Perseverance, Bit of Luck Pay Big Dividends for Nicaraguan

Alex Carcamo figured he had salvaged his disrupted life as a teen-ager in his native, war-torn Nicaragua: he emigrated to the United States, landed a job at a Clairemont car wash and had enrolled as a freshman at Mesa Community College, ambitious for his own future.

“That was back in 1981, and I was really excited,” Carcamo said. “That first week of the semester, I brought my books home and opened them up to read the text.”

His heart sank into his stomach like some dream turned to lead.

“I couldn’t read a word.

“I thought I was retarded. I thought something was wrong with my mind. I couldn’t absorb anything. The culture shock had finally caught up to me. There really was a language barrier.”

Here was an 18-year-old kid, thousands of miles from his parents, who were still trapped in Nicaragua, living on his own in San Diego, wanting to start a new life and emulate his three uncles, all medical doctors.

And he couldn’t understand his freshman college text because this young man with dreams of a new future in the United States couldn’t read English.

On June 16, Carcamo will graduate with honors from UC San Diego’s Revelle College with a bachelor’s of science in biochemistry and cell biology, a 3.7 grade-point average, letters of application for medical schools around the country and holding three jobs--two of them as tutors--while doing graduate medical research work at UCSD. All the while, he is supporting his parents, who now live with him in University City.

“Maybe I’ll write a book someday,” he offered, wondering if maybe, just maybe, his life story could inspire someone else to achieve personal success.

For the thousands of graduating college seniors this spring--including the 700 or so at UCSD’s Revelle College--Carcamo clearly is a standout for having overcome adversity.

He’s the first to point out that he’s not the smartest in the bunch. “There are all these kids around here who got through this in three years and have (a) 3.99. That’s amazing,” he said.

He’s not the most active on campus. “He’s not a bouncing extrovert,” says Ernest Mort, the dean of students at Revelle who otherwise sings Carcamo’s praises.

But consider Alex Carcamo’s story.

The middle of three children, he was raised in the Nicaraguan farming town of Masaya, where his father--a retired army colonel--grew beans, rice and corn on the family’s 10-acre farm.

At 16, he said, “my life got interesting.” The new revolutionary government imprisoned his father because of his former ties to deposed leader Anastasio Somoza’s army.

“It was guilt by association. The revolutionaries took everything from us--our land, our money. They started a draft, and I would be next to go. That’s when my parents decided to do whatever they could to get me and my brother and sister out of the country.”

The three siblings were given political asylum in the United States and allowed to move to San Diego--while his father, Samuel, was imprisoned and his mother, Maria Elena, stayed behind with other relatives.

The three children stayed with friends in Clairemont, Carcamo got a job at a car wash and finished his senior year of high school at Madison High School. “I didn’t know any English to speak of, except ‘car’ and ‘house,’ but somehow I graduated with a 2.0,” he said. “I learned what English I could in the mainstream classes.

“My friends were talking about applying to UCSD or UCLA, and I was just trying to learn more English,” he said. “I was reading everything I could get my hands on, to learn to read and write.

“My life could have gone very badly then, very quickly. I was exposed to drugs, my parents were thousands of miles away, I wasn’t getting any guidance.”

But while at Madison, Carcamo was on the school’s tennis team, a circumstance that led him to Powell Blankenship and, eventually, a renewed life.

Blankenship, a San Diego tennis pro, had seen Carcamo play. “He had a lot of athletic potential and appeared to be someone who would benefit from a little guidance. But he didn’t seem to have a whole lot of money, and I was delighted to be able to offer some tennis instruction to someone so willing to receive it.”

To hear Carcamo describe their first encounter, it was like a wise old man taking a street urchin under his wing. Carcamo had graduated and was taking off a year before enrolling the first time at Mesa Community College.

“I was walking next to the Pacific Beach Tennis Club and looked through the fence. There I was, some dirty kid, watching people learn how to play tennis, and this guy said, ‘Hey, kid, wanna play?’ The next thing I knew, he bought me a racket and was teaching me tennis. He gave me a dream, something I could work toward, a sense of identity.”

Blankenship essentially became Carcamo’s sponsor. Carcamo quickly excelled at the sport, won local tournaments and, in the coming months, worked at various tennis jobs, including as a coach for junior players.

“To this day, I’m grateful to Powell for giving me something to shoot for, a purpose. He kept me from going into drugs.”

For his part, Blankenship said, he was awed by Carcamo’s love for tennis.

“His brother, Roberto, would tell me how he’d find Alex standing in front of a mirror at 3 or 4 in the morning, practicing a stroke we had been working on, to see if it was right,” Blankenship said..

“And, on the court, he’d hit a ball with incredible intensity and confidence, almost as if he was commanding it to go where he wanted it to.”

Tennis became Carcamo’s life focus--until 1983, when he broke his foot while lunging for a sweeping forehand shot, turning his ankle beneath him.

“I was so upset, I took all the trophies I had won by then, put them in in a plastic trash bag, and threw them over the OB (Ocean Beach) pier,” he said.

But he was only sidetracked for a bit. That same year, his parents arrived here after his father was released from prison and the couple won their own political asylum and residency papers.

“That was the most wonderful thing to happen to me--my parents joining me,” he said. “That’s when life really started turning around for the better.”

Having dropped out of Mesa College after his first attempt at college-level studies in 1981, he re-enrolled in 1984 and, this time, it bonded.

“Mesa was a great experience for somebody like me, somebody who’s not a standout. It was a place for me to build confidence, to get better, one step at a time, to develop my study habits,” he said. By now, he had effectively self-taught himself how to read and write English.

Three years later, in 1987, Carcamo had accumulated enough credits to transfer directly as a junior to UCSD, as part of the university’s guarantee to accept Mesa graduates who take the requisite university-level courses.

“And, by the time I transferred to UCSD, I knew I could compete with anybody there. That’s the greatest gift of a community college, to give you the confidence to go on and compete at the university level.”

At UCSD, with many of his general education courses already under his belt, Carcamo focused heavily on the sciences. Today, three years later--at 28--he’s finished the course work and will graduate in two weeks.

He chose biochemistry and cell biology, he said, because he’s undecided whether to become a clinical physician or a basic researcher. “Research in medicine is the last frontier,” he said. “Diseases that today are incurable won’t be cured in clinics. It will be in the research lab, and I’m falling in love with the research experience of medicine.”

Carcamo says he’ll take the year off before enrolling in a medical school--and bide his time by doing research work at UCSD’s School of Medicine. Plus his job on campus delivering mail to the student dorms. Plus his job as a chemistry tutor at UCSD’s Third College. And as a tutor of mathematics and Spanish for a private La Jolla tutorial service.

He’s not sure where he will end up going to medical school--and says that the actual institution may not be that critical to his future.

“It’s not so important, I don’t think, what actual school you go to. UCSD is a great institution, and I’ve met some awesome professors here. But I don’t think the school you go to matters all that much.

“It’s what you make of it. Eventually, ultimately, it’s up to you to decide whether you want to learn or not.”