18-year-old Georgia teen Arantza Peña Popo had the pleasure of having her Doodle she designed to pay tribute to her mother being featured on the company’s website on Tuesday after she came up tops in this year’s “Doodle for Google” competition.
Drawing inspiration from this year’s theme – “When I grow up, I hope…”, Arantza titled her design “Once you get it, give it back” to assure her mother she’ll return the favor of looking out for her as they both grow.
Describing the portrait, Arantza said: “When I grow up, I hope to care for my mom as much as she cared for me my entire life. In my doodle, there is a framed picture of my mother carrying me as a baby (a real picture in my house) and below the picture is me, caring for her when she’s older in the future.”
According to USA Today, the real picture Arantza is talking about is of her mother carrying her sister when she was young.
“I wanted to focus more on a message of helping out my awesome mother more than anything else,” she told Google in a Q&A.
“I think it was just a chance to thank her for all she’d done. Sometimes I think of the cost of raising a child all the way to adulthood and since I know I can’t instantly pay my mom back hundreds of thousands of dollars, I can at least pay her back in a sincere doodle,” she added.
Announced as the winner on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Monday, Arantza will receive a $30,000 college scholarship, a $50,000 technology award for her school, as well as, a trip to Google’s California headquarters.
“At first, I initially wanted [to do] you know, like an invention or a career, but I wanted to make it more personal to me, so I decided to make it about my mother,” Arantza told Fallon about the portrait.
“She’s made so many sacrifices for me, so I kinda wanted to show me paying it back in the future,” she added.
