Course Correction Central Valley High Student Was Headed For Trouble Until He Set His Compass For Mit

Chuck Booten may be the only convicted felon entering this fall’s freshman class at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He is also, his mom says, “the kind of kid every mother ought to have a dozen of.”

Booten, 18, will leave Spokane on Monday, banking on a simple piece of faith.

“I know I won’t be the smartest kid in my class. But I figure I won’t be the dumbest kid either.”

It’s a safe bet.

This Central Valley High School valedictorian took four Advanced Placement classes last year and scored two 5s and two 4s on the AP tests. That means he’s already got a semester’s credits under his belt at one of the nation’s most prestigious universities.

Booten will take with him a ravenous sense of competition, every freshman’s worry about making friends, and a secret weapon - his earmuffs.

Earmuffs?

“If you’re in here,” Booten gestures around his small bedroom, “you can’t read with the noise of the television (on the other side of the wall). Or even just peole talking.”

So, he wears his earmuffs to study.

“I haven’t used ‘em in three months, so I’m not exactly sure where they are, but I’ll find them.”

Chuck Booten’s story is about a boy who started early down the wrong path and decided it didn’t suit him. He decided that hard work, faith in himself, and friends to compete with suited him better.

He was raised with a lot of independence. His parents divorced before he was born. His mother knew she had to get a college education in order to do better by her two sons. Some mornings she was up and gone before the boys were even awake, she remembers.

“In fifth and sixth grade, I shoplifted,” Booten said. In seventh grade, he participated in a burglary.

A few days earlier, fire had damaged a nearby convenience store.

“My brother and his friends were talking about looting it.”

Booten went along. The young raiders made off with candy and chewing tobacco. His explanation is the classic one:

“I wanted to fit in.”

Instead, reality hit. Booten was arrested and convicted. Burglary is a felony charge.

A few months later, he was arrested again, this time for shoplifting.

“I got three days in juvie,” Booten said, his eyes widening with the memory. “I did not like it in there. Those people were losers. I wasn’t anything like them.

“I told my roommate ‘I’m never coming back again,’ and he said, ‘Yeah, that’s what they all say.”’

Booten was right, though. He decided to pull his grades up and earn some respect - other people’s as well as his own.

In the fall of his ninth-grade year, he got his first 4.0 grade point average. “I loved it. I just ate it up.”

And he kept it up, all the way through high school.

Booten competed with friends like Todd Sears, R.J. Del Mese and Rick Giampetri - all future fellow valedictorians. He still relishes narrow victories from ninth grade. Over Del Mese, for instance: “I beat him by two-tenths of a percent!”

Joe Whitson taught Booten Washington state history that year at Greenacres Junior High. He remembers Chuck’s unusual will and self-discipline.

“I don’t think he ever had a late paper, because I don’t take ‘em,” Whitson said.

“He’d turn them in early and I wouldn’t take them. He’d say ‘What if I lose it?’ and I’d say ‘That’s your problem. That’s why we have due dates.”’

Booten jumps with nervous energy as he tells his story. His hands work restlessly, his eyebrows punctuate his nervousness and his bedroom seems hardly large enough to contain him.

His room is a barely controlled disaster. The mattress is bare. Dirty socks are piled high. Bags of stuff bought for college and ROTC are waiting to be packed.

Booten is leaving so early because he’s got Navy ROTC orientation to attend in Newport, R.I., then orientation at MIT. He’s attending MIT on a full scholarship from the Navy ROTC.

Booten leaves behind two proud parents.

“He’s going to go somewhere and do something,” said George Booten, Chuck’s dad.

“He has a very quick mind and a very strong will,” said Elgiva.

Their son is worried about making friends - “because I don’t smoke or drink or party” - about being so far from his girlfriend, Laurel Imus, who’s going to the University of Washington.

“But she’s already got a ticket to Boston for spring break. Now I just hope their spring break is the same time as our spring break,” Booten said.

And what if the other freshmen in his dorm tease him about those earmuffs?

“I’ll say, ‘Come talk to me in two years and I’ll have better grades than you will.”’

He’s hoping. He’s praying. And he’s ready.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos (1 Color)