Miss-Delectable
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http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/news/homepage/article_1152132.php
Kristina Iancului lives in two worlds. During the day, she lives in the world of the hearing, where she reads lips and uses a classroom translator to help her finish college. The rest of the time, she lives in the world of the deaf, where people talk with their hands and hear with their eyes.
Neither world gives her much time for fun. While many teenagers party and sleep in, 18-year-old Iancului gets up every morning at 5:30 to make sure all her daily tasks get done.
She helps her parents communicate with the outside world. Both were born deaf and fled communist Romania as adults.
They use sign language and dislike using their adaptive telephone device, which requires English typing.
"I keep telling them I'm going to move out someday and they will need to learn to do this for themselves, and they say, 'No, I will live with you,'" Iancului says with a sigh. She has some hearing and can speak, making her the family's interpreter.
"I tell them, 'this is America. You need to learn English. You need to be on your own.' But they don't like doing it."
She helps her 14-year-old brother do homework and errands when he comes home on weekends from the Riverside branch of the California School for the Deaf.
She also finds time to do her own homework from Fullerton College, where she is graduating this month with an associate degree and 3.61 grade-point average.
She's come a long way since her childhood, as the daughter of immigrants unable to help her with her studies.
Iancului's father fled communist Romania before she was born.
"He escaped with his friend by riding on a train to Austria," Iancului said. "When the conductor asked for their tickets, they mimed that they couldn't hear and that they didn't have any. Then the officer wrote on a piece of paper, 'Visitor or asylum?' and they pointed to asylum."
Iancului's father was taken to a refugee center, where her mother, also deaf from birth, joined him later. Together, they eventually made their way to Orange County after being sponsored by a church in Garden Grove, she said.
Iancului, who was born in Fullerton, said she was able to hear until about age 5, when ear infections destroyed much of her hearing. Now, using a hearing aid in each ear, she can hear some sounds, but needs a classroom interpreter to help her follow academic subjects.
Her younger brother, Richard, was born deaf, she said.
She is able to speak normally because she learned to talk before she lost her hearing and then later had intensive speech therapy. People who first meet her often don't know she's deaf, she said, until they try to speak to her when her back is turned, when she can't read their lips.
At home, the family communicates with American Sign Language. Most of her home and social life takes place in the world of the deaf, where friends communicate via sign language and Sidekick text-messaging devices.
Chuck Carey remembers Iancului at age 7, when she first appeared at the Orangethorpe Learning Center near her family's apartment in Fullerton, looking for help with her homework.
"When I was little I did not like school at all," she says. "Then I came to the center and my grades started improving." Over the next 11 years, Iancului would become a constant visitor, in the beginning to receive help, and later to assist others.
"She is a wonderful, hard-working young woman," says Carey, a board member of the learning center. "Even after she was in junior high, she kept coming in to help with the little kids. She felt she'd received all this help, and she wanted to give back."
Karen Rose, the director of the office of special programs at Fullerton College, remembers meeting Iancului for the first time while she was still in high school.
"She is amazing," Rose said. "(Orangethorpe volunteer) Norm Todd recognized early on that she was very bright and had a lot of potential. He encouraged her to take college classes while she was still in high school, and she ended up with all but two semesters completed for this year."
Because her friends are scattered around Southern California, she can't afford to put gas into her 1993 Hyundai to visit them regularly.
Instead, Iancului says, every other Friday, she meets friends at the Starbucks at The Block at Orange for a social hour, everyone talking with their hands.
Her best friends are deaf, she says, and can't understand why she wants to transfer to Cal State Fullerton this fall, instead of Cal State Northridge, which has a special deaf program.
"The deaf world is so small, and the hearing world is so big," she says. "I would be so limited. All I could do is be a teacher in a deaf school or a deaf counselor.
"I want to have half and half. I don't want to be stuck in one world and lose my voice."
Only recently, Carey said, would Iancului accept pay for tutoring.
"I think she has a lot of fun helping the kids," he said. "I think she feels empathy for them because she knows what it's like to be from an immigrant family without a lot of money."
This spring, she won the college's Presidents Award for Community Service for 596 hours she donated to the learning center.
She will earn her associate's degree Thursday at age 18, after only one year at Fullerton College. She credits her graduation to the center and its volunteers who encouraged her.
Now, Iancului plans to become a math teacher and encourage her students to dream big.
"I want to prove that just because you're deaf doesn't mean you can't do whatever you want," she say. "You don't have to be smart, you just have to be motivated."
Kristina Iancului lives in two worlds. During the day, she lives in the world of the hearing, where she reads lips and uses a classroom translator to help her finish college. The rest of the time, she lives in the world of the deaf, where people talk with their hands and hear with their eyes.
Neither world gives her much time for fun. While many teenagers party and sleep in, 18-year-old Iancului gets up every morning at 5:30 to make sure all her daily tasks get done.
She helps her parents communicate with the outside world. Both were born deaf and fled communist Romania as adults.
They use sign language and dislike using their adaptive telephone device, which requires English typing.
"I keep telling them I'm going to move out someday and they will need to learn to do this for themselves, and they say, 'No, I will live with you,'" Iancului says with a sigh. She has some hearing and can speak, making her the family's interpreter.
"I tell them, 'this is America. You need to learn English. You need to be on your own.' But they don't like doing it."
She helps her 14-year-old brother do homework and errands when he comes home on weekends from the Riverside branch of the California School for the Deaf.
She also finds time to do her own homework from Fullerton College, where she is graduating this month with an associate degree and 3.61 grade-point average.
She's come a long way since her childhood, as the daughter of immigrants unable to help her with her studies.
Iancului's father fled communist Romania before she was born.
"He escaped with his friend by riding on a train to Austria," Iancului said. "When the conductor asked for their tickets, they mimed that they couldn't hear and that they didn't have any. Then the officer wrote on a piece of paper, 'Visitor or asylum?' and they pointed to asylum."
Iancului's father was taken to a refugee center, where her mother, also deaf from birth, joined him later. Together, they eventually made their way to Orange County after being sponsored by a church in Garden Grove, she said.
Iancului, who was born in Fullerton, said she was able to hear until about age 5, when ear infections destroyed much of her hearing. Now, using a hearing aid in each ear, she can hear some sounds, but needs a classroom interpreter to help her follow academic subjects.
Her younger brother, Richard, was born deaf, she said.
She is able to speak normally because she learned to talk before she lost her hearing and then later had intensive speech therapy. People who first meet her often don't know she's deaf, she said, until they try to speak to her when her back is turned, when she can't read their lips.
At home, the family communicates with American Sign Language. Most of her home and social life takes place in the world of the deaf, where friends communicate via sign language and Sidekick text-messaging devices.
Chuck Carey remembers Iancului at age 7, when she first appeared at the Orangethorpe Learning Center near her family's apartment in Fullerton, looking for help with her homework.
"When I was little I did not like school at all," she says. "Then I came to the center and my grades started improving." Over the next 11 years, Iancului would become a constant visitor, in the beginning to receive help, and later to assist others.
"She is a wonderful, hard-working young woman," says Carey, a board member of the learning center. "Even after she was in junior high, she kept coming in to help with the little kids. She felt she'd received all this help, and she wanted to give back."
Karen Rose, the director of the office of special programs at Fullerton College, remembers meeting Iancului for the first time while she was still in high school.
"She is amazing," Rose said. "(Orangethorpe volunteer) Norm Todd recognized early on that she was very bright and had a lot of potential. He encouraged her to take college classes while she was still in high school, and she ended up with all but two semesters completed for this year."
Because her friends are scattered around Southern California, she can't afford to put gas into her 1993 Hyundai to visit them regularly.
Instead, Iancului says, every other Friday, she meets friends at the Starbucks at The Block at Orange for a social hour, everyone talking with their hands.
Her best friends are deaf, she says, and can't understand why she wants to transfer to Cal State Fullerton this fall, instead of Cal State Northridge, which has a special deaf program.
"The deaf world is so small, and the hearing world is so big," she says. "I would be so limited. All I could do is be a teacher in a deaf school or a deaf counselor.
"I want to have half and half. I don't want to be stuck in one world and lose my voice."
Only recently, Carey said, would Iancului accept pay for tutoring.
"I think she has a lot of fun helping the kids," he said. "I think she feels empathy for them because she knows what it's like to be from an immigrant family without a lot of money."
This spring, she won the college's Presidents Award for Community Service for 596 hours she donated to the learning center.
She will earn her associate's degree Thursday at age 18, after only one year at Fullerton College. She credits her graduation to the center and its volunteers who encouraged her.
Now, Iancului plans to become a math teacher and encourage her students to dream big.
"I want to prove that just because you're deaf doesn't mean you can't do whatever you want," she say. "You don't have to be smart, you just have to be motivated."