South Salem grad beats cancer twice, wins Gates scholarship

Ask Leo Davila when his birthday is, and he'll tell you: Feb. 4 and April 23.

The first date is what most of us would consider a traditional birthday — the day his mother, Aurea, gave birth to all 8pounds, 3 ounces of him at Salem Hospital.

The second date is not traditional. It marks the day of a bone marrow transplant that changed the course of his life.

But considering Leo's journey that involves overcoming cancer twice before graduating high school with a near-perfect GPA and a full-ride scholarship to any university in the country, "traditional" is not the way to describe him.

On Friday, the smile on the South Salem High School graduate's face shone as bright as the crimson robe he wore when he accepted his diploma. It was a joyous day for hundreds of students who completed the first of life's biggest milestones, but for Leo and his family, who looked on and cheered loudly in the stands as he passed over the stage, it was more.

Their boy, then holding a record of the hard work that put him toward the top of his 2015 class, once faced a 35 percent chance of survival.

Birthday 1

Leo's parents are from Mexico. His mother's family moved to California in pursuit of a better life, and his father, Eulogio, moved to Idaho to work. Both migrated to Oregon around age 15. Aurea is a barista at a coffee shop at Salem Hospital. His father currently doesn't work.

At first glance, Leo is a normal high school kid — polite and quiet, but friendly. He characterizes his early childhood years as fairly normal. His most prominent memory is playing soccer.

"Basketball was my favorite sport, and I just started playing soccer and got good at it," he said.

He remembers having the skills it took to be a good soccer player: agility, speed, strength. But things changed during the summer after fourth grade. Looking back, he calls them "clues," referring to the physical pain and discomfort he felt when the soccer ball hit him in a particular way.

"I'd get slower, and my dad would get really frustrated with me."

When the ball flew into the air, he'd try to catch it the way he always did. It hurt in a way he had never felt before.

"After that it just got worse. My bones would ache," he said. "I couldn't walk with my legs because they hurt so much."

The pain would leave, only to come back stronger. It occurred enough times that his parents decided to take him to their family doctor, who ran some tests.

Leo clearly remembers what his doctor said, but at age 10, he didn't understand what it meant.

I'm almost certain your kid has leukemia.

He thought it was some type of virus. Aurea started crying. The doctor told them they needed to pack Leo up and take him to Oregon Health & Science University.

"My mom, she just knew something else was wrong. I was really confused," Leo said.

Aurea knew it was bad, but she didn't fully understand the diagnosis, either.

"I really didn't know what leukemia was," she said. "The first thing that came to my mind was death."

Abrupt change

Whatever type of pain he had felt in the past, it was minimal compared to what he felt when his family drove him to OHSU. He remembers his uncle had to carry him into the hospital.

It was that day that they learned what had taken over Leo's body: acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a cancer of the blood.

The doctor warned him it would take a lot of tests and a lot of treatments, including chemotherapy and radiation. Leo said his family was told it would take three or four years to get rid of it.

His mom wanted to know what his chance of survival was. But Leo didn't want to know; in fact, it didn't really cross his mind.

Daily life changed drastically. He was sent directly to the hospital where he stayed for a while and then had to come back weekly for treatments. He'd get chemo once or twice a week. Sometimes the treatments were so severe that he stayed in the hospital three days at a time.

He missed most of fifth grade. But he remembers going back to Mary Eyre Elementary that year while still having to take prescription pills and steroids that made his face puffy.

"I'd go to school like that, and I remember it was really embarrassing," Leo said.

It took a while for his hair to fall out.

Leo was still on chemo as he headed into sixth grade at Leslie Middle School, but he remembers wanting to be a normal kid. It was kind of like a double life.

"It's middle school; kids are jerks in middle school," he said. "I was trying to go there and have fun."

He had lost a lot of weight with chemotherapy, and he was bald. One day he went into class with his hood on, and a teacher asked him to remove it.

"It was super hot and I'd have my little beanie on and my head would be sweaty."

After sixth grade, things started to look up. Treatments got less severe and less frequent — once every couple of months. His body began to recover, he regained his weight, and his hair grew back curly, like a "mini-afro," he said. When eighth grade came around, he felt like himself for the first time in a long time.

Halfway through eighth grade, his extended family held a celebration because he had been declared cancer free. He made friends and started to outgrow his shell of shyness.

As a freshman at South Salem High School, he enrolled in International Baccalaureate courses. Even at South, students and staff were familiar with his struggle with cancer, including IB English teacher JoyAnna Forsythe.

"It's always hard freshman year," Forsythe said. "I caught wind that a lot of kids knew him because he had been at Leslie. I heard the kids say something about him having cancer."

One of her earliest impressions of Leo was that he was quiet and kind. Unassuming. Academically determined. To get into the IB program, students have to apply, take a test, maintain a certain GPA and have recommendations. And once you're in IB, you're in it for four years.

Leo's counselor at South, Todd Bobeda, had similar first impressions.

"He came in a couple times in a chipper mood and then told me it was his anniversary for his check," Bobeda said.

He was referring to Leo's upcoming appointment with the doctor that was expected to declare him cancer free, because a year had passed since his last treatment. Leo began to live life like cancer was a thing of his past — something he had beaten.

"Everything was perfect. I was in school, I was playing basketball, I was healthy and strong, I was taking IB classes," he said. "All that, I just forgot about it."

Leo felt extremely healthy when he and Eulogio went to OHSU for his check-up in December of his freshman year. The doctor ran a few blood tests, and he went up to the seventh floor.

"The doctor said, 'There is something in your blood that's not normal,'" Leo said. "He said, 'I think your leukemia might be back.'"

Doing it all again

"I got so warm. Goosebumps filled my whole arm instantly," Leo said.

It scared him, yes, but he still refused to believe it. How could it be back after he fought so hard?

"I felt like I was robbed," he said. "Cancer is like my whole childhood. I fought hard for four years as a kid."

Aurea looks back now and says it still hurts to think about the second diagnosis. Hearing about leukemia the first time was easy in comparison. This time it was more painful. And this time, she had another reason to be even stronger.

"I had to be strong for the baby that was inside," she said.

She was three months pregnant with her third son, Isaiah, when Leo's cancer returned.

The news began to sink in. Leo went home to his family for a Christmas party after the doctor's appointment and tried to eat and act normally. He had homework, but he couldn't do it. The next day, he went to school and tried to forget, but it was impossible. In first period, he told his best friend because he couldn't hold it in any longer.

Bobeda remembers learning the news.

"Then the next thing you know he came in and said, 'You're not going to believe this, but I have the cancer. I'm not cancer free,'" Bobeda said.

"He told me he was going to be gone and had to go up to OHSU for some testing," Forsythe said. "All of a sudden he was gone."

Chemo started right away. Even though he stayed at the hospital for two weeks, it took a bit of time for him to lose his strength. His friends visited him, and his class wrote him get-well letters.

The treatments had to be tougher this time around. Leo said he weighed 120 pounds when he went in. He had to get nourishment from fluid bags because he couldn't eat. Throwing up became a daily, sometimes twice-daily routine.

The battle with cancer was harder this time. After about a month — at 5 feet, 4 inches tall and 70 pounds — Leo had that thought.

Maybe he should just give up.

"When I started to feel sick and look sick, I accepted it. It made me feel like I was done. I said, 'What's the point of this?'"

Although the treatments were enough to nearly eliminate Leo's strength and will, they weren't enough to kill the cancer. It was time to look at other options.

The appointment when the doctor described to Leo and his parents what their options were is burned into his memory.

"They said the only way to go is getting a bone marrow transplant," Leo said. "They said, 'Do you want to do it?' And I said, 'If it's my best chance of living.'"

Birthday 2

It's difficult for him to describe the feeling.

It's like his body weight suddenly drops. Blood rushes to his head. He gets really warm.

Leo has felt it twice in his life. The first was when the OHSU doctors told him the cancer was back. The second was when they told him how he'd have the best chance of beating it.

It was April of his freshman year when Leo learned what a bone marrow transplant is.

"They pretty much had to kill me to bring me back," he said.

It's nothing like the movies, where transplant patients seem to be in pain one day and then go home the next. In real life, it involves weeks and weeks of painful preparation, including four rounds of treatment and radiation. Leo remembers a laser pointed at him and having to hold extremely still, all the while having a strong urge to throw up. Oddly enough, he also remembers the smell. It was like a sting in his nose that wouldn't go away.

Fortunately, it didn't take doctors very long to find a blood match. The actual transplant — the one on his second birthday on April 23, 2012 — was easy.

When it was over, Leo held his baby brother for the first time. A photo taken at the time shows him, weighing about 75 pounds with a bald head and a wide smile, his middle brother Josiah, and baby Isaiah wrapped in a blanket on a hospital bed.

Aurea was working every day at the coffee shop and then driving to Portland to visit Leo at the hospital. It was exhausting. But her faith gave her strength and hope. She didn't think about the past or the future, only day to day. She tried not to focus on whether her son might not make it. Without her faith, she said, she wouldn't have made it.

"Usually I was thinking he's going to live," she said. But there were a few times before the transplant when Leo's suffering was so terrible that she prayed it would stop. "I told God if you want him, take him. I just don't want to see him suffer."

Fresh air

Leo said there is no better smell than the fresh air that found him when he walked out of OHSU. His whole family was in the car on the way home. It was the first time in a long time they had been all together in some place other than a hospital.

Recovery was not easy. Bobeda recalled a time when Aurea visited the school to pick up work for Leo. He asked where Leo was and Aurea told him he was in the car, too embarrassed of his looks to come inside. So Bobeda went out to the car and gave him a hug. He was gaunt, frail and weak.

"I said, 'Leo don't ever be embarrassed. You have no idea the amount of students who are rooting for you, buddy,'" Bobeda said.

Leo wanted to get back to normalcy, which meant catching up in school. By the time he got back, it was the second semester of his sophomore year. There were some who doubted that he would be able to catch up, let alone maintain a high GPA in IB courses. But Leo was determined, and so was his mom.

He had just come from two survival stories, Aurea had told him. No one is going to tell him he can't graduate.

Leo said Bobeda and his counselors at Willamette Academy made all the difference. He wanted to succeed for himself and he wanted to succeed for them.

"He told me, 'It's going to be really, really hard. You missed a year and a half of high school. It's not going to be easy,'" Leo said.

They crafted a complex plan that would get Leo caught up. It included external and summer classes. But he never once indicated he wanted to remove himself from IB, Bobeda said.

"I remember reassuring him that we would be able to figure it out," Forsythe said. "I knew he could double up on English, but in my head I was thinking how in the heck can this kid do this? IB is so intensive."

He didn't just stay busy with school work. Leo also volunteered once a week at Salem Hospital. He kept patients company, filed papers, escorted patients to their cars and delivered flowers.

He was used to being the one that always needed help. For once, he wanted to offer that help to others.

Looking ahead

Bobeda was right. It wasn't easy. But in the middle of senior year, Leo had somehow earned all A's except for two B's. He began applying to colleges and for scholarships to pursue a dream that developed sometime while he was in the hospital: becoming a doctor.

He was accepted to all but one school he applied for. He had intentions of attending Willamette University because of its financial aid offer. As he had experienced many times before, though, things don't always go as planned.

In January, Leo applied for the Gates Millennium Scholarship through the Hispanic Scholarship Fund. He asked Forsythe and Bobeda to write his letters of recommendation, and both eagerly accepted.

"In 15 years of teaching, I've known one kid to get it," Forsythe said.

The scholarship is funded through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Since 1999, it has provided outstanding minority students the chance to complete an undergraduate college education in any discipline. Only 1,000 scholarships, which cover a student's education through graduation, are awarded every year across the country. More than 50,000 students apply, Leo said.

Bobeda's letter of recommendation talked about Leo's energy, his devotion, work ethic, how he missed his freshman year, but worked over time. It said he raised money for cancer research and volunteered at the hospital.

"Then it was waiting and waiting and waiting," Leo said.

"And I was praying and praying and praying," Aurea said.

After checking the mail twice a day for weeks, Leo finally came home to a large envelope in the mail box that was addressed to him. He took it in the house.

"My mom was like, 'Before we open it, let's pray," Leo said.

The word "Congratulations" in all capital letters marked the top of a sheet of paper inside the envelope. It certified him as a Gates Millennium Scholar.

"He was at my door when I got to school," Forsythe said.

In a manner not unlike Leo Davila — quiet and unassuming — he told Forsythe that he received the scholarship.

Once Bobeda heard the news, the entire list of South Salem High School teachers received an email announcing Leo's achievement.

Now with the ability to attend the university of his choice for up to 10 years, Leo now plans to attend Oregon State University's Honors College. To be eligible even to apply, a student must have at least a 3.75 GPA and an 1820 on the SAT or a 27 on the ACT, according to an admissions specialist.

Now if you ask him to look back on his battles, Leo will say what he didn't know back then: that it was meant to be.

"It took a while, but there was a reason for the second time. It put my dreams into concrete," Leo said. "Everything from the past fueled me to do what I do now and, I guess, yeah, it was meant to be."

jjohnson@StatesmanJournal.com, (503) 399-6714 or follow on Twitter.com @Joce_Johnson1