Students Rising Above

Christine Fung
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS 5) ― Leonard Goo always knew college would be his ticket.  The son of immigrants, his parents taught him the value of education and hard work, hoping that one day their son would be successful and fulfill their American dream. This year, he graduated from U.C. Berkeley. 

"It felt good to walk across that stage," Goo said, "to realize that I've come a long way.. it was really cool to see my family come out." 

He could see how proud his mother was.  If only his father could have lived to see this day as well.

Leonard grew up in East Oakland, in a rough neighborhood where kids are accustomed to hearing gunshots and police sirens. But crime was not the biggest worry for Leonard.  When he was 12-years-old, his father developed a mental illness. The stress of caring for his father took a terrible toll on his mother, and she became emotionally unstable as well.  Leonard watched them fall deeper into depression. 

Eventually it got so bad, Child Protective Services took Leonard from his parents and put him in foster care.  But the worst was yet to come. 

During his freshmen year of high school, Leonard's father committed suicide. 

"I felt really bad and I felt very helpless… [that] I couldn't help [my parents] as much as I wanted to…" Looking back, Leonard said the only way he could keep himself going during that chaotic time was to stay focused on school.

"I felt the only thing I really had control over was my own life and the path I was going to be taking.  So I guess going to school ..kind of took my mind off the stresses."

Determined to fulfill his and his parent's dream of getting a college education, Leonard would ride the bus for two hours every day from his foster home in Vallejo to attend Castlemont High School in East Oakland. 

During that time, he got involved with Upward Bound, a college preparatory program at U.C. Berkeley that targets Oakland and Richmond high school students.  There, he found academic and emotional support from mentors, counselors and other students like him.  When he graduated, Leonard was accepted to U.C. Berkeley. 

During his first semester in college he faced new obstacles, particularly keeping up with the vigorous academic load and competing with peers who he felt had been much better prepared.

"[When I started] to adjust to the new environment and I started to realize that I was at a place … where you're forced to adapt and learn from mistakes that you've made.  It sounds kind of cliché but I felt like a fish in a large pond."

Leonard found friends and support at the Biology Scholars Program, where he met students with similar backgrounds who all were determined to graduate.  With lots of hard work and determination, Leonard was able to graduate five years later with a degree in molecular environmental biology.

"College has made me curious about a lot of things in life in general.  It's made me want to learn more about disparities in health, disparities between ethnicities [and] it's made me curious about science and the way that people in academia contribute to their field of knowledge… I've always thought it was cool that people could dedicate so many years to studying a specific field of study… and it's just made me want to learn more things."

Leonard will be finishing up summer classes at U.C. Berkeley to officially complete his undergraduate degree.  Following his undergraduate studies, he plans to work for a few years to save money for medical school where he hopes to study infectious diseases and immunology.

For kids who may also be in tough places, Leonard offers this advice:
"As bad as they think their life might be, somebody has it a lot worse.  When you have some type of opportunity, you want to make the best of it."

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