Teen sacrifices fun for hard work, education

Carolyn Jones,

Chronicle Staff Writer

Saturday, June 13, 2009

While her classmates were signing yearbooks and preening for the prom, Vicheka Chres was experiencing a different kind of senioritis as she approached Friday's graduation.

As she had since she started high school, Vicheka, 17, was studying six hours a night. After school and on weekends, she was making apple turnovers in her uncle's bakery - for no pay. At home, she was translating for her mother, whose English is poor and who has a sixth-grade education.

"Fun? I don't really have fun," Vicheka said recently while taking a break from swabbing tables at Rio Vista Bakery, where her mother also works. "I know American kids go see movies, concerts. Go shopping. But that's not what I do."

Vicheka has reason to be motivated. She knows that if her family had stayed in their native Cambodia, which they left in 2003, she wouldn't have had the luxury of studying trigonometry and literature six hours a night. She'd be working in a factory, sewing clothes 12 hours a day for $50 a month.

Instead, she's bound for UC Davis. She plans to study biochemistry so she can eventually be a pharmacist and support her family, those in Rio Vista as well as in Phnom Penh.

Does she have a passionate desire to be a pharmacist? No, but that's irrelevant, she said.

"If I can be a pharmacist, it'll be an achievement for my whole family," she said. "That's important to me because without my family, I'd be nothing."

For Vicheka, the recession is relative. She worries about her mother, who recently had her weekly hours slashed from eight to four at the Tracy casino where she has a second job as a card dealer. But otherwise, Vicheka is boundlessly optimistic.

"I see a lot of opportunity here," she said. "If you don't have money in Cambodia, you don't have a chance at all. Here, there's grants, scholarships, work-study. Here, there is hope."

Vicheka's mother, Thida Chiv, said that seeing her daughter head to college is "a dream come true."

"I did not finish school; that is why my life is so hard," she said recently while helping her brother at the bakery. "My daughter works so hard. I am so proud of her."

Vicheka works so hard, in fact, she often gets headaches and suffers fatigue. Her family tells her to slow down, but Vicheka - motivated in part by the recession - only strives harder.

With graduation approaching, the shy, soft-spoken girl allowed herself the occasional sigh of relief.

"Even though I'm not as smart as the other students, and don't speak English as well, I have studied as hard as I can," she said with a modest smile. "I'm so proud of myself."

E-mail Carolyn Jones at carolynjones@sfchronicle.com.