Stellar grads of L.A. Unified tell their stories

Nick Perle did not seem destined to be among a group of honored graduates selected to address the school board. Most of his life, he'd been headed down a different path -- at age 8, he started using drugs to escape the pain of physical abuse and his parents' divorce. He passed out during classes in high school, if he bothered to show up at all.

But there he was last week sitting with the stellar students, marveling at their accomplishments.

Irresistibly, the student narratives began to overshadow official business at the downtown headquarters of the Los Angeles Unified School District. That business was accomplished with the election of Monica Garcia to a second one-year term as board president.

Then the students told their tales.

Deara Okonkwo, 17, disclosed that she was graduating not from high school, but from the University of Southern California with a major in English and a minor in psychology. (She had graduated from Middle College High in South L.A. at 14.) She also teaches dance and manages a dance group. She's headed to graduate school at USC. She intends someday to be the U.S. secretary of education.

Honors student Kelvin Batiste, 18, hadn't been sure he'd be included in graduation ceremonies at Hollywood High.

Family problems had caused him to move to Lancaster for three months of his senior year, separating him from his friends in the Performing Arts Magnet at Hollywood High.

His mother, Veronica Batiste, recounted in an e-mail how she and her son had experienced periods of homelessness as he grew up.

The day before graduation, Kelvin finally got word that his paperwork was in order. An aspiring actor, he plans to start at Cal State Northridge and hopes to transfer to New York University to major in theater.

"I can actually make it out of the ghetto and become something," he told the school board.

San Pedro High grad Gabriela Lopez, 18, proudly noted that she'd never missed or even arrived late for school. Her mother has worked serving food in the school cafeteria for the last decade or so.

Outside school, the honors student started a dance troupe. She also volunteers at a senior center and as a church youth leader. Her goal is to become a heart surgeon or a forensic anthropologist, which, as she explained, is someone who identifies corpses.

Maybe later she'll run for the U.S. Senate. The first in her family to attend college, Lopez will start at El Camino College in Torrance and transfer, she hopes, to USC.