The idea of graduating with the Class of 2003 would have been unheard of to anyone who knew them as recently as a few years ago. One is from the war-torn West African country of Sierra Leone. The other dropped out his freshman year and retreated to Mexico for a year. Both, however, through sheer willpower refused to allow their pasts to hinder their future, no matter how much it had a grip on them.

And others have also recognized their tenacity—Sahr Kamachi Mbawa and Everardo Ureña were each recently awarded $1,000 "Turnaround Scholarships" from the Willow Glen Sunrisers and Almaden Valley Kiwanis clubs. Three other Willow Glen students—Jennifer Gonzalez, Serena Gonzalez and America Loya—at a ceremony in May were also recognized for their academic accomplishments.

The award is given to high school seniors who have made "admirable changes in their lives allowing them to graduate," and use the scholarship toward college tuition or an accredited training institution.

But Mbawa never really considered himself a student who needed to be turned around. "It's good to start over again," he says in his pronounced accent. "I may not want to talk a lot about my life before coming here and remembering makes me sad sometimes but I don't really consider myself as turning my life around."

Yet Ureña says, "I totally agree with the name because it was really difficult for me and I thought I couldn't make it but Willow Glen High helped me to achieve so much I can't even believe it."

Mbawa and his sister Sia, a sophomore at Willow Glen High, were halfway through their childhood when their nation—Sierra Leone—erupted in a civil war between the government and the Revolutionary United Front in 1991. The decade-long war resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and more than two million people becoming refugees who fled to neighboring Guinea and Liberia.

Their father, Tamba Kamachi Mbawa, divorced their mother and came to California to work and raise enough money to get Sahr and Sia to the United States. It took him 10 years and put him in "extreme credit card debt," the father says with a laugh.

But whatever financial woes he endured paled in comparison to wresting his children out from under immigration's red tape. Sahr and Sia arrived in the United States in 2000.

And their small war-torn country, with the help of the United Nations peacekeeping forces and financial help from the World Bank, is slowly regaining its stability. In May 2002 Sierra Leone held its first national election in decades.

But Mbawa was able to adjust to his new life in an American high school after overcoming language hurtles. He entered as a Willow Glen High School sophomore and Sia enrolled in the Middle School as a seventh- grader. Mbawa struggle with English but excelled at track and even became captain of the cross country team.

Mbawa speaks English, Kono, an African dialect of the district where he grew up in eastern Sierra Leone, and Krio, an English-base Creole.

"We grew up just speaking our language," Mbawa says, "not like here where you go to school [and learn to both] speak and write," English.

His affinity for running, however, was fostered from years of fleeing with his family and villagers across a country roughly the size of South Carolina. He would run and hide from armed rebels, and on occasion would run and dodge bullets.

"We were running for our lives, at that time walking10 or 20 miles a day." he recalls. And while they were running, they were carrying their belongings balanced on their heads.

In January 1996, when Mbawa was 13, rebels attacked a village where his family was staying. "They would shoot everywhere, and we retreated and hid six months in the bush, where there was food, but no salt." Since there was no salt to keep food preserved, villagers relied on hunting. Occasionally, lack of food was the least of their worries.

"I have seen a lot of times when rebels were killing," Mbawa says. "I mean, right in front of me. We were running but behind us they were shooting, so we were running for our lives with big loads on our heads."

Mbawa recalls a tense moment at a checkpoint where one rebel hid among the villagers and had a gun in his sack. The officials allowed Mbawa and his family to pass, but the rebel, who was standing in line just behind Mbawa was grabbed, taken aside and officials began to pelt him with bricks and another officer killed him with three shots from his rifle.

"It was a very furious moment," Mbawa says. "They killed him and they dragged him to a dustbin."

Reluctantly, he recalls a similar incident with his cousin, who he simply called John.

"We used to play soccer together; we used to go fishing and he'd protect me from doing bad things." Mbawa says is a relaxed monotone.

One day the rebels were going to attack the Karmajor tribe and John joined the rebels to steal food from the Karmajors.

Later that day the villagers fled when the rebels attacked, "the old townsfolk ran away, and all around you all you could see was combat." Mbawa hid in the woods for two months.

"We had no food, no clothing, no shoes, no medicine; people were starving," he says.

The townsfolk returned to the village three months later to find that the Karmajors had burned all the houses. "There was no place to sleep so we cut down trees, and made thatch houses and lived in them for two months, and slept on the empty floor. And when it rained, it would rain right on you and it was very cold," he says.

But Mbawa and his cousin didn't let the hardness of their life get them down.

"We were talking in front of our home and laughing about our lives because life then was so intense. I wasn't even scared anymore," Mbawa says. "There were many times I thought I was going to die and I wasn't scared of death anymore."

It was then that a Karmajor rebel asked Mbawa to accompany him but he said maybe later.

"By the time I went to get my shoes, a group of Karmajors with all kinds of paintings on their faces—a group of butchers—grabbed John and took him away. We didn't know what was going on."

Later that day "all they bring back is a liver, his heart and his hands on a leaf," with a rag and instructions to give the murderers money.

Tamba says, "His mother was there and they wanted to cry but couldn't or else they would have been shot."

Tamba said the Karmajors consider themselves to be liberators for the people, "but I call them butchers."

The Karmajors have civilian and combat clothing, which they use to their advantage to lure people into a false sense of secutrity, Tamba said.

But running from danger and violence is a part of his past Mbawa is eager to put far behind him.

Today, Mbawa looks forward to graduating from high school and enrolling at De Anza Community College to sharpen his English before moving on to UC­Santa Cruz, where he's been accepted.

With the successful completion of his high-school education in America Mbawa says, "For me, it's like a blessing, you know, it's like a dream come true."

For Everardo Ureña, no one told him he was going in the wrong direction or that quitting school would be a terrible mistake.

"Teacher and counselors just told me that whatever I decided to do would be the best thing," Ureña said. "And that I would make the right decision for my future. But they never told me anything about how hard it would be to get back to where I am now."

Ureña left during the second semester of his freshman year, returning during the second semester of his sophomore year.

"My freshman year was really tough," he says, "I was going through a lot, and I was drawn into a lot a problems. I thought I wasn't going to make it, and I also thought about doing something bad to myself," he said, not getting into specifics. "It was basically because I didn't have any friends. I didn't think I fit in at this school or anywhere else. And I thought no one believed in me."

Ureña left his freshman year at Willow Glen High to go to Mexico in the wake of his parents' disastrous marriage, to live with his grandmother.

"I left for Mexico, which I supposed would be for a better life," he says.

But when his grandmother died, about a year later, he had no one else in Mexico and didn't want to stay.

"There's not many schools over there; they can't help you," Ureña said. "The government doesn't help you. Either you have money to pay for your schooling or you don't." So he decided to prove to himself that he could make it, not just to his classmates and teachers who thought he'd drop out again. "I wanted to prove to myself that I could make it," he said.

He could have gone to any other high school, but he chose Willow Glen High School because it was someplace he thought he'd never come back to. "I said to myself: If I run away from my problems, or from things that I cannot do, I'm going to be running for the rest of my life."

Although he could have chosen to get his high school diploma through night classes or extension courses at a community college or school district program, Ureña wanted to wear a cap and gown, parade to Sir Edward Elgar's " Pomp and Circumstance" and have his diploma handed to him with the rest of the graduating Class of 2003.

With a year's worth of his high school career lost to his time in Mexico, he caught up by sacrificing his summers, poring through correspondence courses and enrolling at the Central County Occupational Center's medical program where he learned basic medical assistant skills, such as taking a patient's temperature and blood pressure.

His work with the program earned him an internship at a medical clinic, where his proficiency will lead to a job when the internship ends.

Ureña says he would like to attend Bryman College and train as a paramedic, and eventually like to become a doctor. And he credits his academic victories to his counselors at Willow Glen High School.

"When I came here my freshman year, some people thought I wasn't going to graduate," Ureña says. "But the counselors worked with me and told me I could make it."

One of those counselors who worried over, worked with and supported him was Dehdys Dizechi, the high school's bilingual academics and college advisor.

"There's no one like him," Dizechi says. "He tries the hardest and has overcome so many academic struggles."

For Mbawa and Ureña, a lifetime of running and struggling, which eventually lead to graduating from high school, has taught them the most important lesson: "Education is the greatest gift and now we can accomplish anything," Ureña says. "And we're not going to let it go."