Natalie Ruiz hears this a lot from people: “I don’t know how you do it.”

To grasp why they ask, we have to go back nearly four years. Ruiz had just moved into her dorm at UC Berkeley, a transfer student from Solano Community College who worked hard to get into the No. 1-ranked public university in the United States.

And the pregnancy test she was looking at was positive.

She didn’t know it then, but going through the pregnancy, giving birth and caring for a newborn would be the least of her worries as a UC Berkeley student. A frightening medical diagnosis and life-saving surgery would soon top that.

So, as Ruiz prepares to walk across the graduation stage in her cap and gown this weekend, people wonder.

They don’t know how Ruiz raised a daughter while completing a double major in sociology and social welfare.

Back to Gallery Surprise pregnancy, health woes are no match for this UC... 3 1 of 3 Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle 2 of 3 Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle 3 of 3 Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle





They don’t know how Ruiz survived the rigor of UC Berkeley, even as she recovered from surgery, for acute necrotizing pancreatitis, that required her to walk around with a portable feeding tube for six months.

They don’t know how she found time to work as a legislative intern for state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, to volunteer as a GED tutor at San Quentin State Prison, and to be an undergraduate research assistant in the sociology department.

And they don’t know how she still had the drive to raise $50,000 as the food donation program director for the Student Parent Association, an organization that picks up and delivers grocery donations to more than 100 student parent households.

So the amazement — “I don’t know how you do it” — is a familiar one to her.

“People say that to me all the time, looking at me like I’m this Wonder Woman,” she said while zipping the sleeves of her leather jacket.

Yes, I checked her wrists to see if she was wearing metal bracelets like Wonder Woman.

Here’s the secret to Ruiz’s success: fear.

“You do it afraid, but you don’t do it alone,” she told me as we sat at Philz Coffee on Shattuck Avenue.

She’s had help from her partner and high school sweetheart, Luke Blanchard, the father of their daughter, Clara. Both of their families have provided support, as did the Student Parent Center at UC Berkeley.

“I often receive a lot of the credit, but getting myself through to graduation, accomplishing everything I have while still making sure my daughter is growing up in a healthy, stimulating and happy environment — that is not something I could ever do alone,” she said.

When I arrived at Philz, Ruiz was hunched over a folded piece of printer paper. On one side she was making a guest list for the three graduation ceremonies she’s attending. There was a stack of tickets for one on the table near her mint mojito drink.

On the other side was a laundry list of to-do items that included washing and steaming Blanchard’s work shirts so they could save money by tossing the dry cleaning bill. At the bottom was a reminder to practice her commencement speech for the sociology graduation ceremony.

Ruiz, 25, knows how to juggle, but the Vacaville native’s story is one of perseverance and success, a story about how fear can be used as fuel. She was rejected by UC Berkeley as a high school senior, and she feared she’d never get in. So she went to Solano Community College before applying again.

Three weeks after moving into her dorm on the Berkeley campus in August 2013, Ruiz, who was away from home for the first time, sent Blanchard to a Walgreens on Telegraph Avenue to buy the pregnancy test.

To help understand their different but similar reactions, I’ll share that Ruiz told me Blanchard always takes a calculated approach to solving problems while she feels her way through to a solution.

Blanchard sat down for a few minutes to quietly think — and then called his parents as Ruiz yelled at him not to. She hyperventilated — and then called her mother. They were both 21.

“It was an emotional blow for her, because it wasn’t something we had in the cards,” said Blanchard, 25.

“We got to know each other a lot better in the way that we handle things,” Ruiz said. “It wasn’t always pretty.”

Clara, a chatterbox who likes Pokemon, turns 3 on Monday. She’ll walk alongside her mom at the three graduation ceremonies — in her own cap and gown.

Ruiz, the youngest of three daughters, was afraid to tell her dad. He’s the oldest of nine children, and he came to United States from Mexico at 18. When he graduated from California State University Sacramento, he became the first in his family to get a college degree.

“The very first time that I ended up speaking to her father, after Nat and I had been together for, I guess, five years, was the time that he found out that Nat was pregnant,” Blanchard said.

Her father said Blanchard wasn’t welcome in the house until he married Ruiz.

“He has made it clear throughout my whole life that education is a huge privilege, and the opportunities that I had were not ones that he had,” Ruiz recalled. “He wants to see me take advantage of it. It took me a long time to realize where the hurt and grief came from.”

He was afraid she was throwing away an opportunity, but the stroke he suffered that December helped soften his stance. And when he held his grandchild for the first time, Ruiz’s father, who had grown up around men who came around but never stuck around, saw that Blanchard wasn’t budging.

Everything was starting to get better. Then, two months after Clara’s birth in May 2014, doctors diagnosed Ruiz with acute necrotizing pancreatitis and informed her she would need surgery to have her gall bladder, spleen and much of her pancreas removed.

As Ruiz was wheeled into surgery, Blanchard was scared he was saying goodbye to the girl he started dating his junior year of high school.

“I remember kissing her before she went back and being concerned that was the last (time) I was going to see her,” said Blanchard, also a UC Berkeley graduate, who now works in the insurance industry. “I remember my mom driving me back to Vacaville to sleep that night (and I) was sobbing the whole car ride and truly scared that I wouldn’t see her again.”

To help care for Clara, a family breast milk brigade formed. The supply chain included Blanchard’s aunt, who got milk from a choir member. They’d make the exchange in parking lots off the highway in Davis.

Ruiz is graduating with a 3.9 GPA, and she earned the Chancellor’s Award for Civic Engagement and the President’s Award for Outstanding Student Leadership. How did she do it?

“People ask me that without even knowing the half of it,” Ruiz said, laughing, as she twirled the pen she was using to write her laundry list.

The red polish on her fingernails was chipped, but a manicure wasn’t on her list of things to do. Even if it wasn’t written down, finding a job is at the top.

Ruiz, who lives in an apartment in Albany with Clara and Blanchard, would like to do social policy research because she wants to continue helping others.

“I want to help poor families who are trying to navigate systems like Medi-Cal,” she said, referring to California’s low-income health coverage. “I want to be talking to families who are impacted by these kinds of systems.”

Before Ruiz left to go scratch items off her list, I asked her what she feared now. She thought about it for several hours before sending me a text.

“I fear the day that my daughter stops thinking of me as a person who can do no wrong and knows all the answers,” she wrote. “I fear what it will be like the day that she grows up to learn that I’m only human, and I don’t always know if I’m making the right decisions.”

Happy Mother’s Day.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Otis R. Taylor Jr. appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Email: otaylor@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @otisrtaylorjr