Little Big Man on Campus Has Tall Ambitions Ahead : Education: Boy of 10 can’t wait for his next Orange Coast College class. He has a lot to ‘give back to society.’

Masoud Karkehabadi is carrying a hefty load this semester at Orange Coast College. Trigonometry. Chemistry. Anthropology. U.S. History. English literature. Twenty-three units in all, nearly double what many students take.

Not bad if he were some seasoned academician.

But this is a 10-year-old boy.

A gregarious 62-pounder possessing a photographic memory and an IQ of more than 200, Masoud started classes last week as the youngest student ever at the college--by a long shot.

He’s not going to stop there. The boy hopes to enter UC Irvine next fall, then go on to medical school at Harvard or Johns Hopkins.

If all goes according to plan, the youngster with liquid brown eyes and a ready smile will begin his internship as a surgeon by age 15, then start doing what he really wants to do: devising solutions to such medical mysteries as Alzheimer’s disease and brain tumors.

For good measure, he wants to perfect better plastic surgery techniques to help burn victims, a goal he established a few years ago after watching a TV news story about a county boy burned over 90% of his body.

“I’m interested in my studies. I want to use my brain to the best of my capacity,” he says unabashedly. “But I don’t feel any different than anyone else, really.”

Though half the age of most students at the community college, the pint-size sophomore has already made a mark with faculty and students.

“It makes me laugh every time I think of him,” says OCC President David A. Grant, who had to approve the youngster’s admission. “He’s just a delightful guy. He came into my office on Friday afternoon and said, ‘Ah, sir, I have to go home now, but I can hardly wait for Monday to come so I can attend class again. Last night I could hardly sleep, I was so excited waiting for chemistry.’

“And there’s nothing put on with him, nothing is for show,” Grant adds.

The son of an Iranian fighter pilot who immigrated to this country in 1976, Masoud transferred to Orange Coast College from Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut after his parents moved to Laguna Hills. Before that, he was tutored at home by a teacher hired by his father, Mike, a loan broker at a Westminster auto dealership. His mother, Alejandra, is a homemaker.

His family includes doctors, an engineer and other learned members, but no one quite like Masoud.

The boy has a simple explanation. “I realize it’s a gift from God,” he says. “My main purpose is to give back to society.”

The boy began speaking shortly after he turned 8 months old. Within days he was happily babbling. But his parents did not really notice anything singular about his intellect until he was 18 months old, when Masoud took to watching MTV, quickly learning the lyrics to every top 40 song. When the TV was turned off, Masoud stayed on, singing every song verbatim.

When his father taught him the alphabet, Masoud began writing simple sentences. At age 2 he got his first computer. By 3 he had read a guide to family medicine and was waking his parents by putting a stethoscope to their chests and diagnosing their illnesses.

From the beginning, his memory has been remarkable. Masoud can watch a cartoon and recite back the dialogue word for word and do all the sound effects. He learned every word of the Disney film “Peter Pan” after just a few viewings.

By age 7, Masoud was pleading with his father to let him enter college. But his parents did not give in until he turned 9. They enrolled the boy at Mt. San Antonio College near their home in Ontario.

Careful that he not be pushed too hard, the boy was limited to 15 academic units. But the problem was not with Masoud keeping up. He went too fast. In his enthusiasm, the boy would try to answer every question posed by teachers, often before they had finished. He was rubbing students and teachers the wrong way.

“His mind is usually going 80 m.p.h.,” Karkehabadi says. “We usually have to slow him down. He’d answer the questions like he was on some TV game show.”

His father considered for a time pulling Masoud out of college, but the youngster persuaded him that it would work out. And it did. He spent three semesters at the college, made friends and even took on tutoring chores with more than two dozen students, Karkehabadi says.

At one point, Masoud and several other chemistry students showed off their experiments at a local elementary school. The children were somewhat in awe of Masoud’s accomplishments, but after the presentation the boy went out and frolicked with them on the playground, his father says.

“He can adjust to just about anything,” Karkehabadi says. “If there’s a 4-year-old around, he can play on that level. If he’s in a college class, he can handle that. He has excellent adaptability.”

But this is still a 10-year-old boy. At OCC, Masoud is accompanied on campus by a governess, who makes sure that he does not climb trees when he should be in class.

Of course, all study and no play could make him a dull boy, so Masoud makes sure he keeps up with his hobbies. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and spaceships are favorites. He also enjoys skiing, deep-sea fishing with his father and hitting Chuck E. Cheese pizza parlors.

“He has a clarity of understanding denied to most people, but he’s a little kid too,” says Grant, OCC’s president. “We’re going to be careful to ensure that he enjoys life.

“It’s no good being the brightest guy in the world if life isn’t enjoyable to you.”