Area’s brightest students honored

Yusef Abukar traveled a long road to being a top student at Orange Coast College.

The starting point: a house in war-torn Somalia.

A native of the impoverished East African country, Abukar fled to the United States with his family in 1999 as fighting erupted around his home in the capital, Mogadishu. When he arrived in Orange County at age 18, he spoke barely a word of English ? “What’s your name?” was the longest sentence he knew. Too old to attend high school, he turned to himself for an instructor.

“One of my hobbies is that I always read, so I learned English by reading,” said Abukar, who worked at Irvine Spectrum before starting classes at OCC.

On Friday, Abukar’s work paid off, as he was among 44 students recognized by the Costa Mesa Chamber of Commerce as the top among the Class of 2006. At the 27th annual breakfast ceremony, held at the Hilton Costa Mesa, principals and college administrators gathered to hand certificates to their schools’ top achievers.

During the two-hour event, educators spotlighted 16 students each from Costa Mesa High School and Estancia High School, with the remaining 12 from Orange Coast Middle College High School, the Back Bay-Monte Vista alternative education site, OCC and Vanguard University. Not all the students attended, but those present received certificates and took a bow on stage.

In his opening remarks, former OCC history professor Hank Panian said the event has grown significantly since its premiere in 1980.

“It is absolutely astounding for me to see so many people come out for this ? especially parents,” he told the crowd. “I don’t think we had any parents at the first one.”

Although most of the awards given centered around academia, OCC and Vanguard both named a male and female Athlete of the Year. Introducing Vanguard basketball star Kelly Schmidt, coach Russ Davis noted that she had frequently put the college in the limelight.

“She’s won numerous awards, and I’ve won numerous awards because of Kelly Schmidt,” Davis said.

Among the Newport-Mesa students recognized was Daniel de Arakal, a senior at Middle College who was the lone student representative on the Superintendent Selection Advisory Council this year. Daniel, 17, has been accepted to Chapman University and plans to major in music before becoming a scorer for film and television.

“The rocker dream would be nice, but right now, I’m happy writing music,” he said.