Alfredo's story

The life of Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa, a guy from a poor family in Mexico, may sound like a movie script, but it is no fiction.

Twenty years ago, he hopped a border fence from Mexico into the United States and became a farm worker.

Today, he is a doctor at a famous hospital and a researcher who is looking for a breakthrough in the treatment of brain cancer.

His remarkable journey began in a tiny farming community, 60 miles south of the U.S. border. Quinones-Hinojosa was born there, and by age 5, he was working at his father's gas station. His grandmother was a village healer and a midwife.

But in the mid-1970s, Mexico's economy collapsed, and his father could no longer keep food on the table for the family. Quinones-Hinojosa continued his schooling and became a teacher by the time he was 18, but he, too, was unable to provide for his family. So he made the decision — like so many relatives before him — to head north.

Quinones-Hinojosa picked cotton, tomatoes and cantaloupes, and lived in the fields in a broken-down camper he bought for $300. When his cousin told him he would be a farmworker for the rest of his life, he decided to change his life.

He studied English at a community college, where a teacher encouraged him to attend the University of California at Berkeley. At Berkeley on a scholarship, Quinones-Hinojosa developed an interested in science. He went on to Harvard Medical School, where he eventually graduated. It is also during this time that he received his U.S. citizenship.

Quinones-Hinojosa says he owes so much of his success to the many people who have helped him in his life.