He attends an elite university but lives in a trailer with no heat or sewer hookups

HAYWARD, Calif. - Ismael Chamu wakes up at sunrise, shivering in the drizzly morning's chill. He rises from the floor of a small trailer, where he sleeps wedged next to his younger brother and an arm's length from his two sisters, who share the only bed.

As he cooks breakfast, the smell of scrambled eggs and ripe sewage combine. There is no sewer hookup so when the storage tank is full, as it is this day, everyone holds on until they can get to a nearby gas station.

"Hurry up so you guys can eat," Ismael, 21, tells his sisters Jocelyn, 14, and Yazmin, 17.

At 7:40 a.m., he shepherds his sisters to high school, a 30-minute walk through gang territory in Hayward, just south of Oakland. At the school gate, he hugs them goodbye.

Then he heads to his classes at the University of California, Berkeley, the nation's most elite public research university.

Ismael looks