High Life A WEEKLY FORUM FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS : Winning Through Determination : Cancer patient: Craig Pollard, 22, has battled Hodgkin’s disease into remission. Now he’s working on a scholarship fund.

Craig Pollard, a business student at USC, is taking one day at a time as he gets ready for graduation at the end of the spring semester.

The 22-year-old senior can’t help but take things step by step. His life has been interrupted not once, but twice by Hodgkin’s disease, a type of cancer that attacks the lymph nodes.

During his sophomore year at Villa Park High School, Pollard, then 15, was progressing well academically but was having some trouble on the football field.

“I thought my shoulder pads were rubbing me wrong and making me sore under my arm,” Pollard recalled in a recent interview. But the biopsies done on the swollen lymph nodes bore bad news.

Pollard underwent six months of chemotherapy and four months of radiation treatments. He had his spleen, appendix and lymph nodes removed during Christmas vacation.

Came spring and baseball season, however, Pollard returned to the lineup.

He had lost 40 pounds and had to work his cancer treatments into his sports schedule, but by the beginning of his junior year, the cancer was in remission.

“Craig had great family support from his parents and sister,” said Dave Ochoa, varsity baseball coach at Villa Park. “He overcame a challenging obstacle and demonstrated the strength of his character.”

Pollard’s parents are Bob and Gail Pollard of Newport Beach, and his sister, who is two years older, is Julie Pollard.

“He handled it unbelievably well and sports helped him get through the tough times,” Bob Pollard said.

Added Gail Pollard: “He was stronger than his father or myself.”

Craig Pollard was a sophomore outfielder, a junior first baseman, and during his senior season, he played first base and pitched a little. He signed a letter of intent to play at USC, where he was given a partial academic scholarship.

However, during a routine checkup up during his sophomore year as a Trojan, Pollard learned that the cancer had returned.

He endured another year of chemotherapy, during which he lost all his hair, and he took a semester off from school.

“I went back home to live with my parents,” Pollard said. “I got really depressed this time.”

During the summer of 1987, he had a bone marrow transplant at the City of Hope hospital in Duarte, and by the fall, he was ready to return to school.

He decided to give up sports that fall, committing all his time to his schoolwork and sleeping.

“I carried 16 units and slept a lot after my classes,” Pollard recalled.

One of his assignments--his senior project in business--comes straight from his heart.

Pollard is using his entrepreneurial skills to launch the West Coast chapter of Candlelighters College Scholarship Fund, a nonprofit organization headquartered in Vienna, Va., that provides scholarships to young cancer patients.

He estimates that 2,000 college-bound cancer patients each year could benefit from scholarship money.

“I hope to encourage young people with cancer,” said Pollard, whose cancer has been in remission for two years now. “Don’t let it be a roadblock, but let it motivate you to live.”

Applicants for Candlelighters may be in treatment, in remission or cured, but they are required to have received the diagnoses before their 21st birthdays.

Donations to Candlelighters can be made by writing in care of the Pollards at 200 Via Orteo, Newport Beach, 92663, or by calling (213) 749-9605.

Heather Lee is a junior at Villa Park High School, where she is copy editor of the Oracle, the student newspaper; student government club commissioner, and a member of Students Against Drunk Driving.