The Perseverance of a Dreamer : Education: Ruben Cardiel, who has muscular dystrophy, was determined to earn his diploma. Despite a bout with pneumonia, he graduated with his class.

When the capped and gowned members of the Class of ’92 gathered for graduation ceremonies on Wilson High School’s athletic field last Friday night, nobody accepted a diploma with greater pride and gratitude than Ruben Cardiel.

“I just kept thinking, ‘I can do it, I can do it’ . . . and I did,” the young Highland Park man said of his determination to graduate from high school despite his debilitating, degenerative illness.

Cardiel, 19, has had muscular dystrophy since infancy, but that has not kept him from enjoying a large circle of friends or pursuing his dream to graduate with his classmates.

Using a wheelchair, he made the daily school bus ride back and forth to Wilson, on the city’s Eastside, each day until December, when he came down with a near-fatal case of pneumonia.

“I almost lost him then. The doctors told me he wasn’t going to make it,” recalled Cardiel’s mother, Josie Orona.

Cardiel, however, fought hard to hang on and, two days before Christmas, he was able to come home from the hospital. But his days at Wilson were over.

“The doctors said I couldn’t ride the bus anymore,” said Cardiel, whose brush with death had left him too weak to make the daily trip. Cardiel was enrolled at the Carlson Hospital School in North Hollywood, the Los Angeles Unified School District’s education facility for students who are too ill or too badly injured to attend their regular campus.

Working closely with the Wilson faculty, Carlson teacher Arlyn Greene tutored Cardiel three times a week at home, helping him keep up with all his course work and prepare for the required proficiency tests.

“It was hard, and I missed going to school with my friends,” Cardiel said. “But Ms. Green helped me a lot, and my mom kept me going.”

There was a last-minute pang of disappointment when school officials determined that Cardiel’s wheelchair was too heavy for the platform that held the rest of the graduating seniors. But the officials had him sit, in cap and gown, at the base of the makeshift stage and brought his diploma down to him during the ceremony.

At that moment, Cardiel said, “I felt happy.”

“I’m so proud of him,” said Orona, who surprised her son with a dinner celebration at home later that night. “I’m just so proud.”