From homeless to med school - The Orange County Register

He lived for part of his youth with his elderly grandmother in a shack behind a house. Ivy crept through the windows. There was no heating system. Mice flourished in the shack's chill.

And Friday, Peolia Kansas Fonsworth III (the most aristocratic name a poor kid has ever endured) participated in "Match Day," in which graduating medical students at UC Irvine found out which university hospitals had accepted them to begin their residencies.

PK Fonsworth grew up poor in the Philippines and Northern California with a loving, adoptive grandmother who took him in as a baby. "I'm your mother, I'm your father, I'm your everything," she told him. "The two of us were an island," Fonsworth said.

MINDY SCHAUER, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Fonsworth, now 31 and a brilliant student who will finish his educational career with degrees in molecular biology, Spanish literature, psychiatry and business, has dreamed about being a doctor since the days he and his grandmother couldn't afford groceries.

"Education was the mechanism for me to get out of poverty," he said.

Long ago, he set a goal for Match Day: He would be accepted at the Yale University Hospital. He would move to Connecticut. He would become an East Coast guy and get comfortable with the snow.

He has a Yale banner in his bedroom and a Yale magnet on his refrigerator. He wore a Yale wristband Friday as he walked to the podium and opened the envelope to learn where he was matched.

But what would life be, especially PK Fonsworth's life, if everything went as planned?

Let's just say snow is not in his immediate future.

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His grandmother wasn't really his grandmother. PK Fonsworth was born in San Fernando, Philippines in 1982. But his mother (too poor) and his father (a disinterested American soldier), couldn't care for him.

As an infant, Fonsworth was handed off to a neighbor, Ethel Watanabe, a Japanese woman in her 60s.

"She was the first person who threw me a lifeline," Fonsworth said. "She said, 'You're going to college, no matter what it takes.' She taught me about values and dreams."

Watanabe worked in a beauty salon and did seamstress work on the side. She earned enough to enroll Fonsworth in a private school. But Watanabe wanted more opportunity for her unofficially adopted son.

At 10, they move to Martinez, California, a suburban community in the East Bay near San Francisco. At 14, his birth father, Peolia Kansas Fonsworth II, became part of his life. The elder Fonsworth helped pay rent for his son and Watanabe in a nice apartment.

He was flourishing in school, showing a particular knack for biology.

Then, eight months after it started, his father's support ended. He now has very little contact with his father.

"I don't know why it stopped, but I know we couldn't afford rent or food," Fonsworth said.

In high school, Fonsworth got a job at a pizza parlor, then in a Walgreens photo department. He said he and Watanabe, then in her 70s, lived on his small income and her social security check.

"When I started high school, it was a question of survival."

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One rainy day, when their lives were at their lowest point, Fonsworth and Watanabe bought groceries at Safeway. At checkout, they asked that their paper shopping bags also be wrapped in plastic so they wouldn't be damaged by the rain.

Cashier Sandi Flocken Ashton watched them carry the bags to the bus stop. The next time they came in, she asked them if they needed a ride home.

"I took them home, and they lived in a shack," she said. "It was absolutely horrible. I couldn't believe it had ivy growing through the windows."

Before long, Flocken Ashton was buying their groceries. She was at the Match Day ceremony last week.

"His life could have gone either way," she said. "I attribute it all to his grandmother. I am so proud of PK. He calls me faithfully. He never forgets to tell me, "I love you, Sandi.'"

As a senior in high school, he found out he would be receiving a scholarship ? from the IDEAL Scholars Fund, given by the Level Playing Field Institute which was founded by his friend Freada Kapor Klein ? to the University of California at Berkeley. Klein was also at the Match Day ceremony last week.

"While many people graduate from top medical schools and pursue prestigious residencies, painfully few have PK's lived experience," Klein said. "The barriers he faced are numerous and range from significant visible hardship to subtle unseen barriers ... From the day I met PK as a high school senior he has had a five-year plan. While a few details have been modified, he has kept his eye on the prize and pursued his dream.

"It's been an honor and a privilege to know and support PK all these years. The world is a richer place for having PK in it."

Before he got to Berkeley, Ethel Watanabe died of cancer.

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"She was my mother, my father, my everything," Fonsworth said. "I will always remember my grandmother's mantra: Opportunity is education."

He set out to cure cancer. But his educational career took twists and turns along the way. He graduated from Berkeley with honors. Then he came to Orange County for UCI's Prime LC program (medical school focusing on the Latino community).

He has settled on psychiatry. He wants to help impoverished communities.

"At UCI, converting to mental health was a slow seduction," Fonsworth said. "I always admired people who worked with the brain and the mind. Psychiatry can bring marginalized people back into society."

For so long, he felt marginalized.

One of these days, when his schooling is over, he wants to open a network of mental health centers to serve the poor.

"I know there are incredible challenges ... in the under served community," Fonsworth said.

Challenges are what make him tick.

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He won't be meeting those challenges at Yale.

If you haven't seen the Match Day ceremonies at UCI, you have missed screaming, crying, fist-pumping drama in front of about 500 friends, relatives and professors. One by one, 99 students walked to the podium and opened letters that would reveal their future. Some went to the University of Hawaii. Some went to the University of Toronto. They cheered when they were accepted by hospitals at Stanford or USC.

Fonsworth sat coolly behind his aviator sunglasses awaiting his name to be called. He knew he would be going to some prestigious mental health center in the United States. He had 12 choices. Yale and Harvard were his No. s 1 and 2 choices.

Finally, he walked to the podium, took off his glasses and opened the letter.

"Harbor UCLA," he read, prompting a wild cheer from the crowd. They didn't know Harbor UCLA, which is up the 405 Freeway in Torrance, was his fourth choice.

"I'm going to be local," he said. "It's a win. Harbor UCLA serves some of the most under served communities in Southern California."

He immediately put a good spin on his placement.

"Now it's sunny Southern California until the end of my days," he said.

Contact the writer: ksharon@ocregister.com or 714 796 7898

Source: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/fonsworth-500866-school-day.html

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