There should be plenty since Ortiz, who was born with nerve deafness, has overcome his impairment to become a star performer in the classroom and the athletic field, thanks in part to hearing aids and special training. He posted an overall 4.38 grade-point average, 14th highest among Vista High's 766 graduates. Ortiz, 18, also won 15 college scholarships totaling $33,000.

On his climb to success, Ortiz had to endure and confront painful emotional experiences.

His passion to excel arose when he was being taunted by a few students in his fifth-grade class, said his father, Ed Ortiz, an operations supervisor at the San Onofre Nuclear Generation Station. "It made him very determined to beat them on the athletic field and in the classroom, and he went out and did it," Ortiz said.

Later, in his freshman year, Kevin Ortiz was pulled out of honors courses because of his hearing and placed in remedial classes. His parents stepped in and convinced school officials their son could compete at the highest academic level. "It didn't bother me at the time," he said of being shifted to the remedial classes. "The people at school might have just assumed, because of my disability, that I needed that kind of instruction."

His determination has paid dividends with the spate of scholarships. The most recent of those, awarded last week, was the Spence Reese Scholarship, offered through the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater San Diego. He won the engineering section of the Reese competition, which included interviews with professionals in the field. The scholarship pays $2,000 in each of the next four academic years, money he plans to use to study mechanical engineering at UC San Diego.

Ortiz was on the path to achievement from an early age. His parents took action after receiving a firm diagnosis of his hearing disability when he was 3. His mother, Anna Ortiz, gave him an early start on reading by spending hours with him in storybook-sharing sessions. Kevin's parents also enrolled him in a special preschool program for hearing-impaired children at Magnolia Elementary School in Carlsbad. There, he participated in small plays and other exercises to develop communication skills. One of particular value that Kevin remembers involved a mock shopping trip, requiring children to communicate their purchase choices to a clerk and negotiate their way through the checkout stand.

Ed Ortiz also encouraged Kevin to participate in sports and adjusted his workday scheduled to allow time for coaching youth sports. In high school, Kevin Ortiz turned his athletic attention to soccer, playing midfield the last two seasons for the highly touted Vista High varsity team. The father also coached his oldest son, David, who became a soccer star at Vista High and now attends Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles on an engineering scholarship. Ed Ortiz smiled when saying he detects a healthy sibling rivalry going on in his family, which also includes two daughters.

"I don't think it's a coincidence that both my sons are going into engineering and like to play competitive soccer so much," he said. "I think there is a little competition going on."

Kevin Ortiz's ability to thrive has been aided with technological advances. An innovative digital hearing aid enables him as well as other hearing disabled people to become more proficient in speaking. With his new digital hearing aid in place, Ortiz is able to carry on a conversation. He added that his lip-reading skill enables him to ascertain exactly what is being said.

He also can use his know-how in American Sign Language. That often occurs when Ortiz joins in outings conducted by Signs of Silence, a San Marcos-based organization that focuses on enhancing leisure and work opportunities for deaf and hearing-impaired teen-agers. Ortiz, a two-year member of the Signs of Silence, said the organization's executive director, Roy Hensley, "has been like a second father" to him.

Hensley said Ortiz's accomplishments set an important example for other youths with hearing disabilities. That outlook was echoed by the California chapter of the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf. It selected Ortiz for its 2003 Ken H. Levinson Award, denoting a student who best represents a role model for children with hearing disabilities.