EASTVALE - Once so unhappy that she left home on a Greyhound bus at the age of 13, Alyssa Moreno has found it easier to wrestle with life's challenges since she learned a little technique.

Now 15, Moreno is a standout wrestler at Eastvale Roosevelt High, a 5-foot-2 dynamo taking on girls and boys alike.

"I've completely turned my life around," said Moreno, whose report cards are now dotted with mostly A's. She's also a cheerleader.

Moreno took second in the Southern California regional girls tournament Jan. 20 at Oxnard Channel Islands High. She lost, 6-2, to Stephanie Pernillo, of Covina Northview, in the finals of the 98-pound division.

"It was a really good match. She was really tough," Northview coach David Ochoa said of Moreno.

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Jerry Soifer / The Press-Enterprise

Once a teenage runaway, Alyssa Moreno has found a home at Eastvale Roosevelt and an unlikely pastime in wrestling, becoming one of the area's top female competitors.

Moreno is forgoing the girls state meet in order to challenge the boys in the 103-pound class in today's Mountain View League championships at Corona Centennial. Moreno, who has a 15-9 record against boys and girls, will try to qualify for the CIF individual championships at La Quinta High on Feb. 15 and 16.

Rebelling and Running Away

For Moreno, home was with her father while growing up in Inland Southern California. Her parents had gone their separate ways early in her life, and by the time she was 13, Moreno had not seen her mother in nearly 10 years.

"Not having my mom in my life during the beginning of my teenage years was extremely hard," she said. "My friends had their moms. When they had boyfriend problems, they had a girl to talk to."

Her grades deteriorated. She ditched school and ran away from home twice, spending a few days at a friend's home.

"I started not caring, rebelling a lot against my family," she said. "I switched schools twice. I wanted to know who (my mother) was, to see what she was about, if she was a bad person or a good person."

Driven by that impulse, she disappeared from her father's home in April 2006. Wearing sweatpants and a hooded sweatshirt to make her look like a boy, she paid $20 to take a bus to Bakersfield where her mother lived.

She didn't tell friends where she was going and she didn't have a cell phone.

"Deep down I was scared," she said.

Finding What She Was Missing

At first Moreno was glad to be reunited with her mother, who cried upon seeing her daughter. Moreno told her mother that if she called police, she would leave and go where nobody could find her.

However, after a week, Moreno's mother called her father to let him know where his daughter was, and eventually brought her back home for the final two months of Moreno's freshman year at Norco High.

Moreno's father punished her by pulling her out of Norco's softball program. She was not allowed to watch television and had no telephone privileges. She said she finished her freshman year with terrible grades and returned to Bakersfield for the summer.

But Moreno saw that her mother wasn't the person she thought she was. She realized there was no future for her in Bakersfield and came back to Eastvale to start her sophomore year at Roosevelt, which had just opened.

"It was traumatic," Adrian Moreno said of his daughter's disappearance. "We had to figure out what the problem was. It was something inside of her. It took a couple of years to get through it ...

"She realized it wasn't a better life on the other side like she thought it would be. It changed her whole attitude."

Father and daughter agree that the traumatic episode was a big part of her maturation, and the same is true of wrestling.

Moreno's older brother, who wrestled for four years at Chino High, influenced her to go out for the sport. Adrian Moreno said it was initially tough to accept his daughter competing against boys. Now he loves it.

After videotaping a recent match, he said a rival coach came up to compliment him on his daughter's strength.

And Alyssa has found the female role model she needed in Roosevelt assistant coach Stephanie Cataline, whose husband, Mike, is the head coach.

"I do take all of our athletes as my very own children," Stephanie Cataline said. "It's our responsibility to guide them."

Reach Jerry Soifer at 951-893-2112 or jsoifer@PE.com