CONGRATULATIONS GRADUATES TEENS OVERCOME PERSONAL HARDSHIPS TO EXCEL AT SCHOOL.

Byline: SUSAN ABRAM

Staff Writer

SAN FERNANDO - Stephanie Morales' brain devoured high-school calculus like a hungry caterpillar digests springtime leaves.

It was the same when she took advanced and college-level calculus.

The 18-year-old's love of math, of numbers, integrals, derivatives and terms that can cause an average person to feel as if ants are crawling through the brain, opened doors she never expected -- to Stanford and Columbia, Georgetown and UC Berkeley.

The soon-to-be graduate of San Fernando High School has accepted Princeton University's invitation to major in economics.

"My mom inspired me," Morales said. "She earned her GED. She has a passion for learning and doesn't let obstacles get in her way."

As thousands of high school seniors prepare to graduate this month, many will step into a future much different from their past.

For Morales, that means leaving her beloved San Fernando High, where as a magnet student, she conquered every subject well enough to earn more than a 4.0 grade-point average to become the school's salutatorian.

It means leaving a mother and father who earn their living collecting recyclable cardboard to keep the family fed and safe. It means leaving brothers and sisters who look up to her as the first in the family not only to earn a high-school diploma, but also to win enough scholarship money to help her earn a doctorate.

And it means that anything is possible, even for a girl who has known homelessness.

"There was a time when we didn't have anywhere to live," she said. "We lived in a motor home for three years. We had no electricity, no showers. When all that was happening, I became more involved in school."

In an area of the San Fernando Valley tarnished by an image of gangs, violence and the phrase "at-risk youth," good kids, the ones who work hard and keep out of trouble, often do so in the shadows of those who garner all the hype.

But at San Fernando High, success has become more prominent lately. Counselors say they have more valedictorians than in the past, and of 670 seniors poised to graduate later this month, 427 are going to college. Of those, more than 350 are turning to community colleges. Others have signed on to the military or applied to vocational schools.

"There are so many people working hard for these students, for their success," said Sharon Drell, a college counselor at the school.

What has helped is offering concurrent college courses for free while the students are still in high school, Drell said. The students become exposed to college classes earlier, which helps to ease fears or doubts about university level work.

On a recent weekday, Drell and counselor Nina Makhyoun were surrounded by students eager to pick up forms for scholarships, work-study applications and other packets for local community colleges.

While they are proud of those who go on to prestigious universities, the women express the same pride for those students who were going nowhere and managed to turn it around, students like senior Josenia De La Torre.

For a girl who craved trouble, stayed out all night and ditched school, making it to graduation means erasing her past, De La Torre said.

"You should have seen her a few years ago," Makhyoun said of De La Torre, who walked into her office one day to work as an assistant. "She has changed so much that all of us can't believe it. She works at the bank. She has won some scholarship money. She is a different person."

"When I was in the ninth grade, I hung out with friends who stayed out of school," De La Torre said. "I was getting straight Ds. I was getting into fights. My mom was getting chemotherapy for breast cancer at that time, and I took advantage of the situation, just going out."

She then experienced a kind of awakening. She saw how her older brother and sister, neither of whom graduated from high school, struggled with jobs and children.

She wanted to change.

"I started seeing how bad it all was," she said. "I started hanging out with people who stayed in school. And after a while, my work habits changed. I went from straight Ds to straight As."

De La Torre said she regrets the bad choices she made when she was younger, but is glad she has a second chance. She will attend Los Angeles Valley College in the fall. Her goal is to major in business and work her way up the ranks within the bank where she is employed.

"I'm actually proud of myself," she said. "Out of the bad choices I made, I was able to recover. I see a lot of girls who try really hard to do well, but no one recognizes them, and that's when they fall."

susan.abram(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

(color) San Fernando High School senior Stephanie Morales has overcome obstacles to earn a Gates Foundation scholarship and admission into Princeton University.

Evan Yee/Staff Photographer

Box:

CLASS OF 2007 - THE VALEDICTORIANS