Modest Valedictorian Has Always Been ‘Anxious to Learn’ : Education: Gifted student wins four-year scholarship to Stanford. He is first in his family, which moved to U.S. from Mexico, to attend college.

When Ramiro Medina Jr. came to the United States from Mexico at the age of 4, he and his family lived without heat in a converted garage.

Today, Ramiro lives with his parents and five of his six brothers and sisters in a simple, three-bedroom stucco house, sharing a bedroom with his two older brothers.

This fall, the 18-year-old Compton High School valedictorian will move into student housing at Stanford University in Palo Alto.

The university has awarded Ramiro a full, four-year scholarship worth more than $20,000 annually. The son of Maximina and Ramiro Medina, a housewife and a gardener who cannot speak English, Ramiro is an aspiring scientist already doing laboratory research under a National Science Foundation program.

“I don’t have a father who can help me with my science, but I have his support,” Ramiro said by way of explaining how he was able to excel academically.

He is the first child in the family to attend college, an achievement that has produced excitement and pride, as well as tears, at the family’s Oris Street home on Compton’s northern border.

Ramiro’s two older brothers, who work with their father as gardeners tending lawns in surrounding suburban communities, tease their mother, demanding to know how Ramiro got all the brains.

The senior Medina, clad in work clothes, beams with pride. “Very happy, very proud,” he says in Spanish when asked how he feels about his son’s scholarship.

Ramiro’s mother, meantime, slips out of the room and returns moments later with a tissue, dabbing at the tears that spill over whenever the subject of her son’s impending departure is discussed.

Ramiro explained earlier that Stanford is eight hours away, a considerable distance for a family whose members have never been separated, except for the older, married sister, who returns each weekend to visit.

Discovered early in his school career as a gifted and talented student, Ramiro has maintained a 4.0 grade-point average for years and his high school classes are advanced placement, or college level.

This year at Compton High, he is the designated peer counselor, meaning that after special training at UC Irvine last summer he can earn extra money tutoring fellow students in algebra, physics, geometry and calculus.

“Ever since I was in kindergarten, I’ve been anxious to learn,” he said. He spoke only Spanish when he entered Rosecrans Elementary School in the Compton Unified School District.

“My father saw that ever since I was young, I was interested in my studies, so, he said if I want to work with my brain, go for it and get a college education.”

His parents and the economic and educational hardships they overcame in order to give their children a better life, Ramiro said, provide inspiration for him. His father’s first job in the United States, Ramiro recalls, was in a factory for $140 a week.

Ina Silverman, whose full-time job at Compton High School is guiding and counseling college-bound teen-agers, said Ramiro’s dedication is such that he did not attend his senior prom.

“It was more important for him,” she said, “to put the money away for his college education so he wouldn’t burden his family.”

Ramiro’s Stanford scholarship will cover about $21,000 of the estimated annual $23,600 tuition and living expenses. Ramiro also has won several small, local scholarships that will help him make up the difference.

The young man is driven to excel, Silverman said, “but it’s an inner drive.” She remembers that he used to be extremely shy, so, one of his counselors suggested that Ramiro enroll in speech class. “At the end of the year, he was not entirely satisfied with the results, so he took it a second year,” Silverman said.

“He’s not a showoff or anything,” Silverman said. “He’s humble, he’s appreciative of the people who help him. He’s going to be a success some day.”

If he had the chance, Ramiro said, he would tell other students like himself “not to give up, to keep trying and to seek help. Before I was very shy, extremely shy, and I wouldn’t seek help.”

In addition to his peer counseling position, Ramiro is one of 50 out of 220 applicants chosen to participate in a National Science Foundation program that pairs outstanding students with scientists in industry or academe in order to expose the students to the kind of research work they will encounter at the university level.

Ramiro and his mentor, John Roberts, a geneticist and associate professor of biology at Cal State Dominguez Hills, are researching the DNA similarities of different poisonous snakes, hoping to lay groundwork for a new anti-venom serum.

“I’ve had maybe eight or 10 high school students come and work with me over the last five years,” Roberts said, “and he’s the best . . . he’s able to work independently. He would come after school and work and, often, when I had to go home, he would stay and continue working. His results were very good and very accurate.”

Ramiro wants to eventually earn a Ph.D., probably in biology, and dedicate himself to research. In one of his scholarship application letters, he wrote that his dream has always been to help his community and humanity through his scientific research.

“If one day I can help mankind by finding a cure for such dreadful diseases as AIDS or cancer,” he wrote, “I will have fulfilled that dream.”

One of Ramiro’s biggest worries right now about leaving home, he said, is that he will not be available to help his three younger sisters with their schoolwork.

And, then, there is the parting. It will be as difficult for him as for his brothers and sisters, he conceded. Despite the academic endeavors that separate him from his brothers and sisters, Ramiro said they have never been jealous and always supportive.

“We’re a very close family,” he said. “That’s why it will be hard for me to go away to college. But I will do it.”