Richmond Teen Had To Grow Up Fast, Fighting Poverty To Excel At School - And Life

RICHMOND (KPIX) -- Precious Jacques works at a restaurant every day after school. She wants to use her money for the prom and all the other things a typical high school senior wants.

But Precious has more pressing worries.

She wonders, for example, "is the Internet going to be on? Is the bill going to be paid? Do we have to move out? Is there going to be food in the refrigerator this week?"

Money is scarce at home in Richmond. Precious lives with her father who has a job but was unemployed before that. It's part of the reason she got a job, to pay her own way.

Precio0us has grown up with a lot of responsibility, helping to raise her siblings -- starting with her sister.

"As I got older, about six or seven, I learned how to change a diaper, I learned how to give her milk, and then I learned how to heat up milk," Precious said. "I did that with all my siblings."

Precious said her siblings are her motivation to do well in school.

"I try to show them a strong study ethic. I feel like it's setting an example -- you need to get to college, you need to keep going and keep doing what you have to do and you'll get there."

She keeps her private life to herself when she goes to Pinole Valley High. Her teachers don't see a girl who struggles. They see a star student.

"She is the kid with the good grades that comes in early," says Jan Barzottini, her art teacher. "Just her and I in my room sometimes at 6:30, and she'd just do her work. She's just committed. She's a kid who wants to succeed."

That's part of why she was selected as a Student Rising Above.

"I don't let my poverty stop me from wanting to go to college," Precious says. "I really told myself I don't want to give up on my dreams. I'm going to do what I love and make money from it and help my family at the same time."

Jan Barzottini says Precious expresses herself in her computer art. "In each and every one of [her drawings] there was a little piece of Precious, a piece of her personality. I think creativity is her special talent -- seeing things in a light that nobody else has seen."

Precious also has a 3.4 GPA. It's hard to maintain that when you don't always have Internet access at home. She has found creative ways around that, as a professed "computer nerd."

She even built her own computer with help from her Dad! One day, he brought home a box of spare computer parts and they went to work.

"Pulling out the parts, putting in parts and seeing what part worked and we put a computer together and it was really fun," she said.

Precious wants a career that merges all her skills and creativity making video games. It's not just the creative stuff that interests her.

"I want to be able to do the coding, I want to be the conceptual artist, I want to do business, I want to do the marketing," she told us.

Barzottini expects her to run her own company someday.

"I'm hoping that in five years she'll be back here saying I'm done with college, look at this job I have. In ten years she's going to be running a business."

This fall, Precious will go to the New York Institute of Technology.

She wants to set the example for her brothers and sisters. "It's going to give them this sense of confidence that they can just do whatever they want to do too. That's what I want to do. I want to give them hope. I want to be an example to my family."