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(CBS) - In the world of sports, stars are usually born not made. Some players come to play with natural gifts that their competitors just can't match. In the world of high school basketball, no one is as gifted as Mamadou Ndiaye. The 17-year-old junior stands tall at 7-feet-5-inches, easily the tallest basketball player in the country - professional or otherwise. 

The towering Ndiaye hails from Senegal, where he was discovered by scouts in 2010. Even though he is two inches taller than even the largest NBA players, Ndiaye plays for a small, private school in California - the Huntington Beach Brethren Christian School. 

"Right now his game is basically catch, turn, drop-step, dunk," says coach Jon Bahnsen. "But this kid's going to play professionally someday. The minute Mamadou enrolled I became a much better basketball coach."
At his young age, Ndiaye is still developing. But even with his raw skillset, he averages 22.9 points and 13.2 rebounds a game. At his height, the 17-year-old is basically impossible to defend.

It is equally impossible for a high schooler that large to stay under the radar, and Ndiaye has reportedly been approached by Guiness World Records to determine if he is officially the tallest high school basketball player in the world. 

The story of how a lanky Senegalese kid came to play ball in California is a murky one. Ndiaye is at his second high school in two years. The first, Simi Valley Stoneridge Prep, helped Ndiaye get a student visa as well as a physical exam, which discovered he had a large tumor in his pituitary gland. The disorder may account for his oversized growth, but could also lead to complications including blindness.

The school was unable to afford treatment for Ndiaye's condition. But a charity drive was able to amass the needed funds, and a married couple who lives near Brethren Christian became Ndiaye's legal guardians.
The family has remained unnamed, and according to coach Bahnsen, their only goal is for Ndiaye to have the life of a normal high schooler. When he's not imposing his will on the court, Ndiaye can be seen riding his oversized bike around town, and reportedly has become a big fan of Chinese food.

By Bruce Einhorn and Olga Kharif June 26, 2014 


Duong and her classmates are returning to Vietnam, where Intel opened a $1 billion plant in 2010. The facility is Intel’s largest for testing and assembling chips, and the company says its 1,000-employee staff will triple in the next few years. To staff up in a market where engineers are suddenly in hot demand, the chipmaker is turning to women, who, while a big part of Vietnam’s workforce, are underrepresented among the nation’s engineers.

Like South Korea’s LG Electronics (066570:KS), Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology (2354:TT), and other tech companies, Intel is starting to take advantage of Vietnam’s cheap workforce and its location in the heart of fast-growing Southeast Asia. Samsung Electronics (005930:KS) accounted for 18 percent of the country’s exports, according to the official Nguoi Lao Dong newspaper. Samsung says it will make more than 40 percent of its phones in Vietnam by 2015; the government in June approved its $1 billion plan for a plant in Ho Chi Minh City’s tech park.

The high interest from foreign tech companies puts a strain on the Vietnamese skilled workforce. The nation has about 250,000 highly trained IT workers and will need 411,000 by the end of 2018, the official Viet Nam News reported last July. Before Intel opened its facility, it tested 2,000 graduating students for general problem-solving aptitude—and only 90 passed. Of those, 40 had good enough English to make the cut, the company says.

Intel sponsored several scholarship programs to develop the skills of local graduates. “If we want to continue to grow the ecosystem, we need more qualified people in the market,” says Sherry Boger, general manager of Intel’s Vietnam facility. Since launching its Intel Vietnam Study Abroad Program in 2009, the $150 billion company has spent $7 million to sponsor 73 students’ bachelor’s degrees at PSU. With Intel now focused on ramping up production at the Vietnam plant, the company says it won’t be sending more students to Portland. “The program met our need to build a strong foundation of engineering talent,” says Trang Nguyen, Intel’s higher education program manager in Vietnam. “We are now turning our attention towards machine operators as we fill the factory.” Intel also offers scholarships to Vietnamese students at local schools and has sent students to Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology’s Ho Chi Minh City campus.

For its finale at PSU, Intel increased its efforts to recruit women, following the two male-heavy classes of engineering students it had previously sent to Portland. “It’s important to do everything we can to broaden the talent pipeline,” says spokesman Nick Jacobs. “Not addressing women specifically would be potentially missing an opportunity.” The company held recruiting events for women at Vietnamese universities and arranged for Intel employees to mentor the students sent to PSU.

Duong’s four-person team took second place in this year’s Cornell Cup, a nationwide Intel-sponsored design competition, with a model for a motorbike collision-avoidance system of sensors and cameras. That could come in handy in congested city streets back home. The PSU degrees may also open greater opportunities at Intel. Duong’s classmate Thanh Nguyen says she is glad to see women managers at the company’s Vietnam plant. “It’s a motivation for you to work,” she says.

 
By Lisa Fenn from Espn.com

I went to meet these two young athletes for a TV story I was doing. I stayed because I could not walk away. 

 “Why did you stay?” he asked as we waited for the light to turn green. I always thought he knew. “I love you,” I answered. “That’s what I thought you’d say,” he replied. “But … why … why did you stick around and do everything you did?” The answer to Dartanyon Crockett’s second question was not as tidy as the first. Because life can be a knotted mess and, sometimes, love is not enough. 

Dartanyon and Leroy Sutton found their way into my heart four years ago. As an ESPN television producer, I chronicled human-interest stories in sports. I covered everything from legends like Derek Jeter and Michael Jordan to disabled amateurs and terminally ill Little Leaguers. But what I found on the wrestling mats at Cleveland’s Lincoln-West High School in 2009 caused my spirit to sink and soar, all in the same moment. 

Dartanyon was Lincoln’s most talented athlete. A winner in multiple weight classes, he was five-foot-seven, with muscles bunched like buckeyes. He was also homeless. His mama had died of an aneurysm when he was eight, then relatives took him to live in a crack house. Where it was Dartanyon could not say, because he is legally blind. Born with Leber optic atrophy disease, he can barely make out the facial features of a person a few feet away. 

Perched atop Dartanyon’s back—yes, riding on his back—was teammate Leroy Sutton. Dartanyon carried his friend to and from the wrestling mats at meets because Leroy had no legs. When he was 11, he was hit by a train. His left leg was amputated below the knee, his right leg below the hip. His mother, ravaged by guilt, slipped into drug use and disappeared for stretches, leaving Leroy to care for his sister. His father spent nearly all of Leroy’s youth in jail. The boy learned to mask his torment with a quick smile. 

The one with no legs being carried by the one who could not see. At first, I stayed because I simply could not look away. 

Dartanyon and Leroy shared a handful of classes, always sitting side by side. Dartanyon would get up to sharpen Leroy’s pencils; Leroy would read the small print for Dartanyon. Yet each time I reveled in their tenderness, they reverted to teenage humor with a twist only they could share. “Did you guys do the homework?” the teacher asked. “Dartanyon tried,” Leroy said, “but he couldn’t see it.” “Leroy ran over,” Dartanyon said, “and read it to me.” 

They barreled down the hallways together. Dartanyon kept a hand on Leroy’s wheelchair, in part as a guide for himself but also to act as a protector, a brother. Their teachers told me that they were “some of the good ones.” 

Their cheerfulness stood out at Lincoln. Teens poured through metal detectors each morning, many stopped for pat-downs. Less than 50 percent would ever graduate. Yet Dartanyon and Leroy moved through the chaos with grace, with a refusal to have their hope tainted. Dartanyon scribbled on pages in his notebooks “Destined for Greatness.”

In order for their friendship’s nuances to unfold on camera, I needed to be a part of it. This was difficult at first because I grew up on the other side of Cleveland. My parents had scrounged up money for private school to protect me from “those people,” and I’d always silently wondered what was so bad about them. Now I realized their discomfort was akin to the uneasiness I wore in Lincoln’s halls. 

But Dartanyon and Leroy eased me in. They taught me their lingo and poked fun when I used it. They opened up about their struggles—Dartanyon with eagerness, as I suspect he had waited all his life for someone to want to know him. Leroy’s revelations emerged more reluctantly. He had been abandoned too many times. But sharing his past became a type of therapy for him.


 
 
I stayed because I would not be next on the list of people who walked out on them. After wrestling season, Dartanyon and Leroy competed in power lifting, a sport in which they both excelled. Leroy held the state record in bench press, Dartanyon in dead lift. Immediately following a conference championship win in April 2009, Dartanyon discovered that all his belongings had been stolen. 

That week, I drove him around to replace his items. A new bus pass. A cell phone. A trip to the Social Security office for a state ID, which required a birth certificate, which had been confiscated during his dad’s eviction. His was a cruel world, and how he endured it baffled me. I paid for his items, crossing a journalistic line. But this was becoming less about a story and all about soothing the suffering. Dartanyon later told me that that was when he grew convinced God had placed me in his life for reasons beyond television. 

I traveled to Akron to film Leroy’s old neighborhood. This required a police escort. “Welcome to Laird Street,” a police officer said. “We call it Laird Country because once they’re born into Laird, they never leave. They just move from house to house, up and down, following those drugs.”

I stayed because my heart was too heavy for my legs to walk away. 

That summer, I edited their story, “Carry On,” praying that one viewer would be moved to help. After the airings, hundreds of e-mails flooded my inbox, offering money and sharing how this friendship shook their souls awake. Dartanyon and Leroy were no longer invisible. I curled up and wept. 

I responded to nearly 1,000 e-mails. Each time I shared exciting developments, Dartanyon gushed with thank-yous and hugs. But Leroy’s stoic posture never budged. “Leroy, if at any point you don’t want this, you need to speak up,” I said. “The last thing I want is to inflict my desires on you.” 

“No, it’s all good,” he said. 

“But usually when it’s all good, people smile or say something,” I said. “Each time I call with good news, you are so quiet. I’m not even sure you’re on the line.” 

“No one’s ever called me with good news before,” he said. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”
I stayed because I vowed then to fill Leroy’s life with a thousand good things until he burst with joy. In November 2009, thanks to viewers’ generosity, he moved to Arizona to study video game design at Collins College. I had doubts that he could manage on his own, but time and again, he disarms his skeptics. He was the first in his family to graduate from high school, and in August, he was the first to receive a college diploma, as Dartanyon and I applauded. 

Dartanyon received his life-changing offer from the U.S. Olympic Committee in March 2010. Coaches invited him to train in Colorado to learn the Paralympic sport of judo. This was like winning the lottery: shelter, sports, mentors, school, medical care, and, as he proudly showed me, his first bed. 

“Top judo athletes begin training at a very young age,” his coach confided. “We don’t know that he can make up the years by 2016.” But he worked his fingers into calluses and swiped a spot on the 2012 team. At the Paralympics in London, Leroy and I celebrated as a bronze medal was draped around Dartanyon’s neck. Once forgotten by the world, he stood on top of it. 

“Things like this don’t happen to kids like us,” he cried that night, his tears soaking my shoulder. He’s right. Blind and legless kids from the ghetto don’t get college degrees and medals, but they should. And that is why I stayed. Because hope, love, and redemption can happen to kids like them. And people like me, people from the “other side,” who can soften life’s blows for them, ought to help.

Those who know the story heap a lot of credit onto me for dedicating four years to improving Dartanyon’s and Leroy’s lives. I’ve removed obstacles from their paths, exposing new horizons and piling on encouragement. I taught Leroy how to pay a bill. I sat with Dartanyon at the Social Security office to apply for disability, something he could have received all his life had anyone submitted the forms. I soothed the burn of Leroy’s broken heart and phantom limbs. Through it all, we grew into an eclectic family. We carried on. 

When he visited the eye doctor, I asked Dartanyon to include me on the consent form so I could access his records. Later, the administrator called. “I just thought you should know what Dartanyon wrote on his form,” she said, somewhat undone. “Next to your name is a space that says ‘relationship to patient.’ He wrote ‘guardian angel.’ ” 

I stayed because we get only one life, and we don’t truly live it until we give it away. I stayed because we can change the world only when we enter into another’s world. I stayed because I love you.

Kwolek died this week at the age of 90, her co-workers at DuPont, the chemical company where Kwolek worked, confirmed to ABC News.

"She leaves a wonderful legacy of thousands of lives saved and countless injuries prevented by products made possible by her discovery," DuPont CEO Ellen Kullman said in a statement.
 
In 1965, Kwolek devised a liquid crystal solution that could be cold-spun. Nearly half a century later, her discovery and legacy have endured through a variety of goods ranging from bulletproof vests to sports rackets and smartphones.

Earlier this week, the one millionth vest using the latest Kevlar technology was sold, according to DuPont, showing just how important Kwolek's discovery remains, even half a century after she did what researchers had long struggled to do.

Kevlar has been used to make sporting goods "lighter, stronger and safer," according to DuPont. It can be found in motorcycle components and clothing, as well as skis, racquets, canoes and kayaks.

The durable, flexible material has also been integrated into personal electronics, such as the Motorola DROID RAZR, which is made with Kevlar unibody design

Kevlar's resistance to chemicals and extreme temperatures makes it ideal for personal electronics, according to DuPont's website.

Goodyear has used the material to create a tire with Kevlar reinforced sidewalls that DuPont said can increase puncture resistance by 35 percent.

Kwolek, who aspired to be a fashion designer before she discovered a love of chemistry, served as a mentor for other female scientists throughout her career. She also participated in programs aimed to introduce children to science.

Kullman remembered her as a "creative and determined chemist and a true pioneer for women in science."
A Catholic Mass to celebrate Kwolek's life is scheduled for June 28, according to the Associated Press.

Less than 24 hours before the Sochi Games' closing ceremony, Russia led the overall medal table with 29. The United States ranked second with 27. Were he still competing for the U.S., Wild would be the most decorated American Olympian at the Sochi Games – and the athlete who pushed them into the lead.


"I'm very lucky this all happened," Wild said. "I don't know if I deserve all this luck. This is just too good to be true."


by Yahoo!Sport

But had Ann left her project in Victoria, situated just 25 miles north of Washington State, the world may have missed out on a light source that doesn’t use batteries, solar power or wind energy.

Stunningly, no one on record has thought to use thermoelectric technology to power a flashlight. But for Ann, peltier tiles, which produce an electrical current when opposite sides are heated and cooled at the same time, were a convenient solution to a friend’s study problem.

“That was the inspiration for my project.” said Ann, “I just wanted to help my friend in the Philippines and my flashlight was a possible solution.”

Ann got to work. She remembered hearing human beings described as walking 100-volt light bulbs: “I thought, why not body heat? We have so much heat radiating out of us and it’s being wasted.”

Ann spent several months designing the flashlight and figuring out its voltage conversion. Much has been written online about powering a flashlight with peltier tiles, but those devices used heat from candles and blow torches. Ann’s patent-pending prototype relies on hand warmth only and required that she make her own transformer, among other difference-making factors.

Art Makosinski remembers his surprise when Ann figured out how to light the flashlight’s LEDs at 20 millivolts: “I didn’t believe it, I had to inspect the circuit. I said what did you do here, do you have a hidden battery on the other side?”

At the science fair’s gala night, Ann and Art mingled among top Google engineers, eminent scientists and some of the most innovative kids on the planet. Hers was the last name they expected to be called out the winner for her age group. When it was, Art almost dropped his camera. Ann floated to the stage as if welded to a conveyer belt; her face was frozen in shock.

Her prize was a trophy made out of Legos, a visit to the Lego Group headquarters in Denmark, and a $25,000 scholarship.

“I still have some of the same confetti that rained down,” said Ann. “Just an amazing experience and probably something I won’t experience ever again.”

Many people have asked where she wants to attend university, expecting to her to name the likes of Stanford or MIT. Ann said she’s not thinking that far ahead; she needs to get through the eleventh grade first.

Dong Nguyen claims he pulled Flappy Bird because of the bad press it got him, but hardly anyone believed him. He was earning so much cash from ad impressions that it would be insane to bail out simply because of spite.

It seems our suspicions have been confirmed.

“A person familiar with the App Store review process tells Apple’N’Apps that Flappy Bird wasn’t removed voluntarily by Mr. Nguyen, as he claims. It turns out that Nintendo got in touch with Apple regarding the art assets in Flappy Bird claiming that they’re in direct violation of their copyrights.”

Apparently, Mr. Nguyen got a call from Apple, which informed him of the copyright infringement, and he quickly scrambled to change the graphics.

The latest build of the game indeed comes with a more polished version of the pipes, which still resemble those in Mario games quite a lot.

“Nintendo already decided that they had seen enough, and Apple is the one who pushed Mr. Nguyen to remove Flappy Bird (with 24 hour notice).”

So that’s that, then.

 

 

 

 

  Standing tall through it all

---

This 6-foot beauty captured not only the attention of the judges but also the world when she was recently crowned Miss Israel. Soon after, another dream was fulfilled when 21-year-old Yityish “Titi” Aynaw was invited to dine with President Barack Obama. It was in celebration of his most recent trip to Israel.
Titi, the first Ethiopian immigrant to win the Miss Israel title, says she’s come a long way in less than 10 years. Born in a tiny African village where things like staircases didn’t even exist, Titi suffered the tragic loss of both her parents by age 12. She then came to Israel and created a new life.
Today, an estimated 121,000 citizens of Ethiopian descent are living in Israel.

The residents of a small Philippines village hit by the powerful Typhoon Haiyan are celebrating a "miracle" after they all survived thanks to a storm shelter built there earlier this year.

Cangumbang, located around 11 miles (17.7km) south of the devastated city of Tacloban, was hit directly by record wind speeds of up to 200mph, but miraculously, every one of its 300 residents survived, due to work that was started by a charity before the storm hit.  China Correspondent Angus Walker reports. 

Authorities estimate more than 3,900 people were killed in the Philippines when the super typhoon made landfall on 8 November.

Tropical storms and typhoons in previous years struck Cangumbang hard, with many homes being damaged or lost.

That devastation led American volunteer Elsa Thomasma to begin fundraising drive to build a storm shelter.
Ms Thomasma, now dubbed "the woman who saved a village", raised over $40,000 to ensure the project was completed by the end of August.

Although the roof was ripped off during the typhoon, everyone sheltering beneath survived as their homes were swept away in the storm.

                            

Ms Thomasma told ITV News Asia Correspondent Angus Walker:

"I'm just so thankful that we built the centre in the way we did and that it was ready in time.  The children are like my children so, to be able to still have them here and be able to see them whenever I want ... it's just a great feeling to know they are OK."

article link:  http://www.itv.com/news/2013-11-19/philippines-village-celebrates-miracle-storm-shelter/

George and Johnny Huynh want a better life - and they believe they can get it through school. They have to. It’s the only thing in their control.

It’s 6:30 in the morning. The bus will be there in 15 minutes, and as usual George Huynh is still sleeping. He’ll sleep as late as he can. Teenage late. Ten minutes is all he says he needs, and he can pull it off. He showers at night, and eats breakfast at school because he likes that food better and, unlike at home, he knows there will be food there.

His older brother, Johnny, is already up and ready. He was awake until 2 doing his homework, but is always up in time to make sure George doesn’t push it too late. He watches for George’s light to come on; he’ll knock if it’s getting close.

With 10 minutes to spare, the light comes on and George shuffles down the dark hallway to the bathroom. He moves quietly. His older sister is still sleeping. So is his mother; or at least the door to her bedroom is shut. It’s usually shut.
The bus stop for the No. 19 is directly across the street from their house. This is the MBTA bus that goes from Fields Corner and Grove Hall in Dorchester to Dudley and Ruggles in Roxbury, connecting the dots between neighborhoods where struggling to make it is the norm.

But as Johnny looks down the street toward Fields Corner, he is looking for a different Bus 19, one that will carry him and George out of those neighborhoods. For once a day, the 19 becomes a charter bus to Boston Latin School.

Johnny spots the bus making its way up Geneva Avenue, and moves toward the street to signal the driver. Sometimes the driver will miss them and keep going. Johnny is 17, a junior in high school, and George is a 15-year-old sophomore, but they are small. They are easy to miss.

They board and immediately it feels like a different place. At the front, kids are playing chess on a portable board. The rest of the seats are full of kids reading or doing homework or sleeping. Most of them are white kids from the Irish-Catholic neighborhoods of Dorchester; few have been handed much in life.

Since seventh grade, this has been George and Johnny’s routine. Wake up on their own. Get themselves on the bus. Go to school. Work extraordinarily hard.

They do this because they have been promised something by Boston Latin School, something they both desperately want - a better life - and they are trying to study their way there. They are two of the top students in the city; theirs is the kind of Geneva Street story you just don’t often hear.

Schoolwork is not the concern. They can handle the famously rigorous curriculum at Boston Latin. The concern is how they handle everything else, with so little to lean on but each other. 

“They’re living on the side of a cliff,’’ said Emmett Folgert, the mentor they have come to rely on for so much, “and any moment they can slip.’’

Police at the door
Johnny does this thing with his legs where he bounces them up and down frantically, as though he’s counting out an endless list of things to do to keep things from crumbling on him. At times, it’s almost as if his whole body is buzzing. 

George is the opposite. He says little and shares less. If pushed, he will say simply that he gets it done: the bus, school, after-school activities, back to Dorchester on the train, basketball practice, homework past midnight.

Johnny works most afternoons tutoring Vietnamese kids, then walks home with his head down and his hands in his pockets, past the trouble on the street. 

They live in a quiet house. Their mother doesn’t speak English. The boys don’t understand much Vietnamese. The living room is used for storage. Most of the time, everyone is alone in their room. That’s where they all were that night, three years ago, when the police came to the door.

George doesn’t remember much of that night, only that one of the officers was Asian and carried a photo of his father. The boys didn’t see their father much, and when they did they had to meet him at a police station. They weren’t exactly sure why they had to meet him at the station, but they assumed it had something to do with his beating them, and their mother. But their father, David Huynh, spoke English, so they could at least talk to him. And despite it all, they still loved him.

The police had a translator with them, and the translator told their mother the news. David Huynh had jumped off the Tobin Bridge. It would be a while before the boys learned the full details, before their mother told them he had died from suicide. But the police gave them a bag with some of his belongings, and Johnny remembers that the wallet was wet, and his father couldn’t swim. He went into his room and cried a lot that night. But not George. He just held his head in his hands for a very long time.

From Grove Hall to Gatsby
In a second-floor classroom at Boston Latin, George drags his desk across the old wooden floors and pushes it into a group with three other students. The 10th-grade English class has just finished reading “The Great Gatsby’’ and is gathering into groups.

The teacher walks around the room and assigns each group a character from the book. George’s group gets Gatsby, the main character, a poor man who tries to win back a wealthy girl by building his own fortune; the class has been discussing him as a parable of “The American Dream.’’

The group must make a poster critiquing Gatsby like you might in an online review of a hotel or restaurant, rating him on things like “compassion’’ and how “American’’ he is.  

The three other students in the group debate the topics. George writes his thoughts down.
“He is American,’’ he scribbles on a sheet of loose-leaf paper, “to the extent that he is living a life of luxury.’’  Boston Latin, the city’s top entrance exam school, gives off a feeling of aspiration. It is the nation’s oldest school, founded in 1635, a year before Harvard. The school’s name is almost always preceded with adjectives like “elite’’ or “prestigious.’’ But such labels obscure the fact that its student population is rather scrappy. It’s the kids of Boston, in all their breadth and variety, ticking every racial and social and cultural box. The only thing they really share is promise.

The American Dream is sold in heaping spoonfuls at Boston Latin, especially in the auditorium, which is next door to George’s English class.

Inside, names of the school’s famed alumni ring the frieze, names like Hancock and Emerson and Kennedy. There remains always one empty space, open to the next great alumnus. The idea they push at Latin is that all students have access to that level, regardless of where they begin.

George and Johnny work hard, but their aspirations are decidedly lower than making the top frieze in the Latin auditorium. They don’t quite know what they want. They’re teenagers; the future is a foreign country. They just know that they want out of their present situation.
Sitting one day in the auditorium, beneath the giant-font names, Johnny is talking about a North Face jacket. He wants one desperately because that’s what the other kids at Latin wear. “I’m jealous,’’ he says. “But I’m only jealous because I have to work to get the bare necessities. That’s my only option.’’

It’s a life of welfare, of food stamps, of Section 8 housing, of putting out cockroach and mouse traps at home. Hard, but not that unusual in their part of town. What is comparatively rare is their will to break out, and to do it together. 

After high school, Johnny’s thinking, he would like to go to a local university and study computer science, because he’s been told that’s a pretty stable path, and stable sounds appealing. Maybe he can get married, he says. Maybe he can get a dog.

“I just want to fit in,’’ he says. “I’m tired of being known as that poor kid who is struggling.’’

Hoping to be noticed
Johnny’s usual table in the cafeteria is full so he awkwardly takes a seat at a table where two girls are doing schoolwork. He has a class with one of them, but they pay no attention to him.
He’s been working out. He has a weight bench in his room now. He’s trying to put on some muscle. Girls, he says, don’t pay attention to small people; they like big white guys. There isn’t much protein at home, mostly rice and noodles, so he ordered some whey powder on the Internet. He’s been talking a lot about it, waiting expectantly for it to arrive. He tried to buy the whey at GNC at the mall, but the woman wouldn’t sell it to him. She told him he had to be 18, and that he should talk to his doctor. If he was a regular white kid, he doesn’t believe she would have hassled him.

The bell rings and as he walks out of the cafeteria, he points out a freshman. The boy had recently harassed him, he says. “I think he thought I was an eighth-grader.’’

He’s a junior now, but he’s only 5 feet 2 inches and 100 pounds. He’s tired of being small, tired of going unnoticed. “Who the hell doesn’t want to be bigger?’’ he says. “Who the hell wants to be small and tiny?’’

Throwing out a lifeline
Emmett Folgert walks into a small conference room in the Dorchester Youth Collaborative and greets Johnny and George. The boys have been sitting across from two women from Catholic Charities, who have been interviewing them about their personal lives, about school, about the suicide. Folgert had arranged the meeting, and he stops in see how it’s going.

Three years ago, he got the charity to pay for their father’s funeral, and now the boys are going to deliver a speech at the charity’s $500-a-plate black tie Christmas gala.

The conference room, like everything else at DYC, is threadbare. The center, which Folgert founded 30 years ago above a row of shops on Dorchester Avenue, is little more than a few empty rooms filled with broken furniture, a few computers, a Ping-Pong table, and a room in the back where kids practice break dancing and crumping. Usually, kids are also playing video games, but the PlayStation has been stolen again.

It was in this conference room that Folgert first met Johnny, seven years ago. Johnny had been playing cards with some friends at the library next door, and followed them up to the center. Folgert noticed the new face, and asked Johnny how he was doing. He immediately burst into tears and put his head down. Folgert asked the rest of the kids to leave the room.
“He just spilled. His emotions were so high,’’ Folgert remembers. “He told me his father had been thrown out of the house, something about a court order, and I said ‘Well if it’s a court order, maybe it’s a good thing.’ And he said, ‘No, no, you don’t understand; my mother . . .’ ’’ He told Folgert about mental problems she suffered, about the medications she took, about the way things sometimes got badly skewed.  

Johnny was too young to come to DYC, which is a drop-in for kids 12 and up, but Folgert knew the stakes were high so he let him stay. “These are the exact sort of kids that get recruited into gangs, and we have a thriving Asian gang culture up and down Dorchester Avenue,’’ Folgert says.

The DYC is full of kids with horrors at home. Folgert, a tall man with a soft demeanor who is almost always wearing a scally cap, views his job as being somebody they can count on. “It’s that simple,’’ he says.   But with Johnny and George, who soon started to come to DYC as well, there was something deeper. Too many give in to the struggle, Folgert says, but these boys refused to.

Folgert is famous in Fields Corner as the white guy who gives out one-dollar bills. He peels them off, two or three at a time, so that kids can go to McDonald’s and get something to eat. He learned long ago you can’t talk to kids if they’re hungry. For years, Johnny would pocket that money - it was the only cash he had access to - and use it to buy things the family needed. 

Folgert now fills a lot of those gaps; he’ll buy school supplies for the boys, make sure they have clothes, and try to give them an occasional break from the work of getting by. 

He told Johnny that if he saved up half of the money for the North Face jacket, he would cover the rest. When he took Johnny to the mall to get the jacket, he ended up just buying it and got one for George, too. Lately, Folgert has been helping them try to move again. The family has moved five or six times in the last few years, looking for a decent home.

One apartment had fleas. Their current apartment has lousy heat, and the wafts of marijuana smoke from the floor below are too much. They’ve found a place they like, but can’t come up with the deposit. They’ve asked Folgert for help. He has become a father figure to both boys, the first man they had been able to count on.

Folgert wraps up the meeting with the women from Catholic Charities. He can see the boys are tired and hungry, and he takes them to dinner at an Applebee’s. As he drives, he tries to explain to them why they have to get dressed up and stand in front of a room full of strangers and talk about their personal lives.

“You get a lot from us,’’ he says to them, “but we get a lot from you. You represent those people who face obstacles and get it done. It’s not just about you. It’s about all the kids in your situation.’’

The car is quiet for a bit, and Folgert asks the boys if what he said made sense.
“We’re diamonds in the rough,’’ Johnny says. “Or we’re just as rough but a little shiny.’’ 

A mother’s private turmoil
Johnny opens the door to his apartment and looks down the hallway toward his mother’s bedroom. It’s the middle of the afternoon and her door is shut. He has no idea if she’s in there. He has no idea what she does in there. There’s a lot he doesn’t know about his mother.
Johnny dumps his backpack in his room and heads back out the door to go to his after-school tutoring job in Fields Corner.

In a private moment when the boys aren’t around, Nhung Bui will admit that she knows her boys blame her. Much of it is deserved, she says, but there is much they don’t know.

Her mother died in a terrible bus accident in Saigon when Nhung was 8, and her father had moved the family to the country. She later moved back and met her husband while working at a Saigon coffee shop. He was four years older. He had fought with the United States in the war and then was put in a communist “reeducation’’ camp for more than five years.

He was “weird,’’ she said, and she was afraid of him. But her stepmother insisted they get married, for David’s military service opened the possibility of immigrating to the United States. She did not love him. But they had been told that money fell from the sky in America. Plus, defying her parents’ wishes was unthinkable.

After coming to the United States in 1992, she was lost. The weather was so cold, and she was very afraid of this new land. She says her husband put her through private horrors that she has kept hidden from her children. There are things, she says, that her children do not need to know.

Her health became strained. “I was told that I have mental health problems, and I have a hard time to sleep at night,’’ she says through a translator. And she struggled to raise American children who had wants and demands and attitudes she could not understand.

After her husband died, a wall went up between her and the boys. The children thought they shouldered all the responsibilities, and that she had driven their father away. Whenever she goes into their rooms to talk, they kick her out, she says.

“The children blame me, yes, and I am so sad about that,’’ she says. “I try so hard to raise them and so hard to protect them, but nobody knows the hell I went through.’’

Trying to make the cut
The whistle blows and George charges down the basketball court. He’s pushing hard, trying to impress the JV coach, because this is the sort of drill where he can shine. He’s smooth dribbling a basketball, can move quickly up the court. If he’s going to stand out among the two dozen kids trying to make the team, he knows he has to do it away from the basket, away from the taller kids.

He looks good all the way down the court, then runs into reality. As he approaches the basket, he has to heave the ball up to get it off the glass for a layup.

Another whistle, and the coach has them line up by height on the baseline so he can divide them into groups for drills in tight to the basket. At 5 feet tall, George is at the far end; he’s almost six inches shorter than the short kids. The drills begin and he looks lost, swallowed up.

Back in Dorchester on his Asian basketball club, George is the starting point guard, one of the stronger players. At the YMCA in Chinatown, where he goes to play full-court pickup games, he’ll take charge of the offense, his movements assured, confident. He can play with the Asians, and his strategy for making the team at Boston Latin is to beat out the other Asians.

After the final day of tryouts, George gets dressed and walks to the bus stop in front of Boston Latin and waits for the No. 19 to take him home. He’s not feeling very confident. “At the end, the coach put me in a group with a lot of the Asians that aren’t very good,’’ he says. “That’s significant.’’ Later on, he updates his status on Facebook. “Height,’’ he writes, “is such a commodity.’’

The next morning, right after he gets off the bus, George walks to the athletic office, looks quickly at the list of names posted there, then puts his head down and walks back to the cafeteria to eat breakfast.

Shut out at the movies
It’s the day before Thanksgiving, a half-day at Boston Latin, and when school lets out Johnny walks to the Green Line stop on Huntington Avenue with his friend Giovanni DePaulo. They’re on their way to the movies, which has become a tradition for the two of them, and this time it will be a landmark, because Johnny is now 17 and can get them both into an R-rated film.

Johnny met Giovanni in seventh grade. They were in the same homeroom, and they were both into video games. They became fast friends, and Giovanni started bringing Johnny home to his family in East Boston. Johnny liked the DePaulos; they had nice things, and Giovanni’s parents, Thom and Sheila, would do things he wasn’t used to, like ask how his day had been.

On the Green Line trolley headed downtown, Johnny seems anxious. He wants to see a movie called “Immortals,’’ and he wants to get to the theater before noon to get a matinee price.

When they arrive and look up at the digital marquee, they see “Immortals’’ doesn’t start until after noon, and it’s in 3D, which means the ticket price is almost double what he was expecting to pay. “That’s just way too much,’’ he says.

Giovanni could cover Johnny, but he doesn’t reach into his pocket. When he first started bringing Johnny home, the DePaulos could see they embarrassed Johnny when they tried to give him things. Johnny doesn’t like to be treated like a charity case. They limit their gifts to special occasions. 

Johnny and Giovanni discuss their options and decide on another movie that neither of them is too thrilled about. There is time before the movie starts, so they walk up the street to UBurger. It’s one of those upscale fast-food joints, and the prices are much higher than the McDonald’s in Fields Corner. In front of them in the line are a bunch of students from Latin, though they don’t say anything to Johnny or Giovanni. One of the girls holds up a couple of twenties and says to her friends, “Does anyone want anything? My mother gave me some money.’’

The kindness of strangers
December arrives, and George and Johnny start preparing for the gala. They work on their speech with Folgert, and he takes them to Men’s Warehouse to buy suits. George doesn’t want to wear a kids’ clip-on tie, the only one that fits him, so one has to be shortened. Johnny goes for a bow tie. It takes them forever to decide on a shirt color.

Back at the Dorchester Youth Collaborative, Folgert has them rehearse their speech in the room typically used for breakdancing, and preps them on how the night will unfold, who will be there, how they should act.

When the day comes, Folgert makes sure the boys get to the Fairmont Copley early so they can get a feel for the room. While waiters in white gloves set the tables, they run through the speech again and again. When Folgert is busy, the boys horse around at the microphones.  As the guests arrive, Folgert introduces the boys around. These are the people who help kids like you, he told them.

Their mother arrives with a translator. She has dressed nicely. She stands quietly and says nothing.

The guests take their seats. Dinner is served. The boys laugh at their photo in the program. A few seats away, their mother picks at the unfamiliar food.

After dinner, the room goes dark and a video is shown highlighting the charity’s work. As it plays, Folgert leads the boys to the podium.

The first half of their speech is jokey, a back-and-forth about who is taller, who is smarter, culminating with a story of the time their mother received a turkey from Catholic Charities. She didn’t know what to do with it so she stuffed it with noodles. The crowd laughs.

Things are going well; their delivery is better than in rehearsals. Then they get to the second half of the speech, the part about their father’s death.

First, George tells the story of that night when the police came to the door, carrying their father’s photo. Then Johnny picks up the story. “He was only 54,’’ he says. “He took his own life. And we didn’t have any money.’’

As he says the word “money,’’ Johnny cracks. He tries to push on, but the words won’t come out of his throat. 

His whole body seems to cave in on itself, and Folgert leaps up from his seat to support him. His face contorts into sobs. He keeps trying to push the words out, and he keeps losing his breath.

Slowly, he regains his composure as many in the audience lose theirs, and the boys limp to the end of the speech. Johnny is curled up in Folgert’s embrace.

“There are times,’’ Johnny says finally, “when we all need to depend on the kindness of strangers.’’
“It’s true,’’ George finishes.
Johnny staggers from the lectern. The crowd rises to its feet and cheers.

Folgert leads them out of the room to fresh air. Johnny is still very upset, struggling to compose himself.

George has been George; he has kept it together quietly, but now there is real emotion in his eyes. 

He reaches out to his older brother and offers his hand. They shake. Then the little brother pulls his big brother in, and gives him a hug.


By Biller Baker (The Boston Globe)

Of the 2,100 students who attend Kentridge Senior High School, only about a dozen make it into the Calculus AB classroom.

"This is the cream of the crop we have here," explained Mark Champoux. "Not only do you have to be hardworking but you also have to be extremely intelligent."

Champoux calls all of his students "intelligent", so he wasn't surprised that one of them Tracy Tran, 18, recently scored a 5 on the AP Calculus AB exam.

As a child, Tran's parents had to force her to stop reading and go to bed. She calls books an escape. Math, however, brought her back to reality.

"We can solve so many problems with it. So now it's become like a passion," Tran said.  "By turning it into a graph and revolving it around an axis and taking integral. It's just crazy stuff."
Though humble, even Tran knew she'd do well on the test.

The surprise came later, when the College Board sent Kentridge Principal Mike Albrecht a letter.  It reads: "Only 14.3% of the 3,938,100 exams taken in 2013 earned this top score. She was one of only eight students in the world to earn every point possible..."

"I've never had a kid score a perfect score on any of our AP tests," Albrecht said.

When he told her class, however, no one seemed shocked.
 "If anybody was going to get a perfect score, it was going to be Tracy," said Josh Curtis.

For Tran, the credit belongs to her entire class. She call calculus a community effort, and she plans to use her math skills to give back to her community.

"It's really humbling because I know that it's not all my success," she said. "Whatever I want to do, I want it to have an impact on the way we live our lives."