Homeless Student Defies Odds, Becomes Valedictorian

HOUSTON - By all accounts, he's the best kind of kid, the kind with plenty of reasons not to be.

"Those things that you experience, that you live through, that you witness, I think they shape the character you become," Victor Cardenas says.

Cardenas is a film student at Houston's Furr High school who picked up a camera last year and crafted a haunting story.

The tale he told was his own.

"We never had money, we never had food. My mother didn't care that she had four kids," Cardenas tells his own camera in the film he dubbed "Being Victor".

"It was knives, guns and it was people ending up in the hospital. It was my own family ending up in the hospital. She kicked out my brothers, she kicked out me and it was on our own. I was 14 years-old," he says during a tightly framed monologue within the film.

"Being Victor" it seems, meant, being homeless.

For far too many nights, he bedded down, as best he could, on a park bench in Denver Harbor.

A throw away kid, ashamed and alone.

"I guess I didn't want to say anything, to anybody," he explains.

This is where many stories end badly, but not this one, not by a long shot.

What happened next was a synthesis of survivor's instinct and near flawless safety net. A buffer of Furr high friends who offered this boy without a home, shelter and support in theirs.

Their voices pepper Victor's film, none more powerfully than that of Anna Hinojosa.

"He wants to be something, something to be proud of, to be like 'Hah, I did this ! So show me what you can do. you can do anything," Hinojosa says.

"Like they are my family. That is what I always say, they are my family," says Victor.

The undisputed matriarch of Victor's make-shift, but devoted Furr High family is film teacher Assol Kavtorina.

"I'm a typical jewish mother from anecdotes, I'm overprotective of my kids," says Kavtorina.

From the very beginning "Ms.K", as they call her, saw extraordinary qualities in the quiet, hard working kid clearly reluctant leave campus.

"He had the wisdom of a grown up person and when I met him. He was fifteen," she adds.

This past Thanksgiving, the shuffling between classmate households came to a halt when Victor moved in with "Ms.K".

In a suburb of Houston, Texas, the Mexican street kid had found a home, with a family of intellectual, Russian immigrants.

"She took on the responsibility of a 16-year-old and to me that shows, that not only do I owe her a lot of respect as a person, I think that I really appreciate everything she has done for me," says Victor.

"This kid tried chicken soup for the first time in my house," says Kavtorina with a tone astonishment.

"She has been more of a Mom to me, because she has taught me home values, social values, people values, so I've come to appreciate her more as a Mom," explains Victor.

Call it an investment of compassion that may very well break the bank.

That's because, these days, Victor Cardenas is acing multiple advanced placement tests, mastering the Russian language and earning national accolades for his film work.

Next fall, he'll attend Texas A&M University and study bio-chemistry on full scholarship.

This kid, who not so long ago, was reduced to sleeping in the park, is the valedictorian of Furr High School.

"I am proud of him because I believe kids like Victor, they are the hope of the whole nation," says Kavtorina.

"When you catch a kid with dreams like that, we want to be dream makers," says Furr Principal Bertie Simmons.

They are dreams, driven by a simple, unyielding desire.

"I would always tell myself that I don't want my kids to have to go through what I went through," says Victor who considers himself "one of the luckiest people in the world."

That's because these days "Being Victor", is better than good.