-- Driving his mother to chemotherapy treatments, making dinner when she was too tired and applying medical cream to her inflamed skin -- these are activities that don't show up on Kevin Luo's monstrous list of largely academic achievements.
But doing them, and learning from them, has molded his York High School career every bit as much.
So when it came time to write essays for college and award applications, Luo devoted one of them to the experience. When he was 16, his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy.
Suddenly a dizzying schedule of studying, science fairs, tennis, piano, student government and Scholastic Bowl -- all of which resulted in a prestigious Presidential Scholar award -- lurched into perspective. The possibility of losing his mother, Xianchin Kong, overrode everything.
"You kind of have to put things in perspective -- yeah, it's great that I can keep working hard to accomplish all these things, but family and life comes first," Luo said. "So you kind of have to put that as one of the top, if not the top, of your list of priorities. Even though academics and things are so very important, I just try to do best as I can in terms of keeping both within my scope of how I go about working toward whatever I need to be doing."
He cut back on time spent tutoring others and practicing the piano.
"I couldn't exactly not do homework," Luo said. "But I had to try and manage my time even better, and try and do some catching up in lunch, or wherever I can, to try and get stuff done and save whatever time I can."
Before Luo's junior year, his parents contacted York High physics teacher Cynthia Hardesty, who taught their son and advised him in several capacities. They were adamant that his studies not suffer because of the family's medical situation.
"Kevin tries to keep his private life private, to the extent that I don't know how much his classmates really know about what's been going on with his mom and at home," said Hardesty, who received a Teacher Recognition Award from the U.S. Department of Education after Luo listed her as his most influential teacher on his Presidential Scholar application.
Kevin's father contacted Hardesty midway through his son's senior year saying that radiation treatments had been added to his wife's care and that Kevin was helping out. He told Hardesty to feel free to mention that in her letters of recommendation, lest recipients think his son had slacked off as a senior.
The affects of his time challenges showed little. Luo will graduate June 17 as York's valedictorian with a 4.7 grade point average in the International Baccalaureate program and an Advanced Placement class as his elective. He will attend California's Stanford University and probably study math or science.
Luo won a $2,500 National Merit scholarship and was chosen for the York County Youth Commission's Outstanding Youth Award for overall achievement.
As one of the nation's 141 Presidential Scholars, Kevin was invited to recognition events in Washington later this month. If he meets President Barack Obama it will be for the second time -- he met him while attending a Washington Workshops Congressional Seminar summer program in 2007 when Obama was a senator.
Helping his mom pushed Luo back to volunteering at a local nursing center, where he has a new appreciation for the senior citizens' struggles.
"Through my mother's suffering I have developed compassion, empathy, and an appreciation for life, attributes that I have learned only through experience," his essay read.
Schedule
York County School Division graduations
June 17, William and Mary Hall:
--Tabb High, 9:30 a.m.
--York High, 1 p.m.
--Grafton High, 4:30 p.m.
--Bruton High, 7 p.m.
-- York River Academy, June 16, 7 p.m. at Grafton Middle School
For more information, visit dailypress.com/graduations
This article is the fifth in a series about members of the Class of 2009 To see more of the Daily Press, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.dailypress.com. Copyright (c) 2009, Daily Press, Newport News, Va. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Copyright (C) 2009, Daily Press, Newport News, Va.