Life is a tough juggling act for College-bound Hayward student

By Eric Kurhi Oakland Tribune Posted: 02/13/2011 

HAYWARD -- Ask Cindy Dam what's the most important thing for her high school colleagues to think about, and her answer is easy: going to college. The 17-year-old Mt. Eden High School senior hasn't wavered from her goal of doing just that, despite hardships that could have easily knocked her off course. Her parents, who immigrated from Vietnam, recently separated, and she's in a new home because the old one is in foreclosure. 

She's been helping out on both sides of the newly split family, assisting her father with dialysis treatments three times a week and her mother with daily stuff, because the matriarch is usually out working as a waitress. That means taking care of her two younger siblings and doing much of the work around the house. Cindy has a hectic schedule of picking up people and dropping them off, writing checks to pay the bills, cooking, filling out Medi-Cal applications. Then it's time for late-night studying, followed by waking up early to play viola with the school orchestra.

"The first thing we noticed about Cindy is just how resilient she is," said Irene Nyavor of Summer Search Silicon Valley, a nonprofit group that lends a hand to disadvantaged kids who are beating the odds to make it into college. "When we met her, she was facing some pretty tough challenges at home, but not taking it out on her family -- she was still always willing to help out." The family lives paycheck to paycheck, but they're getting by.

In school, Cindy's doing better than that. She's got a 4.286 grade point average, and has applications out to five University of California campuses and another five to East Coast schools. "I've always had parents that I've helped to support, but I realized that I had to support myself first," said Cindy.

She's got a passion for sociology -- add volunteer work with kids at local libraries and serving on the City of Hayward's Youth Commission to the list of things she's done. "I am a strong advocate for youth," she said. "I was working on making more scholarships available for seniors to go to secondary schools.

A lot of students don't have a chance to go to state or UC -- they can't afford it. I advocate that college is possible for everyone." Nyavor said Cindy could have taken "the easy way out" -- become angry, jaded over the hand she'd been dealt. But the opposite happened. "She could have blamed everyone around her and not done anything, but instead she got really motivated, really passionate," Nyavor said. Cindy has eyes for the University of Pennsylvania,