As 17-year-old Brandon Ragasa prepares to graduate Sunday alongside more than 600 of his Campbell High School classmates, the senior class president and valedictorian says he’s proof that your past doesn’t have to control your future.

Teachers say Ragasa, who had a nontraditional upbringing without either parent in his life, manages to see the positive in every situation — especially his own.

His father died in an accident when Ragasa was less than a year old. His mother, who had him when she was 15, got addicted to drugs at a young age and has been living on the streets. He was passed among family members before he began living full time with his paternal grandparents, Elisa and Edwin, in Ewa during his high school years.

“He’s never wanted anyone to know about how he grew up, because he didn’t take that as a negative and didn’t think of it as a disadvantage,” said Marites Galamgam, Ragasa’s AP biology and AVID college-readiness teacher. “He doesn’t want people to pity him.”

Galamgam learned about her student’s background from an essay she assigned students to write about a role model or event that helped shaped their life. The assignment revealed that Ragasa’s father was her former classmate.

“At the end of his paper, he wrote that not having parents in his life wasn’t a bad thing for him,” she said. “One of the things that makes him so different from other kids is that he takes every situation and turns it into a positive. He wrote, ‘I’m unlucky yet lucky to have had this experience because it made me who I am today,’ and taught him to be responsible and have compassion.”

Ragasa said in an interview on campus that he doesn’t let his background define him.

“I don’t think your past should hold you back in any way. To me it holds no significance in what I do now and what I want to do,” he said.

English teacher Kim Virtudazo, who’s also the class adviser for the seniors, said Ragasa’s upbringing is easily hidden from others by his positive outlook and work ethic.

“He never made his situation an issue. He’s never made it an excuse or pity story. Because of his positive attitude, no one would ever know that he had such a rough childhood,” said Virtudazo, whom Ragasa affectionately calls “Mama V.”

He’s also excelled in academics, earning higher than a 4.0 grade point average this semester, qualifying him as one of 28 valedictorians. (In addition to a 4.0 GPA, public school seniors are declared valedictorians if they also meet the requirements of one of the state Department of Education’s three honors recognition certificates. The academic honors certificate, for example, involves taking advanced and college-level math and science courses.)

Ragasa’s accomplishments have attracted a host of scholarship offers. In all, he received $600,000 in scholarship offers and was accepted to 10 colleges. He’s accepted a full ride, plus half of his room and board costs — valued at $64,000 a year total — from the University of San Francisco, where he plans to study biology. He’s also received $12,000 in other local scholarships.

“He is more deserving than anyone else in this world of the scholarships he’s receiving and all that he’s done, not because of his situation, but because of the person he is,” Virtudazo said.

Ragasa says he found an outlet in schoolwork and enjoyed the challenge. His grandmother, Elisa, said she’s always emphasized to him the importance of a good education, self-respect and discipline to be successful in life.

“I wanted to show my family that I could do it, that no matter what I’ve been through, I can still do whatever anyone else can do regardless of my circumstances,” Ragasa said. “And I didn’t want to end up like my mom. I didn’t want to take a path that the majority of people in my life have taken.”

He’s considering a future career as a pharmacist sothat he can potentially help his mother and others like her. He wants to return to his hometown after college to help tackle issues of homelessness and drug abuse.

“Those two issues, even though it didn’t directly affect me, it affected me personally through my mom,” he said.

Galamgam said Ragasa fuels her optimism.

“A kid like Brandon gives me hope for the future that they’re going to help each other, that they’re building something for other generations,” she said. “He’s going away for college, but I know that he’s one kid who’s going to come back, because he truly cares about the community.”