New Path Blazed to Distant College : Education: A judge, a high school counselor and the campus’ president help recruit and find funding for five Santa Ana youths.

Hidden in the throng of seniors graduating today from Santa Ana Unified School District, which will include immigrants from dozens of nations, is a story quintessentially American.

It’s about success embraced through hard work, and about tangling with cultural differences. It’s about accomplished people going out of their way to help those struggling to accomplish. And it’s about growing up, with the pain that can come with independence.

Among the 1,800 Santa Ana teen-agers who will move tassels from one side of their mortarboards to the other today are five whose futures are linked.

Thanks to a rare combination of hard work, charity and optimism, these students--two Latinos and three Vietnamese, most of them immigrants from homes with modest incomes--will attend Allegheny College in Pennsylvania next fall on hefty scholarships.

The teen-agers’ chance for a future at this small, ivy-covered liberal arts school was clinched by an unusual cooperative effort by a local judge, a high school counselor and the president, who used their influence to make it happen.

“These kids are going to become the leaders of their communities in the next 50 years,” said Superior Court Judge Jack Mandel, who has been friend and mentor to the five. “After all the things we keep hearing about inner-city kids, it’s important to know those stereotypes aren’t always true. These are terrific kids.”

Three of the teen-agers heading to Allegheny next fall are from Santa Ana High School: Phong Tran, 17, who aspires to be a doctor; Chau Dao, 17, a straight-A student and class valedictorian, and Victor Sanchez, 18, who hopes for an engineering career. The other two are from Saddleback High: Kim Phan, 18, an accomplished violinist who hopes to win a seat in Congress someday, and Adam Ruiz, 18, a would-be archeologist.

Their road to Allegheny College began with high school counselor Lucy Ginorio, who knows Allegheny’s president, Daniel Sullivan, and whose daughter attends the school. She talked up the college to promising students. Mandel, an Allegheny alumnus and now a college trustee, persuaded Sullivan to talk with the students and turned his living room into a friendly meeting place.

Mandel was already well known to the teen-agers. Two or three nights a week, he tutors teen-agers in English or other subjects. He also spearheaded the district’s stay-in-school program, which brings professionals into classrooms to share their success stories.

Still, the youths were moved by Mandel’s willingness to help them make college connections. The judge is paying for plane fare or winter clothes for a couple of the harder-pressed students.

“It changed my view of government,” Sanchez said. “Usually it’s full of corrupt politicians. But I guess there’s a few good men out there.”

And all were surprised and touched that Sullivan flew to California to see them, and treated them with warmth and respect.

“It really clinched my decision to go there,” Ruiz said. “He made me feel like (the college) was a real family kind of thing.”

Although some arrangements are not yet final, most of the students are getting four-year scholarships averaging about $11,000 a year, with another $8,000 or so coming from government grants, loans and work programs. That package covers most of Allegheny’s $21,000-a-year fees for room, board and tuition.

A school of 1,800 students near Lake Erie that counts Clarence Darrow and President William McKinley among its alumni, mostly white Allegheny will be a change for the Santa Ana students, who are accustomed to warm weather and a student population where more than 80% are ethnic minorities.

For the five students, deciding to attend Allegheny meant struggling against cultural norms. On a recent afternoon, they told of parents who were angry, insulted or worried that their children would choose to go so far from the protective circle of their families.

“The first time I told them, my dad was just silent,” said Tran, whose family came from Vietnam when he was 4 years old. “My mom just said straight out, ‘It’s too far. It’s too cold. You might get sick.’ ”

Sanchez, who emigrated from Mexico when he was in the eighth grade, said his father worried that, without relatives nearby, Victor would have to struggle unnecessarily to learn to cook, do his laundry and get along with roommates.

“My dad said, ‘It’s really hard making it on your own without family around. How are you going to make it?’ ” Sanchez recalled. “Among the people they know, it’s not very often that a kid goes to college that far away from home.”

The Santa Ana students admitted that they are a little anxious about undertaking a life so far from everything familiar. But they are optimistic that, at a small college like Allegheny, they will find comfortable niches.

“With all that individual attention,” Sanchez said, “it makes you feel like a person and not a number.”