By the time Pauline was 10 or 11 she was dreaming about going to America. She had seen enough Hollywood movies to think that America was the one place where opportunities could be had by all, regardless of social position. She saw real live Americans every day in the form of free-spending tourists who frequented her family's small shop.
"I never felt we were underprivileged, but always I knew we had a lot of things going against us." As a British colony in an age when westerners were lords of the earth, Hong Kong's top schools were the English-speaking private institutions run by various western churches. Only the graduates of these elite schools could hope to get into Hong Kong University. A merchant's daughter with a public-school education, Pauline had no hope of being admitted. At best, the Leungs knew, their children could become civil servants or teachers--and neither prospect thrilled Pauline.
"My parents were traditional in other ways," says Lo Alker, "but I have to give them credit because they always thought that the opportunity wasn't in Hong Kong, but in America. They wanted my brother to go. Of course I wanted to go to."
Pauline had been active in church since grade school. Her minister spotted musical ability in the bright, energetic youngster and took it upon himself to give her a series of informal piano lessons. In her junior year of high school Pauline began taking lessons from a concert pianist. She tutored after school to pay for the lessons. For a time she considered teaching music and math at the high school level.
The elder Leungs' misplaced hopes for their first son got in the way of Pauline's own dreams. Being a considerably better student, she graduated ahead of her older brother. In deference to her parents' wishes she waited until his graduation to apply with him to various U.S. colleges. One of her applications was to Northwestern University where she hoped to study music. Months later, Pauline was deeply disappointed when she heard no word back.
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Then she discovered the reason. Her parents had intercepted a letter from Northwestern accepting Pauline and offering her a full music scholarship. "My parents didn't let me know about it because they didn't want me to go unless my brother could go too."
One of her father's customers, a gift shop owner from Scottsdale, offered to help get Pauline and her brother into the University of Arizona in Scottsdale. Pauline was able to obtain two scholarships--one for music and one given to promising foreign students. Her brother had none, and the elder Leungs were forced to borrow to finance their educations and living expenses.
"It was a shock," Lo Alker says of her impression on first arriving in Scottsdale. "Arizona is a desert. I came from a big city with a lot of people, water, high mountain, a very metropolitan city and herešs this desert town! There's very few people there. In Hong Kong you're surrounded by your friends, there's a lot of people around." The loneliness was intense, and it made her and her brother grow even closer. "We've always been very close. My older brother and I were especially close. I never resented him."
To lessen the financial burden on her parents Pauline and her brother earned their meals by working in the cafeteria of the dorm where both lived. The summer after her first year Pauline despaired of finding work in Arizona and took a bus to San Francisco where she found a job in the bookkeeping department of a stationery store. She worked there again her second summer.
Pauline had first enrolled in the school of education to major in music and minor in math. Upon learning that, as a foreign student, she wouldn't be able to get a teaching certificate, she changed to the school of liberal arts.
"I had to choose how to make a living," she says. "I thought perhaps I can make a living better in mathematics, right? But then I didn't want to give up music so I decided to study both and get a double major."
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