Jumping the hurdles, reaching the goal Jumping the hurdles, reaching the goal (June 11, 2003)

Tales of two students who beat the odds

By David Boyce
Almanac Staff Writer

Students know about pressure. Of the 714 graduates of Menlo-Atherton and Woodside high schools this year, scores have faced obstacles that could have derailed their plans. Here are stories of two students who surmounted unusual obstacles.

Bouncing around

When Andy Tzelepis was in fifth grade, he almost got sent back to the first grade. His language skills just weren't up to what his teachers were expecting. So he buckled down, hooked up with an after-school tutor for a semester and learned to read and write, in Greek.

At the time -- it was 1995 -- Andy was living in Patra on the coast of the Peloponnesian peninsula in Greece. In hopes of a better life, his parents had just sold their Redwood City flower shop and moved the family back to the old country, where Andy had been born and where they owned a home.

Andy learned to speak Greek during his earliest years living in the Bay Area. Now he had to learn to read and write in that language, and fast. "I just kept on sitting down and thinking that I want to go to college ... to make something of my life," he says. He stuck with that goal and became a top student.

Meanwhile his dad poured the family savings into unsuccessful efforts to break into the restaurant business. The money drained away. Christmas gifts? Well, there weren't any, Andy says. Utility bills were paid with credit cards.

In 1998, his dad and older brother returned to the Bay Area with a suitcase and a goal of starting over. "There was no one to help out," Andy says. "We had nothing. Just the clothes on our backs and credit."

His dad found work as a mechanic and his brother as a bag handler at the airport. It was the dot-com boom and housing was in short supply. They finally found a Redwood City apartment and brought the family back. Andy enrolled at Kennedy Middle School, then went on to Woodside High.

At Woodside, Andy has both given and received help in programs such as Students Offering Support and after-school tutoring. He took advanced-placement classes, and studied hard; many times, the clock showed 1 a.m. and, still studying, he would hear his mom say, "Andy, go to sleep now."

His main influences at school, he says, were his chemistry teacher, Jill Baumgartel, who he says doesn't "baby" her students, and Kathleen Coughlin, his English literature teacher, who kept his spirits up when he was looking for college funding.

Andy's headed to UC Berkeley in the fall, having won about $32,000 in scholarship money, though more is needed. At home, his brother is helping out with the rent, but things are tough, he says. "We're still struggling at this moment."

Andy's not looking forward to leaving home, even though it's just a move across the Bay. "Going away from my family, that's probably the hardest transition," he says.

Resisting temptation

Temptation is as old as life itself. Giving in to an impulsive act can be one's undoing.

Noe Lopez Reynaga, who is graduating from Menlo-Atherton High School this year and is headed to Stanford University, credits his success to his determination to maintain his academic routines and his early efforts to resist using his fists to solve problems.

As a freshman, Noe joined a gang, one that existed on the M-A campus only. "It kind of felt comfortable," he says. "We didn't really do bad stuff. We just hung out together" by the football field.

They did do some bad stuff once, however, when they fought a rival gang. "They thought they were hard. They thought they could mess with everybody. So we put a stop to that," he says.

It was a Pyrrhic victory. Both gang leaders were expelled, Noe says. That fight marked the beginning of the end of his involvement, but his exit was not without difficulty. He had to learn to ignore challenges, he recalls. "That was the hardest part, to kind of look the other way."

Later on that year, after repeated provocations, he almost gave in and fought with a classmate. He backed off when he was threatened with suspension, which would have caused him to fail four classes and would have ended his plans to go on to a major university.

"It's kind of a struggle to stay out of trouble," he says. "If you keep focused and keep your eye on what you want to do, you can do it."

And he has done it. He's taken advanced classes in humanities, sciences and math and has a 3.9 grade point average.

He says he'd been looking forward to honors classes since before he got to M-A. In the seventh grade, Noe attended the pre-college math institute at Stanford. It awakened his interest in school, he says, and gave him a goal that carried him through the tough times.

He's also a four-year alumnus of Stanford's Upward Bound, a federally funded college prep program for high school students from socio-economically disadvantaged homes.

Noe's parents came from Mexico. His dad is a construction laborer who left school in the second grade; his mom went on to community college and is a preschool teacher for the federal Head Start program.

Noe works at the East Palo Alto library, helping kids with their homework and reshelving books. To pay for college, he has scholarships worth about $22,000, including a $20,000 annual grant from Stanford, where he plans to study either history or engineering.

As for being a Stanford student, "I think it's going to be real hard," he says.