Palm Beach Post -The place is Canarsie in New York - sometime in the 1990s - outside of a Brooklyn town house, home to at least 10 Chinese immigrants. Barry Cheung pictured his grandmother sifting through piles of garbage, her eyes peeled for any recyclable items that might have been worth a few cents.

"We were so poor," he remembered.

Cheung, 18, is the oldest son of Laura and Shuk, of Shenzhen - who came to the United States before Barry was born, having briefly lived in South America. "They weren't college-educated," noted Cheung, who is the valedictorian of  Palm Beach Gardens Community High School.

Cheung moved with his parents to Boynton Beach when he was 4, where he'd restart pre-K. "I found it hard to adjust even at that age," he said. Raised in a home where Hakka, a dialect form of Chinese, was mostly spoken, his English wasn't very good. "My parents didn't raise me to assimilate into American society. I just figured it out for myself," Cheung said.

Growing up, Cheung described himself as a quiet, socially awkward kid who didn't really know how to fit in.

"Some kids treated me differently because of my race and because of my awkwardness," he said. At 9, he was reintroduced to a cousin 10 years older - someone with whom he'd finally feel a bond.

"He was crucial in shaping my life experiences," Cheung said of his cousin. Although busy attending New York University, Cheung said: "We had phone conversations all the time ... he was like my role model. He was probably one of the most intelligent people I've ever met, but also empathetic and caring."

While in middle school, Cheung said his cousin started attending Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, where he was studying to become a doctor. "Around the beginning of my freshman year," Cheung chose his words slowly, "He died in a tragic accident. It was one of the worst experiences of my life. I'm still not completely over it. He was the one role model I could talk to, being Asian-American and having immigrant parents. My entire world crumbled because he was the one person I could relate to."

The teen would endure more tragedy in high school, including the death of his grandmother his junior year. "It put a strain on my dad and on my family," he said. To top it off, his 12-year-old brother was diagnosed with leukemia in December.

Cheung said he was not in a good place throughout most of high school, but "I still held onto the belief that education would allow me to escape my circumstances and forge a better life for me."

The senior, who graduates with a 3.98 unweighted GPA and 5.3 HPA, calls his success the American dream, with admission to 12 schools and the status of being the first member of his family to go to college. "I didn't even know what a valedictorian was when I entered high school," Cheung said. "Once I knew I was in the running, it's just a common thing, you know, you just want to hold on to it."

As he considers offers from  Williams College and  Stanford University, where he plans to double major in computer science and East Asian studies, Cheung reflects on his grandmother, who was not even educated to read.

Yet, here he stands.