This is the third of 20 profiles of The Gazette’s Best and Brightest Class of 2018.

Rupa Duggirala, a Rampart High School senior, has always been an avid reader. She says that when she picks up a favorite adventure novel or Indian mythology tale the real world disappears as she enters the story.

Her enthusiasm rubs off on the students she helps at Kumon, an after-school education program for kids. “We don’t just read a book, we live it by acting out the story,” she explains.

In December of her junior year, she suffered a severe concussion after an encounter with a metal shower door. She could not read a single sentence, could not write, could not go down stairs without help and could not teach the classical Indian dances she enjoyed.

That was not her only struggle. Months before the accident, her seemingly healthy father died of a brain hemorrhage. “I felt suffocated by a black hole where I lived in a constant nightmare of sadness,” Duggirala said.

Her physical pain was all consuming. It took five months to recover from her concussion. She was alone during the day while her mother worked and her sister attended school. She was too wobbly on her feet to leave the house. It was painful to read or even watch television. The days seemed endless.

She pushed herself as much as she could, she said, because after her father’s death, she had promised herself she would work hard to go to college. Her father had been her rock and inspiration. He father never allowed things to get the best of him, and she vowed she would not either.

At first, because of the pain, she could manage to read only a sentence or two. But she felt joy at such simple accomplishments. She struggled through physical therapy and eventually could walk steadily. She was thrilled when she could finally read one of her cherished novels again and attended school a couple of days a week. By April, she was back full time in classes. In May, she was well enough to travel to India for the one-year family memorial for her father. She missed more school, but it was another defining moment in her healing.

This school year, she has doubled down and caught up with her rigorous International Baccalaureate program courses.

While ill, she had plenty of time to think about the temporal nature of death and her future. “I wondered why modern technology could not save his life. It sparked an idea within me that I had the responsibility of paying my debt to the world by striving to improve the lives of others.”

Although Duggirala has not decided where she will go to college, she has been accepted to the University of California at Berkeley and several other schools. She has chosen engineering as a college major. Meantime, she has learned to write computer code. She created a computer game in financial literacy that hundreds of students are now using.

She is again teaching classical Indian dance to children and performing the intricate steps that tie her culturally to her father and family.