2014 Recipients

Elaine Cheung
Mark Keppel High School
U.C.L.A.

Elaine Cheung will undoubtedly accomplish great things. She graduated from Mark Keppel High School with a 4.23 weighted GPA and earned many academic honors, like being an Advanced Placement Scholar and winning first place in the National Ocean Science Bowl. Elaine achieved these successes while working part-time at her parents’ small accounting business and volunteering at various community organizations.

She served food to the homeless with Union Station Homeless Services and organized events at the Los Angeles Public Library’s Chinatown Branch. We were also impressed by her leadership. She is president of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance Youth Council and vice president of the City of Monterey Park’s Youth Advisory Board. After losing her father to a stroke, Elaine dreams of becoming a dependable doctor who improves the lives of patients. We are happy to help her reach her goals and are excited to see how she’ll pay it forward.

Tony Hua
South El Monte High School
Standford University

Tony Hua stands out as a self-starting leader who has beat the odds. Despite growing up in a community riddled with gang activity and homelessness, he found compassion from his situation and turned his family’s struggles into motivation to become a successful engineer. From teaching himself to fix salvaged electronics to creating and funding a new engineering program at his high school, Tony has been proactive about pursuing his goals while also helping others.

Tony led his school engineering team to a first place win in the 2012 Solar Boat Project competition. He is well on his way to becoming an impressive scientist, having interned with the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the UC Davis Ross Laboratory, as well as learning multiple scripting languages and software. In addition to all this, Tony has kept up stellar grades in all areas, and served as Captain of the varsity tennis team. We know Tony will make incredible contributions to society and his community, and we are delighted to invest in his future.

Angelica Lujan
Gabrielino High School
UC Santa Cruz

Angelica Lujan has a strong voice and an even stronger dedication to her community and family. She learned at an early age how important it is to help her family have a voice, as she served as a translator for her family. Now, she is an accomplished orator, having won numerous awards in Speech and Debate competitions and Mock Trial competitions.

Angelica is passionate about tutoring as a way to give back to her community, particularly reaching out to other kids who want to succeed in school in the face of tumultuous lives at home. Angelica hopes to be “one of many future Hispanic leaders of this nation, who strive for success and empower others.” She plans to major in Human Biology at UC Santa Cruz with a focus on social behavior. We are sure she will succeed in empowering her family and her community in the years to come.

Josephine Wong
Gabrielino High School
Harvey Mudd College

Josephine Wong has a fierce and unparalleled determination to succeed. Despite growing up in an unstable environment, she graduated third in her class with an un-weighted GPA of 3.98 from Gabrielino High School. She summed up her perspective as this: “If others could climb Mount Everest or solve this math problem, I could do it, too. If others could not, I would be the first to do it.”

We were also touched by her commitment to taking advantage of all educational opportunities her garment-worker mother was able to provide her. She plans to become an engineer and work on environmental sustainability efforts. Josephine also wants to continue helping the immigrant community as she has done through the San Gabriel Library, where she has encouraged limited English speakers to read and participate in programs. We have no doubt she will change lives for the better.