WIRED’s original reporting describes a build using PVC pipe, small trolling motors, cameras and a control system. Their fundraising brought in about $800, compared with the MIT team’s roughly $11,000 budget. A leak threatened the electronics; an improvised absorbent solution helped protect them. Read Joshua Davis’s original “La Vida Robot” report.
The useful lesson is not that equipment or expertise are unimportant. It is that engineering also involves working within constraints: choosing available materials, testing an idea, finding the weak point and making a repair. The students’ story gives that process a human scale.
Explore how Stinky worked through the team’s original technical report, a simple control-flow diagram and a printable STEM activity.
How does the movie compare with reality?
| In Spare Parts (2015) | In the documented story |
|---|---|
| Four students take on an underwater robotics challenge. | The real team was Oscar, Cristian, Lorenzo and Luis from Carl Hayden High School. |
| George Lopez plays Fredi Cameron. | The real mentors were Fredi Lajvardi and Allan Cameron. Do not use the movie character’s name as a biography of either teacher. |
| The contest is the central dramatic event. | The victory happened in 2004. The students’ education, work and immigration experiences continued after it. |
| Actors portray the team and people around them. | For firsthand accounts, explore the documentary Underwater Dreams alongside the reporting and book. |
A dramatized film is not a transcript of the competition or of the students’ private lives. When researching a particular scene, keep the source clear: a film credit establishes a character, while original reporting supports a historical claim.
From the competition to the screen
- 2004
The Carl Hayden team competes at UC Santa Barbara and defeats college teams.
- 2005
Joshua Davis tells the story in WIRED’s La Vida Robot.
- 2014
Mary Mazzio’s documentary Underwater Dreams is released. Davis’s nonfiction book Spare Parts is published in December.
- 2015
The dramatized film Spare Parts, directed by Sean McNamara, brings the story to a new audience.
Where are the real students now?
There is more to their lives than the competition’s ending. Our then-and-now guide brings together dated follow-up sources and explains what they do—and do not—tell us about the team today.
Reading or discussing the story in class?
Use our Spare Parts movie discussion questions and printable worksheet to explore teamwork, engineering and the difference between a film scene and historical evidence. The guide includes original prompts and facilitator notes.
For the book, Macmillan provides teaching and reading guides. For screening information, see where to watch Spare Parts.
Sources & further reading
- WIRED: La Vida Robot — original reporting, April 2005.
- Macmillan: Spare Parts reading guide — the team and competition.
- ASU News: the team’s achievement and mentors — July 17, 2014.
- Underwater Dreams — the documentary’s official site.
- Macmillan: Spare Parts — book information and publication date.