Aggressive Eighth-Grade Computer Whiz Sees His Future Up on Screen

David Brussin’s goal in life is to start a computer company, a heady ambition for a 13-year-old.

However, he first plans to complete his schooling at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which he considers “the best technological school in the country.”

But the Costa Mesa eighth-grader, who has been working with computers since the fourth grade, is on the way after winning a computer in the middle-school division in a national contest that asked entrants to design a telecommunications program that could link services among states.

The contest, sponsored by the Computer Learning Foundation based in Palo Alto, drew 25,000 entrants.

“Computers are my goal,” said the TeWinkle Intermediate School student, “but anything can change. Right now, I’m committed to computers, but I also want to do other things.”

He said robotics might be an alternative course of study.

In the meantime, he sharpens his computer skills by playing video games. “I’ve always wanted to design my own video games for the challenge,” he said.

His winning program in the national contest calls for countries to equip schools with instruments to measure weather data that would be fed into a central computer in one school.

“Of course the school would be TeWinkle,” he said, noting that the program would provide weather conditions of certain areas that would aid farmers, airports, governments and tourists. Subscribers would finance the project.

He said it could also be used as an international emergency communications system.

David said he feels that his presentation in the same contest last year was “probably more valuable” than his computer presentation this year.

He suggested a system of programs to help handicapped people. It earned him an honorable mention.

“I think the lives of people who are handicapped should be more independent through computers,” he said. “Right now a lot of handicapped people have to rely on other people, and they like to do things for themselves.”

For instance, he suggested making a refrigerator with a built-in microwave oven and shelves on a conveyor system to allow people in wheelchairs to prepare their own food.

There’s a reason for his project. “I was brought up to help other people,” he said.

“David is aggressive, and when he wants something, he goes out and gets it,” said his mother, Rosalind Brussin, a former schoolteacher.

Mary Lee Clark, his computer teacher at TeWinkle, agreed. “He has an unending reservoir of perseverance,” she said.

David’s response? “My computer teacher is enthusiastic about everything.”

In at least one way, every day has been like every other day for Darla Kitchen since she started attending school.

But unlike other students, Kitchen has never missed a day at school, thanks to the fact she had all her childhood diseases before she entered kindergarten at Iva Meairs Elementary School in Westminster.

She has perfect-attendance awards from Meairs and Warner Intermediate School, also in Westminster.

Now a senior at Westminster High School, she says, “People ask me about it a lot now as it gets closer to graduation.” And she adds that perfect attendance now is “very important.”

Randy Campbell, 24, of Irvine was looking for a creative way to propose to Laurah Grijalva, 23, of La Habra.

So with help from Orange Coast College student film maker Daniel Buhler, Campbell concocted an elaborate and complicated surprise for Grijalva that ended at the Edwards Hutton Centre theater in Santa Ana.

Campbell and Buhler had made a cops-and-robbers film segment that was added to a coming attraction at the theater. At the end, Campbell, who was playing a role in the film segment, suddenly turned around, faced the camera and asked Grijalva, “Will you marry me?”

Campbell had taken Grijalva to the movies and was sitting next to her.

“The audience really got into the whole thing,” said Campbell. “When the lights came on, the whole audience shouted, ‘Well, how about it?’ ”

She accepted his proposal, and they plan to marry next June.

Acknowledgments--Fullerton resident Anne-Marie Palacios Guerra, a senior at Harvard University, has won a $6,000 public service incentive grant from the Stride Rite Corp. Grant awardees are required to make a commitment to a year of public service after graduation. She plans to teach vocational English to young women in the Mission District in San Francisco.