His promise was to pick up the tab to college if they graduated from high school. Some dismissed his gesture as a PR stunt, since the then-chief executive of Avant! He and other executives eventually pleaded no contest. Certainly Hsu, a Korean immigrant turned self-made millionaire, never imagined the struggles that the mostly poor, Latino and Vietnamese children would face, or what it would take to get them through high school.
No one did β not even Stephen Lehane, whom Hsu hired to run the Avant! For 10 years, until his death two weeks ago, the wildly eccentric, sometimes frenetic former professor of early childhood education devoted his life to the 40 students from Lester Shields and Grandin Miller elementary schools. He was their confidant, scold, sugar daddy, surrogate father, nag. When they were little, he cooked green eggs and ham in honor of Dr. Seuss and took them to museums and baseball games.
When some families moved or lost contact, he hired investigators to find them. When his STAR KIDZ matured, he bought them laptops, hired tutors, got them jobs at a swanky health club and internships at Merrill Lynch, paid for dance lessons and a coach for a promising boxer.
And he never gave up on the ones in trouble, through pregnancies, drugs, gangs and terms in juvenile hall for assault and shoplifting. Occhio, the law firm of his fertile imagination. Lehane had his own struggles: periodic bouts of depression, which he hid well from the kids. With the latest recurrence, he was taking medication and had requested a leave from his job.
No one knows whether he was disoriented or made a conscious decision when he stepped in front of a train in Menlo Park early April 7. But he went to his death knowing that 16 of the original 20 Shields students, now seniors, will probably go to college next year. One will attend University of California-Berkeley or University of California-Los Angeles, seven will go to other public four-year colleges and others will attend community college.
